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All morning was taken up by theory again, learning more about the science involved in scuba, nitrogen, oxygen, how long you can stay at certain depths, how to kill a great white by stabbing them with your flippers and so on...Unfortunatley it's not just a case of head down, off you go, and then come back up!
After theory we went back to change at the apartment for our swimming pool session, where we encountered the largest cockroach that we have seen yet on this entire trip! It was stood there challenging us on our bathroom wall. For some reason Dave has been charged with all cockroach clearing duties on our journey (this, by the way, was not explained to Dave before departure).
The plan was once again quite simple - Dave had his half plastic bottle that he was going to use to trap the cockroach (had to be a 2 litre bottle this time as the width of a normal 500ml bottle would be too small) and then slide some paper under it and chuck it our of the window all done in a calm, cool manner as one would expect from dealing with such a small problem.
Unfortunately for Dave he didn't realise that the biggest problem was going to be other person in the room observing at a safe distance, by the doorway. Whilst approaching the cockroach with the bottle it's antennas slightly moved and the cockroach started to make his getaway up the wall, this was to be expected, and Dave was going to wait patiently for it to stop and then Dave would pounce with bottle. However it was also at this moment when Claire decided to help the situation out in a way that only she knew how. Standing at the bathroom door she decided that making a loud high pitched scream would be the best course of action, this in turn made Dave jump, scream a little himself and kind of lunge at the cockroach with the bottle. He missed the the cockroach which then flew off the wall and was doing that little flying thing that some of them do. Claire, in her state of panic decided the best thing she could now do was to scream again and slam the door shut, leaving Dave alone in the small dark room with a flying cockroach. Fortunately, Dave survived the ordeal and allthough a little shaken he eventually did trap it in the bottle (which the cockroach could quite easily move around the floor when it wasn't held down) and got a piece of paper under it and it was chucked out of our second floor window. After which Dave calmly explained to Claire that he didn't fully agree with her methods of locking him in the room with the flying c*** roach and that next time she can catch it on her own.
After all that we were taken back to the swimming pool for out last confined dive, which now didn't seem very scary at all - in fact nothing seems that scary having spent a bit of time in a dark room with a flying cockroach. We learnt quite a bit from keeping you pressure equal in your ears as you descend, which is really difficult to do at first and a little uncomfortable. We had to do various skills under water again (4 metres this time) including taking our packs fully off and putting them back on again underwater, this was quite funny as Dave couldn't stay on the bottom he would just float up in the air and struggle to come back down. It's even more funny when you try to find your buoyancy under water (thats where you don't rise or sink you just stay level). The instuctor just sits legs crossed like a genie making it look annoyingly easy, whilst Claire just falls onto her back and sinks to the bottom (her floaty ankles don't help) and Dave just bounces up and down like a yo yo with his legs dangling up and down like a frog. We didn't get buoyancy spot on but Claire did master the ability of laughing hysterically underwater at her bouncing boyfriend.
W e were taught some more of the serious stuff befre being told that we were now ready for the ocean! Stiff and aching a bit we had the evening to ourselves to prepare for our first ocean dive tomorrow and our dreaded exams! Gulp!
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