I found Nemo!!

Alright alright, I am officially licensed to SCUBA dive! This past weekend I spent three amazing days on Pulau Redang finishing up my SCUBA training. The island is pretty much the MOST beautiful place I have ever been in the entire world. Alright, close your eyes for a moment and imagine paradise...

Ok. Did it have white soft sand like powder sugar? Was the water multiple shades of TURQUOISE? Were there no other people around on the wide beautiful beach? Was the beach surrounded by jungle and palm trees? Was the water the perfect bathtub temperature and the sun a-shining? Well, I would say you just imagined Pulau Redang! I'm not kidding... gorgeous, just gorgeous.

There I am in Paradise... I have tried time and time again to find a place like this, and finally, it happened. Sorry to rub it in because I know Ohio is cold and a little miserable now, but I'm pretty excited that I only live an hour away from this place!


Here I am getting to know my regulator... having a piece of rubber shoved in your mouth for 45 minutes while your lips get all salty and raw is made ok by the fact that this very important piece of equipment will keep you alive while under.


Here I am practicing in the pool before my big dives... a month later. I would not recommend staying upside down while SCUBA diving because it's already weird enough for your body to undergo the pressure changes, let alone having to regain its bearings when your blood is full of nitrogen.


On Redang, me and the 4 others working on their certification completed 5 different dives around the marine park. We did 3 on the first day, and 2 on the last. When your dive master tells you not to drink the night before, I HIGHLY recommend that you heed his advice. Diving while still being slightly drunk is the most nauseating experience I can imagine :) After the first 2 dives I vomitted a total of 23 times, it was not pleasant, but the fish were happy. I got myself together and the last dives were great, no problems.


The water is merky here because I was feeding the fish some bread that I brought down with me... this photo is just to prove that I was actually under water.





Here are some of the things you see when you SCUBA dive in perfect conditions. There are little Nemo fish everywhere... they're actually a lot smaller than you would think too. In fact, everything you see underwater is 25% bigger than in real life, so, in fact, Nemos are incredibly tiny! When you SCUBA in a marine park you aren't supposed to touch anything because it's protected. Really, whenever you see coral you're never supposed to touch it at all because it dies instantly and it is the lifesource for anything that lives underwater. So, I held out my hand and the little Nemos swam to me and bit me. It was awesome! I didn't touch them, they touched me.

Also, while underwater I saw a baby shark and tons of fish I can never tell you the name of. They were every color imaginable and every shape and size. I didn't touch anything because 1) you aren't supposed to and 2) there are so many insanely poisonous things living in the deep sea. Then, after some time, I saw a giant sea turtle! It was so calm and graceful while I was swimming with it! It was just like the turtles in Fining Nemo, swimming in the current, they even had the narly accent. However, chasing the turtle made me use up my oxygen really fast so I had to quit the dive 10 minutes before the rest of the group, which sucked. However, what sucked more was the fact that I ran out of air 30ft under water and didn't realize it until I couldn't breathe anymore. I swam to my dive master for emergency air, doing the hand signals and everything correctly, and he shooed me away!! So I surfaced immediately, and thank god, I didn't die.


Here is a picture of everyone that took part in the SCUBA class. Fiona, Ismail (he works for the Economic Planning Ministry in the gov't and pretty much accompanies us on all trips. He's sangat (very) awesome.), Oceana, Mansor (the dive master), Matt, Yours Truly, and Ahzman (the dive master's assistant and my personal tutor when I can't keep up with the rest of the group.)


Finally, a lasting shot you all can borrow to give your computers a new wallpaper... It can be your secret escape from the nasty weather of Ohio, and you can know it's a REAL place and not photoshopped on someone's computer.

After Redang, I headed over to the district of Setiu for a 3 day English camp. 90 students from all over the state of Terengganu came and it was a lot of fun! Myself and 5 other ETAs helped facilitate the camp. We sang songs, played games, divided the students into groups where they named themselves, came up with a chant, a motto, and then did a skit. My group was called Final Fantasy, our motto was "The end starts here," our chant was "Do not fear, as the end starts here. Final Fantasy is who we be, and winning is our strategy. Make way for the best and save losing for the rest." The skit was a news reporter and camerman interviewing 4 groups of people involved in different activities during an earthquake, ie running, drawing, eating, and reading. It was good fun to watch my kids shake for 5 minutes while acting.

This is a picture of my group! The names of the kids are Luq, Faiz, Amirul, Izwan, Anis, Hidaya, Mimi, Eja, and Farah. Azzizi is not pictured and I just realized that.

I was in charge of facilitating 20 questions and Hot Seat... so for 8 hours on the second day of camp I played the same games with 8 different groups. It was agonizing but fun. Only one student from my school was allowed to attend the camp. I really want more of them to experience such an event, so I'm thinking about organizing my own English camp at school.


One of the other groups did a skit about space travel and here are their Alien members. Nice stuff.

Alright, I've had enough of blogging for now and you've probably had enough of reading. I still have loads and loads of stuff I could talk about, but school is ending and I have stuff to do... take care!