Sunday, March 17, 2007

I’m sorry it has been so long since I wrote last, but I wasn’t home much this week at all! I’ve been SO busy!

My week was full of classes and PBL’s as usual, but I also started my open water scuba diving course Tuesday evening which made things even busier!


This is a picture of the quad area where we usually eat lunch in between lectures.
Thursday night I went to a “Welcome Party” for a student club that I joined called MIRAGE. The club focuses on rural medicine and plans lots of (subsidized) trips around the country doing medically related things. (I figure it might be kinda similar to what I was doing in India??) Anyway, I know lots of people in the club and it was only $5 to join (for my entire degree), so I thought it sounded like a good idea. The ‘Welcome Party’ was at a bar right around the corner from my apartment- so it was also very convenient.

I tried to avoid doing anything too exciting on Friday since I knew I had a long weekend ahead of me! Len, Jacqui and I went downtown after classes and had dinner at Darling Harbour. After dinner we got some Lindt ice cream which was SO delicious!! But I seriously haven’t been hungry since I ate it. It was so filling and so rich that I think the calories from it lasted me all weekend!

Both Saturday and Sunday were FULL days of my scuba diving course. We met on campus at 8am both mornings, where we were picked up and taken out towards the coast (where the dive shop is located). Saturday morning was spent in the classroom and then in the store- fitting (and buying) gear. Janice and I didn’t realize that we would have to buy so much. We had to buy all of our ‘personal gear’- which is a mask, snorkel, fins, boots and gloves. Not cheap! (but apparently will last a long time…). It better!

Saturday afternoon we went to a big outdoor pool and went scuba diving in the deep end. It was pretty neat, but all we got to see were a bunch of bloody bandaids :( . yukky. It is a very strange feeling to be able to be underwater for so long. I just can’t believe the amount of equipment that you need… and how much it weighs!

It took a while for us to get through all the required skills since there were a lot of people who seemed pretty uncomfortable in the water. We didn’t get back to the city till well after 7pm, so I just stayed in and tried to get to sleep early. There were lots of parties going on (since it was St. Patrick’s Day), so I was woken up a lot- by the drunk people outside and by my friends who weren’t very happy with me going to bed so early on St. Patrick’s Day. :(

Sunday was another long day. We had a little bit of classroom work in the morning and then headed to the ocean for a snorkel and our first dive. We went to a place called Inscription Point in Kurnel (towards the southeast end of Sydney). We were in a national park called Botany Bay. Unfortunately, because it was a national park, access to the shoreline by car was not very convenient and we had to walk over a kilometer will all of our gear on (each way). If you haven’t been scuba diving before it probably doesn’t sound too bad, but it was! I have massive bruises on my hips from my weight belt being grinded into me.

The snorkel was ok, but the dive was much better. The visibility wasn’t very good (especially for the snorkel) because it was overcast and there was a fast current stirring up the bottom. Plus there were LOTS of bluebottles in the water and a few people got stung.

The dive was good, even though the visibility wasn’t great. We went down to about 12m and we saw lots of neat things. Our instructor (Bill) caught a sea dragon (looks like a giant sea horse) and let us all hold it. He also found us a little octopus hiding in between the rocks, but it wouldn’t come out very far. There were also really BIG blue groper fish everywhere and we broke big sea urchins open and fed them to the blue gropers. The one I got to feed was about 2.5 feet long. Towards the end of the dive, we were all kneeling on the sandy bottom of the ocean working on some skills when Bill came swimming at me quickly and told me to move. It turns out I was kneeling about a centimeter away from an electric ray that was hiding in the sand. You can’t touch the top of them or else you get a shock (which can really be dangerous if they are big enough!). Bill got his knife out and started to tease it a bit so that it completely burrowed itself under the sand and you couldn’t see it at all. EEEK.

This is a blue groper (like the one I fed)!


Anyway, I survived. We have 4 more dives next weekend and two more Tuesday class sessions. I really think that anyone who is planning to come to Australia to visit (hopefully lots of you!) should try and do an open water diving course before you come (or plan to do it while you are here). Everyone who I talk to says it would be a shame to come to Australia and not dive, and now I can understand why.

Off to bed early tonight- I’m at the hospital tomorrow! Only 2 more weeks of school till the holidays! I can't wait for FIJI!