Day 71- Call Me Jacques Cousteau...Or Whatever The Opposite Of That Is.

With our thoroughly rested minds, Colleen and I made our way back to school the dive shop for our last installment of "in class" work which was followed up with our final exam.  Despite my lack of recent scholastic endeavors and the fact that I dozed off during class a few times (sorry Amber!), I still managed to get 92% to Colleen's 86%.  Not that anyone is keeping score.  Yeah, just kidding I was keeping score, SUCK IT COLLEEN!!!  Regardless of who scored higher (IT WAS ME!!!) we both achieved a high enough score that we were officially out of the classroom and ready to embark on some dives in the super terrifying ocean.



Big-ups to the Beaufort Delta. Repping hard like a white boy with my shirt!

After mowing down a huge lunch (not the best idea when you have to go swimming) we headed down to the pier and loaded up our gear with the other divers for the afternoon session.  We were going to be diving at two sites known as Japanese Gardens and Twins, which I realize means absolutely nothing to anybody unless you have been to Koh Tao, so I shall leave it at that.  We were both super gung-ho to experience our first taste of non-pool diving, but before we were allowed to go all Jacques Cousteau, Colleen and I were told we had to swim two laps around the boat and complete a doggie paddle for what seemed like an eternity.  I actually thought I was going to drown right then and there and that I was going to be the first scuba student to die before they actually did any real dives. 



Colleen getting ready to submerge herself.  Never thought I would see this day.



Did I mention she got her hair done in prison!?

Alas, my giggly belly and weak heart survived to pathetic fitness test and the next thing I knew we were swimming amongst the fishes like long time professionals with our scuba gear intact.  Well, at least that's what I would like you to believe.  In actuality I was struggling with my buoyancy quite a bit, and I was kind of floating around everywhere (think Sandra Bullock in "Gravity").  I can only assume it was due to all the jelly in my stomach I had amassed in the previous few weeks thanks to the cheap Thai beer.  My favorite part of the dives was watching Colleen as she did her best to stay far away from any fishes that attempted to get close to her.  Thank God we weren't diving with spiders or she would have been really fucked!  Our instructor Amber also had open cuts on her legs that the cleaner wrasses (think algae eaters for all you aquarium aficionados [if that's a thing]) took a shining too and were constantly trying to attack.   While I am not overly afraid of small fishes, I definitely don't like them sucking the life out of me, but Amber seemed quite content with donating her skin to the local sea life.  Due to my heavy breathing, I was constantly running out of air faster than the other divers, which kind of sucked as I felt responsible for shortening up other people's dives as we would have to surface for my sake.  Aside from my breathing issues and Colleen's fear of minnow-sized fish, we could officially say we had dived in something other than a pool!  Swimming under the water was actually not as strenuous as I had imagined, although the boat captain more than made up for this when we parked the boat on what seemed like the other side of Thailand in relation to the dive sites.  It may not have taken a ton of exertion to swim under the water, but Captain Ahab more than made up for it by making my non-athletic ass swim for ten minutes at the surface to get back to the vessel.    



"Don't worry Colleen... I'll tell your mother you love her!!!"



That evening we again took it easy as we were pretty wiped out from diving and would have to be up again bright and early the next morning for our final dives and (hopefully!) receive  our Open Water Certification.

~Brentski~