~Officially Certified~

Oh my gosh!!! I'm so glad that I'm finally done...ha! Yesterday I got my official certification (of course I had to go with a temporary one since I leave in 3 days...yes...3...I'm so excited!) Since it takes about a week to get the actual card, all I have is an 8X10 paper saying that I'm good to go. But as long as I don't have to do the hotel certification, I'm down. This weekend was pretty much exhausting. I had 4 dives that had to be done in order to be certified, these dives ranged anywhere from 30 to 40 feet. We had to do all the things that we learned in class, but in much deeper water. The CESA assent was pretty sweet. You start at 20 or so feet, take in 3 breaths, and have to assend to the top breathing out the whole time. You have to assend slowly, so it takes about 30 seconds or so to get to the top, and the crazy thing is, you don't run out of air. Because of the pressure difference, at 20 feet the air in your lungs is compressed, and when you assend, it expands, so the closer to the surface you get, the more air you have. So weird...but it was awesome! I also had to do alot of things that I don't like, but hopefully I will never have to do them again. The crater was awesome but I'm not a huge fan of confined spaces...which is why we're doing the cave dives after the open water stuff. We also bought Randy some good fins yesterday, since that was the thing that was missing from his essential gear. So now we're already to go. We found the dive sites that we're going to do yesterday as well...and they are freakin sweet! This trip has pretty much turned into a diving trip, we are diving 3 out of the 6 days we're there. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be exhausted and run out of room on my camera, but I think it will be worth it. Here's a small preview of what we're going to be doing...and then you'll understand why I'm so excited for this dive!!