So we spent the majority of yesterday hanging out on the beach. I thought it was an absolutely beautiful day! The clouds were out and the sun wasn’t too hot. Leslie thought it was overcast. We also spent some time checking out different SCUBA schools to see if it was something we wanted to do.
We ended up deciding that we should give it a go, so we packed up our bags and headed back to the site of Leslie’s recovery. . . . Coral Grand Resort.
This time, we headed to the dive school and signed up to get our PADI lessens. There are about 16 different certification courses, with PADI being the most common. The open water certificate course we signed up for is a three and a half day course. At the end we’ll be licensed to go diving all over the world. It’s 9000 baht each for the course, but that includes lunch and accomodations. It seemed pretty expensive, but we figured it’s cheaper than home and something that’ll be a great experience.
Our room is “free” with the class, and is pretty nice. It’s got screens all around, a toilet that flushes the same as home, a table out front and a dresser that can actually hang clothes. We even unpacked all our stuff anticipating at least three nights in the same place.
We picked up a few more swimsuits before the class began. At 3:00 this afternoon, Leslie hand I headed back to school. She was a little disappointed because she thought she was done with homework and tests!
There was us, three people from Denmark, two Irish, two English and an Israeli. We then watched a couple movies that taught us about the various parts of the equipment (regulators, bouyancy control, etc). The movie was interesting because we watched in English with Danish subtitles. The Jewish woman had a book in Hebrew, but the Hebrew video tape had apparently busted a few days earlier.
The class will include four dives, two of 12 meters and two of 18. Tomorrow, we’ll meet the gang at 9am and split into two classes. Then, we’ll spend half the day in the classroom and half the day in the swimming pool before we head out to the open ocean the following day.
On another note, I’ve been working on my Thai and went into a store the other day attempting to start negotiating for a t-shirt in Thai. I attempted to ask how much she wanted for the shirt I was holding, but instead . . . I bungled it pretty badly. I held up the shirt and tried to say “make it cheaper” before I knew the price. However, I mispronounced it and I think I said a word that’s derogatory to women at the woman in the store.
Imagine a foreigner walking into a store, picking up a shirt, looking at a female saleswoman and saying, “B@(!”.
She immediately started laughing and cut the price by about 20%. I bought the shirt.
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