Live your life

I finished shadowing my first PADI open water certification on Monday and am still basking in the glow, it was so much fun and so rewarding to be part of introducing someone to diving. I know I am incredibly lucky to be here learning from such professionals who happen to be pretty cool people too!

The day after the OWC finished JHubz and Care, one of my fellow Divemaster trainees and I headed to Sanur on Bali for a much looked forward to day out. As the boat crashed across the sea from Nusa Lembongan my smile grew in unison with the waves around us. I love the sea with a heretofore unknown ferocity, so strange that something I spent most of my life afraid of should now provide so much joy. I don’t even mind if I am not in it, although that is always a bonus, just being on it seems to make me plenty happy. I love its power and its calm; the ripples across its surface telling me what’s going on underneath, upwellings, meeting currents, surge so high the island is temporarily blocked from view, I LOVE IT ALL.

As we crossed a memory surfaced from a long time ago when I used to be on boats, although I remember the sails and little else except being put overboard with a rope and a dingy to swim ashore for supplies. I was around ten at the time, a child of divorce and on one of the month long trips to stay with my father in Spain. I remember the seaweed wrapping around my legs and fear gripping me as I swum all the harder to be free. With no mask to see under the waves and into the magical world beneath my imagination ran riot with sharks and monsters inches from my feet. Maybe this was the beginning of my fear of the sea. Whatever the cause I am forever thankful for Andrea and a girly weekend trip to Tioman Island in Malaysia where gripping her hand (much to her dismay) I snorkeled again for the first time and a slow burning love of the ocean was set alight.

Back to present times and our day out in Sanur was great, we spent the day eating and buying food to eat later 😉 starting with a fabulous breakfast at Flashbacks (Understandably a World Diving favourite), a mountain of sushi in the middle and ending with Gelato Secrets at Hardys. Our trip to the dive shop for supplies was mostly fruitless but we picked up some cute dresses and tasty snacks and had a lot of laughs along the way. On the return crossing we were persuaded to sit on the bow of the Rocky fast boat by Darren and Kip, a couple of very nice dive instructors we’d just met through Nicole, a newly qualified instructor on the island. It’s really the most sociable place we’ve spent any time in ages! So up we went, the boat captain successfully soaking us as much as he possibly could as the speedboat roared its way across the channel to Lembongan. I arrived sodden and with sore cheeks from all the smiling, not a bad way to end a day.

The few days since have been spent studying, learning new skills and practicing newly acquired ones, laughing a lot as we practice teaching each other – it seems we make the most unruly students, and diving, wonderful, beautiful, diving. I feel it’s not a bad mid-life crisis we’re having, ha! Life is ridiculously short peeps, you can either live your life or life can live you, I know which one I’m choosing Xx