Our holiday ends today

It was hard to sleep with unfamiliar sounds of roosters crowing (they definitely do not just crow in the morning but all through the day and worst at night), lizards calling and the occasional dogs barking. Thankfully we did not have to be to the dive shop until 9:30 and we managed to catch up on some sleep in the early morning. Well I caught up on sleep but Jeff was still on Hawaii time and was up at 1 AM. We will be able to sleep in longer since getting ready in the morning should be quicker. There is no need to apply makeup as this will most certainly just sweat off after a few minutes in the hot sun (it has been very warm consistently high 80's/low 90's, quite humid, the temperature at night is also hot and muggy). Yet getting ready does take more preparation as we need to remember to bring out tolietries to the bathroom, along with shower towels, the estimated amount of toilet paper and our mobile plastic bag that serves as our garbage container. I got ready quickly this morning as I was very thristy and hungry for breakfast. Oscar's restaurant is our main eattery, it is located on the roof of the dive shop which is where we receive intern discounts on food. Mainly we receive a 20% discount on all food and drinks except for the super discounted Filipino meals which are 50% off. Worried my stomach would get queezy, I opted for a sandwich and my body gladly welcomed the replenishment of calories and nutrients. I also could not resist having a mango shake as well which was very refreshing.

Jeff and I met for our orientation which was quite intense. Basically they create a revolving 2 week curriculum that there is no way you will succeed at. Based on the diver's needs they will revamp it to suit your deficiencies when the second 2 week set comes up. By the end of 4 weeks all the charteristics of a surperb dive master are met. We have already learned from our instructors what scores it takes to pass per PADI guidelines, and the higher scores they hold us to.

After the introduction to divemaster, we then placed orders for our staff T-shirts, watched a short video on chapters 1-3 of our divemaster manual, and then went out to our ocean pool for our 400 meter swim (no snorkel, fins, etc). The start was a little off shore and we swam along the shore to a rocky point and then swam back while avoiding a couple anchored boats and people swimming. I never make it easy for myself and went at an angle, swimming more than necessary, and finished in 7 min 45 sec. Jeff finished at 10 min. Less than 6 min is worth 5 points (the instructor stated he only witnessed one 5 ever), a time of 6-8 min is 4 points which I got, and 8-10 min is 3 points which Jeff got. There are 5 swim tests and we must have an accumulative score of 15 points which is an average of 3 points per test, considering this was Jeff's most worriesome of the 5 skills and my best, I hope we can make the grade.

We then met with the Operations Manager to go over our package to ensure we were all on the same page. Like true Bennett travels, the office had not recieved all the paperwork from our contact which we had completed a month prior to our arrival. Fortunately, Jeff had the information saved on his phone and was able to show him our package description and payment information. The packages are all individually tailored to what specialties are chosen along with what prerequesties that still need to be completed and if any gear is needed. All of our prerequesties are completed, we have all of our gear and they were very impressed with the amount of dives we have already completed. After that was all sorted out it was time to pick up our dive master crew pack which come in their very own canvas bag (about the size of lap top bag) and consists of our dive master manual (274 pages), instructor manual (162 pages), EFR instuctor course book (8 pages), scuba tune up dive book (40 pages), Encyclopedia of recreational diving (350 pages), plus several dive slates (large water proof index cards), and ERDP (fancy dive time calculator). With all this reading to be done, it was time to head back to our room and hide from the sun for a wee bit.

When we got back to our room we started on reading the required 3 chapters right away. By this time both our bodies and brains were tired and the heat was not helping us feel very motivated yet we had a reading assignment. Basically we would read a few pages, fall asleep, read a couple more, fall asleep. Needless to say it is going to take a long time to finish the book at this pace. We spent the next couple hours repeating this cycle until we finally gave in to falling asleep, we did not even make it out for dinner. We had a big day planned for tomorrow and would have to be up at the dive shop by 4:30 AM for the Thresher shark dive. Our instructor had stated that our holiday ended today and it will be assignments and work from here on out. We definitely were already coming to terms to this reality.