This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I have to say that I wasn’t too thrilled about scuba diving after yesterday’s disaster. Okay, no, it wasn’t a disaster, I actually did really well under the circumstances. But those dives were scary as shit and were way worse than the training open dives should be. But now I am aware of how bad it can be (haha, wow, I am really making it sound like it was a storm and we all almost drowned, it definitely wasn’t that bad), and it will only be better from now on. Like today was perfect! I enjoyed every second today and I can’t wait to get out there and dive again.

So today we did our two last open water dives before getting certified. We went to Morro Bay, on the tiny beach right next to Morro Rock. No waves, the sky was blue and perfect and it was just a wonderful day. We met at 1pm because of weird tide times. We went in the water for the first dive at 2:20pm and did some exercises on the bottom by the buoy. Since the water was so calm in the bay I had no problem swimming out and everything was fine. I could go down the rope directly. During the first dive we did three exercises. First we had to remove our mask completely, put it on, and get the water out. That was ridiculously scary. In the pool, fine, we even swam with the mask off for a while. But the saltwater is not very fun to get in the eyes. We didn’t have to take it too far off our faces, only like an inch. So I did that and didn’t freak out. Then we practiced neutral buoyancy but with oral inflation of the BCD under water. Piece of cake. The third thing we did was the Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (CESA). That’s when your buddy is nowhere near you, you run out of air, and have to ascend. So you breathe out an “aaaaaahhh” sound in the regulator all the way while ascending and then orally inflate the BCD on the surface. Then we had to wait for a while before the minidive. We swam on the bottom and looked at cool stuff. I didn’t see too much on the first dive, but the visibility was so much better than yesterday. Okay, it wasn’t great, but we could see tiny stuff on the bottom. But that was the second dive.

Between the dives we ate a little, switched tanks and went in again. I was colder today which is weird, maybe because I didn’t move as much in the still water or because I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t very cold, but 56F on the bottom is not very much. It wasn’t too bad though. The second dive was just about swimming around looking at cool stuff. We brought the big camera and took a lot of photos. First proof of me being under water! The camera died on the pool so no pictures came out. So, during the second dive we saw so many cool things. On the surface we saw a small jellyfish. On the bottom we saw some small flatfish, cool anemones, nudibranchs (a type of sea slugs). They were all small, but when you saw them they were really cool and brightly colored!

After the dive we filled in our log books, took apart all our gear and drove to the shop to clean everything before we could finally go home and rest after this long weekend. When we got to the shop our instructors surprised us with pizza. It tasted amazing and was well-needed! I guess my pulled pork sandwich is breakfast tomorrow.

I took an hour nap back home, took a shower, and spent too long brushing my hair out. Even with a braid it got so tangled up!

After that I didn’t do much. I wanted to play GW2, but for some reason I found other stuff to do, nothing really. What did I do tonight?!

Anyway, we have the day off tomorrow so I might as well play then. Unless it is good weather, then I will probably chill by the pool for the first time in weeks. Bad California for giving me bad weather my last few weeks here!

 Surface Interval with snacks. Matt, Melissa, and I. Assembling our gear during SI. Full gear, going to the beach.  Me under water. My diving buddy, Melissa and I in the background trying to photobomb her. Unintentional photobomb from me. I had the yellow tank during the second dive. It is hard to recognize people unless they have something very distinguishing about their gear since almost all wetsuits and hoods are black.  That might be a nudibranch, I don’t know honestly. It was one of the cool things we saw. Me just chilling, swimming slowly along the bottom. “I am okay”. All of our group except for two girls. Melissa and I. She was a great diving buddy and I am happy that she was so nice and helpful, especially yesterday when I was panicking.Happy and just certified diving buddies! 😀