No. 11

So, here i am, intern number 11 (or according to our lovely CK on certain nights out: "the old woman" ), back at Dive and Sea Tenerife after 11 months to do the second part of my Divemaster internship.
My first week back has been a week of very low lows and not very high highs.

For me, the week started of with assisting Will on an open water course for 2 Belgium boys. To summarize: its awesome to work with teenagers who actually not try to stab you with home-made-knifes out of toothbrushes or throw deskchairs at you ( for all you people who didnt bother reading my awesome and well-thought-about blogs last year --> at home i work in juvenile prison!!). Thijs and Tuur did really well during their pool session and open water dives. The conditions were rough, big surge and bad vis. But they managed to complete their open water certificates without throwing up or getting seasick on the boat. So much can be said about me; First day back in the marina and on the boat was the worst day of the year so far... I got seasick, thought i was gonna die and got offered tons of drugs, aka seasickness medication, by dodgy-rich-boat-owners-in-speedos...I stayed out on the second dive, lost my rashvest in the marina, dropped dory's pants in the marina, dropped will's mask in the marina, peed over my own towel while peeing behind a rock because i couldnt run of to the toilets and leave the kid behind....got bruised all over and finally shared my emotions during debrief with my 'new best friends for the next 5 weeks' with a good cry!!

So... After my second day in, I needed a positive experience and had a go at the PADI Divemaster exam; passed it with nice percentages and got my groove back!

The rest of the week went pretty ok. A couple of shore dives at Abades and an awesome deep dive at poco naufragio; Malene and I buddied up for the deep dive and after we passed the little tugboat and got down to 25m. For a navigation skill. Malene took the baring, i counted the fin pivots and after 20 pivots we were about to take our reciprocal bearing (look at me using fancy language that i absolutely didnt had to look up in the dm manual :-)) and swim back when we saw this strange fish circling around us. We were about to turn around and spotted a massive common ray with that same strange fish lifting on his back. Turns out that 'strange' fish is called a life sharksucker or remora in Spanish, it sucks on to other species to catch a ride. During our safety stop it even tried to catch a ride on one of our interns private parts, funny as!!

I' ve also been in the pool quiet a few times this week to get my skills back at the level where they were last year. I got pretty frustrated with myself a couple of times, knowing how everything is supposed to go, but not being fysically able to actually live up to my own expectatoins...sucks, but still 4 weeks to go, ill get there and be my awesome little selve in no time!

Thats it, be back next week!

Susanne