Today, I woke up early to go to Sunderland Scuba Centre. At the scuba store, I took my closed water 1 test and then went to the back to get a kit. One of the staff members was nice and drove me and my kit to the pool which was on the other side of town.

At the pool, we started by learning how to put our kit together then, we jumped in and put our masks on. Next, we learned to put our kits on which is kind of difficult considering how much it weighs and the fact that there are so many straps on it. After everyone got their kits on, we swam out to where the water was about 6 feet deep. Then we let the air out of our BCDs and sank to the bottom of the pool. Scuba isn’t quiet whatsoever when you’re underwater. The constant release of the bubbles from your regulator is really loud. We practiced clearing our masks, emergency procedure for if you’re out of air and, clearing our regulator. These were really difficult for me and I think that everyone thought that I was awful at it. I had to surface like 5 times while doing these exercises. Mostly because, my mask did not have a good seal. I think that I need to buy another one. After learning these essential skills we were allowed to swim around in the shallow end of the pool. A little while after this we were taken to the deep end of the pool where the water was 3m or approximately 9ft deep. The swimming around in the shallow end and deep end was much easier than the emergency exercises we did earlier because, I could keep my regulator in the entire time. When we left the deep end, we went back to the shallow end and removed our kits. It was time for the swimming test. The swimming test consisted of eight lengths of the pool followed directly by 10 minutes of floating or treading water. I mostly floated on my back kicking to move for the swimming portion as it didn’t require much to float. I just floated on my back for the floating/treading water portion which was really easy. When everyone completed their tests, we learned to skin dive. Skin diving is basically when you have a mask and a snorkel and you dive down and come back up for breath without bringing your head out of the water by using the snorkel. It took me a while to figure out that you’re allowed to hold your breath as long as you aren’t breathing compressed air below the surface. The #1 rule of scuba is do not hold your breath because, just a few feet of vertical movement while holding your breath can burst your sinuses, lungs, ears, or any other air pockets that you may have. I was able to skin dive easily after I figured out that I can hold my breath if the air is from the surface. After skin diving, it was time to head back to the Scuba Centre. I checked in my equipment then headed back to Clanny House.

Back at Clanny House I did laundry and finished just in time to leave for the last bus to the city centre to see the Martian with one of my flatmates. Of course, the bus never showed up as I’ve found to be typical. We instead walked to the city centre where we ate at Louie Louie which is a world buffet. It cost me 10 and a half quid with a coupon for 2 pounds off. It was not worth the price at all. For as much a I payed I could have eaten at the much better tasting golden corral back home twice. I learned my lesson and will probably not return there again. After dinner, we went to the movie theater and bought our tickets. The box office was closed so we had to use the automated machines which, were really cool. The theater lets you pick your assigned seat in the system and, there are even private suites at the back of the theater. When we went to go into the movie, we found that there was still another movie in that theater. We were only there 15 minutes early too. When we got to go into the theater, there was movie scores playing but, no commercials on the screen like in the States. The commercials started at 20:30 exact, yes I mean commercials like you would see on TV not trailers. Mixed in with the commercials there were a few trailers the best being for 007 Spectre which comes out on Christmas day. After 30 minutes of commercials, the movie started. It was a good movie but, it was no where near as good as the book. The movie is never as good as the book though since you can fit more detail into a book than a movie. Afterwards we walked back to Clanny. There’s also a casino by the movie theater so I might go play poker sometime (legal age here is 18 for everything).

Back at Clanny House, I posted the blog posts that I had sitting around and then went to bed. It was a long but, fun day.