Life is Scuba-dooba-tastic!!

Ah, life in Oki is fantastic, on land AND under the sea. As you all know, Mike and I finally finished our two Scuba courses... sorta. Last Sunday we completed our Basic Open Water course which allows us to, I guess you can say legally, Scuba up to a depth of 60 feet!! Yay for that. It took almost 10 hours in the pool practicing skills, about 15 class hours and 6 tests, and 5 open water ocean dives over the cours of two days, but we passed with flying colors!

We liked Scuba so much and had such an awesome time with our Instructors Dave and Tim, we immediately signed up to take the advanced class with them. Basic class ended Sunday at 2ish, then we went for a quick dive off the sea wall with time at the Bird Cage, then we went back to the Marina to start our advanced class with Dave that afternoon! Yeah, it's addictive. We'd only been in the ocean one day when we dropped like 3K into all of our own gear. It costed us a small fortune, but we have all of our own very very nice gear so we don't have to rent the crappy stuff from the Scuba Locker. Mike is all pink and black, haha. Mike went with the red, black and neon yellow stuff. He's very easy to pick out under water, needless to say, with all that neon yellow!!

Ok, so first picture up for discussion is our poor shower room, or the "Scuba Room" as it's been named at our house. We hang our wetsuits in there, our regulator hoses, snorkels, masks, fins, boots, gloves, BCD (bouyancy vests), all our weights are hanging out on the edge of the tub, along with our rash guards. They are those nifty red and white looking shirts in there. They have the protection of wearing SPF 50, so you can stay cool but keep out of the sun during your surface breaks. It's amazing how burned you get here even after an hour in the haze. Poor Mike got fried Memorial weekend when he wasn't wearing one, and I got crispy last weekend when I was cold and took mine off to warm up... oops!

Next pic is Mike, obviously. Sorry the pic is on it's side, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it. This was on the last day of our open water dive. Mike, myself and 4 others out of the 12 of us had finished all our skills the previous day, so this day we got to swim and fart around and take pics with the instructor assistant Tim! It was a ton of fun, minus the huge sea snake that took an interest in our group! They are super poisonous and very curious about divers, but hardly ever bite... thank GOD!

Next is Mike and I at the North Steps on our last day of class. It's hard to time pics underwater so that bubbles don't get in your face... the biggest and most important rule about diving is your not supposed to hold your breath, even for pictures because it can cause lung damage, or so we were told, so neither of us dared to tempt fate on our second dive...

Next is Mike and I at the "Bird Cage." Under water this structure looks like a gazeebo that is left with just a metal frame or something, making it looks like a huge bird cage under water, but in reality it was a structure left behind from the old water treatment plant in Oki. The site we were diving was right across the street from the new water treatment facility, but the cage was left behind from the old one. Apparently, it was some type of structure that held a huge pipe that either did water intake or an outlet... I'm not sure, but it was quite impressive under water and you could swim all around and through it. Very entertaining for newbies like us! Oh yeah, note all the bubbles in my face from Mike below me... silly boy hogging all the spotlight!!

Last pic up is me! It looks like I have my hands up in a "Stop, don't come any closer" pose, but in reality I was giving peace signs with both of my hands. The Japanese are very big in posing for all their pictures giving the peace sign... I dunno. I just did it to be cool, I guess.

So yeah, that's it for underwater pics so far. I think I may invest in a new case for my sony camera some time this week so I can snap some pics of mike and I and all the awesome fish we get to see. It's a couple hundred buck and I am too impatient to see if Santa will bring me one. Plus, it will provide endless posts for all you hard-core fans (yeah, that shout out goes to Debbie and all her awesome co-workers, and Sarah R. for being such avid readers and making me feel like this blog provides some purpose!).

More to come soon!!