A most excellent day

I'm a PADI Scuba Instructor!!!

The day started at Mango Inn. Got there 7:30 ish and had confined water assessment first. We started with our skills demos, where all we had to do was demo presentation style, no briefing or debrief. We were in a group of five people at a time, and our skills were:

Mask Remove Replace
Reg Recovery and Clear
BC Remove Replace
Neutral Buoyancy Fin Pivots
CESA

I got 5's on everything except the CESA, which I got a 4 on (I didn't inflate enough and was wearing too much weight, so I wasn't quite graceful enough).

Then we went through our full confined water presentations. I had Rescue Breathing using a pocket mask, and got a 5 on it. It was great fun.

Our whole group of 9 were out of the pool by 9:45, and we headed into the classroom for our Knowledge Development presentations. I had a True/False question on what a DM can do if they are a DSD leader. Got 4.8, and that was it, I was a certified instructor!

Our examiner, Gary, has been a PADI examiner longer than anyone in the world; he's been doing it since 1986. He was super nice, though a bit quirky. Had all of us check the Certified box on the form.

They did a little ceremony and gave us certificates, and then we were done. I grabbed a baleada at Mama Rosa's, and ate it on the top deck at UDC. Then, in a startling turn of events, I went home and took a nap for an hour. Glorious.

We all met at UDC around 6 for some drinks, then the shop took us all out to dinner at La Piccola, a really nice italian restaurant. They'd rented out the whole place. Great food, drinks, and service. Before dinner they had us do an elaborate drinking game involving tequila and our own modifications to confined water skills.

A small group of us headed down to Rehab to do the t-shirt drinking challenge, but they were closed. We went to Skid Row, which is...aptly named. The boys all did the t-shirt challenge, but you have to go topless for part of it, so us girls did not.

We had grand plans to go to all the bars that did the challenges, but only made it to the one. Then we went to Treetanic (the bar at Jade Seahorse. See post from a week or two ago) which was PACKED. Queue another weird drinking game. I don't think my team won, but none of us threw up last night to my knowledge, so I call that a win of it's own.

Jhair, one of the course directors, was dj'ing at Coco Loco, so we headed over there. Everyone was pretty ridiculously drunk by that time, so it was great people watching. I played anti-wingman for a guy who has a girlfriend back home. Great fun.

Highlight of the night was probably the guy from my class that came up to me and said something along the lines of "I don't care if you're a lesbian, you have to admit that I'm really hot." referring to himself.

Didn't get back to my apartment until about 2:30 am, had fun, but didn't do anything stupid. Celebration night success.

I only have today and tomorrow left on the island. Today is souvenir day, and tomorrow is my last day to try to see a whale shark.