march IDC

Hi all, hope everything is great in your world!!!  AHHHHHHH.......IDC is done ( Instructor Development Course ) Everyone in the class passed including a local honduran guy sitting the exam for the 3rd time. So that was a couple of days ago, so we've been just fun diving and celebrating with our fellow students, napping a fair amount and yes finally found someone to play cards with. Erica , his name is Simon and he was one of our instructors on the IDC, anyways he taught us this game called spades, totally amazing, great game, sort of like a cross between bridge and oh hell. Anyways I'm just sitting here on our deck watching them unload the twice weekly supply ship, at this moment they are unloading the beef, that is to say the cows.

   We had orientation for the IDC the day we arrived, to take care of the paperwork, as you can imagine, because diving can be quite dangerous if your careless....lots of liability release forms, to give us an idea of our schedule and yes homework!!!we then had the next day free to get ahead on our homework or in our case go diving...not responsible, but yeah !! diving.So it works out to basically classroom stuff in the morning and pool or open water work in the afternoon, and when I say pool or open water, I don't really mean diving, I think it only qualifies as a dive if your down longer than 20 minutes and deeper than 30 ft. So using that criteria...we only dove 3 times in 2 weeks. There were a couple of days we didn't get into the water at all...huh ??I know, counter intuitive.Almost every night we had stuff to read for class the next day and or lesson plans to make for presentation the next day. PADI has a pretty specific  way they want things taught, so there's a formula basically for you to follow and your graded on how many of the points you mention in the presentation.We didn't get alot of sleep, especially those 1st few days, when the work load was pretty heavy and most stuff , for me anyways, David had some experience with some stuff from his divemaster course, was new. That would be one awkward sentence, fun though huh!!!Carrie actually was great as we practiced our presentations on her, she gave us some good advice and was our biggest fan ...best wife ever!! ..and MOM.One of the great things about working at the winery is that I've become fairly comfortable speaking in front of people...but apparently that only applies to talking about wine , not diving, GREAT!!!! bring on the stress, like I'm not having enough already! It took about a week for me to get comfortable enough to get through a presentation without shaking, which of course is just in time to sit the exam...more shaking.
    So the exam takes place over 2 days with 1 pool , 1 open water and 1 knowledge presentation..shaking. As a little aside here speaking of shaking, the 1st person in our group to do the pool presentation, failed, which meant she got about 30 minutes to write up another presentation on a different skill and present it to the examiner..if she fails that she fails the whole exam and has to retake it later..she was shaking. Thankfully she passed.Ok back to the exam, then you have theory exams on physiology, physics, equipment, skills and the environment and on the RDP (recreational dive planner) which is a tool developed to help divers plan safe dives.An exam on the general standards and procedures that PADI (professional association of dive instructors) wants all instructors to use when they are teaching and finally a skills circuit, where we were supposed to demonstrate 5 skills to the examiner, in a slow , emphasized manner easy for a beginning level diver to pick up( according to rumor though...beginning students are, ok not all of them , but most are, dumb as posts and it doesn't matter what you do, they won't get it anyways)
   I don't know if I've ever been so relieved, as when the examiner shook my hand and said congratulations you passed. I can't speak for David, he seemed a little nervous in the beginning ( HMMM... I think this is called speaking for him..oh well ) but he basically aced the whole thing, he did a really great job on everything we had to do and was a big help for me on stuff I had no idea about which was suprisingly a fair bit. Suprisingly because I was able to look over the curriculum for the divemaster course and I didn't really do about half the stuff in there, oh well it was still a fun course for me, maybe that's why it was.I couldn't be more proud of David ( well Carrie's probably more proud ) and grateful that he asked me to share in this experience with him, in a sport that I'm truly passionate about...THANK YOU DAVID!!
    So anyways after we all pass, the dive shop throws a congratulatory dinner for us, great by the way, as a part of it , they ask us to do a dive skill, except it has to involve drinking, tequila shots to be specific. I had heard about it , but to be honest I didn't really think they would make all of us do it....wrong !!! So I'm wracking my brain to try to do something that isn't totally lame, and it comes to me as if sent from someone ( EM?) anyways  ( I say that alot) the voice says do something to embarrass the boy, PERFECT!! So I do the licking the salt off of Carrie's cleavage, down the shot and take the lime from her mouth thing and is David embarrassed ..ah no he's taking pictures!!
    So we have a couple more days here, we're going to go see Tron at the theatre tonight and get in our last dives tomorrow, hopefully David and I will have the opportunity to see whale sharks this trip, but if not at least Carrie was able to cross that off of her bucket list.OK then we're on a ferry to La Ceiba, a bus to San Pedro Sula, ( your welcome to follow along in your local guide book), a bus to Managua and finally a bus to Leon. (UGH  tired just thinking about it , that's about 20 hrs of travel time, it's going to take us at least a couple of days)
So with that said , I wish you all the best and warm thoughts from our deck in utila