Rescue Diver weekend

May 15- May 17
This past weekend was again pretty laid back. Friday night some friends and I (Rhona, Miranda, Laura, Chris, Morgan, Scott and Chris’s two roommates) went to see Angels and Demons. I thought the director did a pretty good job from my memory of the book. I think everyone else liked it, but they hadn’t read the book. We went to a late showing so it was pretty late when we got back. But I had to stay up late and finish my readings for a rescue diver course I was taking this weekend. Though I was up late I’m really glad I finished it because it turned out that the teacher checked us on all of it.

So Saturday morning I made my way to the JCU pool. There were three of us in total in the class, so really small, but this worked out well I think because then we didn’t have to wait around for ever for others to do their skills. It was pretty similar to lifeguard rescues, just incorporated dive gear really. Saturday night I had the Americans, Rhona and Miranda over for a movie night. That seems to be our thing here, movies and icecream—can never get enough of them! We watched Jumper, which I thought was really cool and Beverly Hill Chihauahs, which was a joke-it was so stupid we had to keep watching it. The Americans made these things they call Oreo balls—with smushed oreos and cream cheese—tasted kind of like fudge and of course I supplied some popcorn. Nice way to relax the night away.
Sunday my class met at the Strand to do actual open water skills. We had to start at 9 AM so I was having a crisis the night before trying to figure out how I would get there because the first bus from Uni was at 910 AM. Luckily Sameer was willing to wake up and drive me, what a life saver! Today’s session was exciting and challenging as the water was super murky. We had to do things like search patterns and tows and mouth to mouth (but not really). It really was a fun course until my mask disappeared. I was really really mad. We purposely had one person be the gear collector so that we wouldn’t lose our stuff, and of course it had to be me to have my mask get lost. We searched for a good length of time, but I am not confident the girl knew where she lost it. My guess is she dropped it as soon as I handed it to her, but she thinks she brought it to the beach and it got pulled back in by the waves. It’s hard for me to say, because I was rescuing my victim at the time and was not paying attention to her. It makes me really mad because we were in a confined area, so we only have that area to search—its blocked off by the stinger net—yet we couldn’t find it and I couldn’t do much in the way of searching because I didn’t have a mask to search with! Anyway the plan now is to ask the girl to go half in with me so I can replace it. But I think I am going to wait until I go back to America to buy a new one so that I can get the same one again, I really like it so I don’t want anything else. Yup so that’s my latest drama. What other bit of equipment could I mess up?

After my class yesterday I was so pissed off that I took a 2.5 hour nap, but it may also have been that I was tired from the work of the class. After dinner and after updating this blog insanely haha I went with some friends to watch a movie called, Mongol. It was really good, in a different language, but subtitles, I am not exactly sure where it was done, maybe China? Anyway, I guess it’s pretty well known now and it was basically the story of Ghangis Khan, really interesting! I watched this with Josh, Xu and Miranda as well as two of Josh’s friends.

Well that brings you up to date on my life. For this week I have my fish skull due tomorrow and my rainforest project poster due Friday. Thursday at 4AM I leave for Orpheus Island again, looking forward to that. Next week is the final week of classes, holy crap right? Then we have two weeks of exams!
Ah for anyone not in my family, I just want to say, Maggie (my twin) bought me a ticket to come visit her in Los Angeles for our 21st Birthday! How cool ya? So despite my lose of my mask, destruction of my camera and getting dumped at the beginning of the year—it’s looking to be a good year so I’m okay with those set backs.
Take care and write me sometime!