One of the most popular activities to do in Guam is to Scuba dive. It's apparently one of the top 10 locations in the world for scuba diving and it's supposed to be pretty cheap to get certified and continue diving compared to other locations. Mason went through his training in December 2016 and he tries to dive once a month. I really wasn't interested. I didn't have any interest in being lost in the big blue ocean, having that Finding Nemo moment being surrounded by all blue, and the snorkeling view, to me, was just as good. Mason was encouraging me to take the class, but I wasn't that in to it. I had thought about doing a Discovery dive, but kept talking myself out of it. A friend who PCS'd in the Spring made me promise her that I would at least try a Discovery Dive while we were here. So, after floundering around for a bit, I signed up for a Discovery Dive with the teachers that Mason did his class with.
For the Discovery Dive you basically go through a brief tutorial, practice a few skills in chest deep water, and then go for a dive. We were diving at Fish Eye, which is probably one of the top dive places in Guam for tourists. We'd snorkeled there and I was familiar with the area. The Discovery Dive was in the afternoon after Mason and I had an amazing morning snorkel date. While we were going through the brief intro and discussion on the land I was getting that "feeling" that I was going to pass out and throw up. It's what I call my doctors office behavior. I knew I needed to walk away, and I grabbed some water and actually threw up. I was so nervous that they weren't going to let me dive. I knew I'd be much better once getting in the water. I'd much rather just get in and do it than talk about what we're going to do. So, this cycle happened again and we finally got to go in the water. I'm so thankful that the teacher (and our friend) let me try the dive. I was able to do the skills and the dive was awesome! By the end of the day I was telling them I was ready to sign-up for the Open Water Scuba Course.
I think it was perfect that I had the Discovery Dive under my belt, because when I was reading the course book and then took the evening course to review the work and take the tests a lot of the information made more sense to me since I was familiar with a few of the concepts and the equipment. I signed up to do my dives in a small group since I wasn't sure if I'd panic again and I didn't want to rush through the water work. My class has an eighth grader, his dad, and a sixth grader and me. We did a pool work session two weeks ago and it was so great to go through so many skills in the pool and then on Saturday we did our first two dives. It was so cool! (they went so fast)! I had a harder time descending on the second dive, so I need to practice that on dives three and four, but I am so excited that Mason and I will get to do this together soon. I'm hoping to finish off my course next weekend and be scuba certified!
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