My 1st SCUBA Diving Class: whole lot new experience!

I try to master snorkeling first

Honestly, diving is an impossible activity for a human named Lolo (me). Why? First of all she’s by nature a control freak, and other thing she’s easily panicking. Obvious huh? But as usual the force is strong with this one! Her curiosity is stronger than the understanding of reality. I finally try diving, and put my life on stake.

True that it’s more fun to do new things with a companion as passionate as us. Grateful that I met a lovely friend, Etha, that happily arranged the whole diving courses (finding instructor, match the date, venue, participants, etc) together with her colleagues, a bunch of people as curios as me to try diving. I was of course not aiming for the license, I just want to know how it feel, but meanwhile I’m at it, to have an open water diving license is great. I was taking the course from POSSI that affiliated to CMAS, meaning I can later use my license to dive around  the world! Yay!

Thank you for all my funky instructors: Begin, Jali and Denny! They are amazing instructors that I’m suspicious, are fish by nature, just in human shape. They dive like they’re living in water. No wonder to that since they are all graduated from IPB, majoring marine biology. The great thing about them is how humble and patience they are, and they shares a lot. They really know what to do and don’t make things complicated. Thou we have to admit, diving is a bit complicated sport. Good teacher is one who don’t make you feel inferior but encourage you to learn whilst give you vision of the final result. They did that to me. Why I need that? To tell you the truth, I  was almost quit,  3 times in only 3 classes, due to hesitation and doubt that I can actually stay calm breathing underwater.

Diving class taught me more than just how to breathe under water properly, and I’m not yet talking about the amazing of our sea and reef and fish. It taught me to be more detail especially in the section where we learn about our gear. There are no room for being reckless or our diving will be very much inconvenient. Checking the gear one by one, the tank, BCD, masker, etc. How to put it the set together and unset it. To remember each step meticulously and  all the little tips that actually really matter. As simple as, don’t put down the mouth fish.

It also taught me well how to keep calm eventhou I have no idea what’s going on. Once I was panicking and end up rushing to the surface from 5 meters deep and inhale a lot of water to my lung, I was almost drowning. That very second I’m sure that I’m going to die. Horrible death, drown. I was panic because simple thing, I thought my inflator doesn’t work, and I let go my mouth fish to give my BCD some air so I can float. Boy, I was so scared and decided that diving is not my thing. But then Jali, my instructor patiently guide me from zero, and sooth me. He did funny thing underwater, silly pose and signs, I feel comfortable. So, lesson learned, stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. I’m bataknese, staying calm is my weakest area.

Yes, it feels amazing, glad that I took this chance. So here are the pictures of my first classes of diving.

Me and Jali my instructor. the class is really fun!

learning how to Equalize Underwater Ear Pressure, really important!

me learning how to use the inflator

The mask clearing skill is one of the most important skills to master when scuba diving, but I still cannot let go my mask.

me learning exploration with Jali watching over me in weird pose hihihi...

keep learning and start all over again so I get use to it....

sign thumb up doesn't mean I'm good, it means: let's go up!

Special note: Thank you Begin for my lovely pictures! *hug*