I saw a seahorse in the sea

Today being Saturday, it meant i was about to take my first ocean plunge. I arrived at the shop at 9am and began to collect my gear and 2 tanks of air. Our instructors talked in a foreign language about southerlies, swells, visibility and names of places i had never heard. however, after a bit they decided and off we went.

Turns out we ended up going to Whitireai bay, which Blaise is familiar with because he has kite surfed there. we arrived, geared up totally (this means 14mm of wetsuit), cross-checked, were briefed on the skills we would practice and then waded into the water to be weighted.

...heavily weighted...i ended up with 6 big weights pulling in at about 14 kilos (about 30 pounds). we had to take off our weight belt on the surface and then put it back on. its a relatively simple procedure, grasp the free end in your right hand, bring it right to your hip, lie on your back and "turn away from the nasty weight belt". do it fast btw because thats a lot of weight on an arm and you drop it....well you don't want to do that to the instructor who is marking you. by doing this manuver you rotate it onto your back and then you can float face down (with your respirator in), all the weight safely on your back and re-clip the belt.

did i mention that 30 pounds? in the waves which are moving around you and in full gear which makes it really quite frustrating to get it back between your wetsuit and buoyancy vest. as i struggled away trying to get it on (and not drop it!) a strong wave hit my foot and i guess i hadn't tightened the flipper enough because it pushed around off my foot and became a charming anklet bracelet. Now i was really struggling i was being spun in circles cause the one flipper was getting pushed around like a rudder. i couldn't get upright for fear of dropping the belt. all i could do was breathe through the respirator and keep working on the belt. i knew the instructors wouldn't let me float away. i was breathing hard, swearing through the respirator. my instructor said i was very 'creative' in my wording, he could hear me underwater as he swam up to me through the water. he grabbed my back leg and was holding me still and getting my flipper back on and i kept fighting the damn weight. 30 pounds is hard to lift when you can't rotate your arms fully backwards and can't move in any real direction. i eventually got the d*mn thing clipped and tight enough not to slip off. i used a pile of air though in my struggles, the tank started at 210 psi, and dropped to 160 psi in that 5 minutes; i ended with my tank at 70 psi. as a comparison my 2nd dive later that day i started at 200 psi and ended at 130. you can see by the numbers i was really sucking the air desperately that first dive.

ok that was the bad but it wasn't really bad. onto the fun stuff ^^bb

getting down still seemed slow but i was definitely going down. so much weight that i had to inflate my buoyancy vest so that i could get off the bottom and actually swim. the visibility was horrible, less than 0.5m; on the plus side the instructors pointed out that we essentially got the worst visibility we could have ever gotten so it could only get better. we lost my dive buddy at one point so we even got a chance to practice lost buddy procedures (we popped out at the surface about the same time, he was fine). we went down essentially touching the next go and the instructor had us all connected when we swam.

compass work: i rock! seriously. i had a busted compass on my guages (i get a new one for tomorrow) but i was still able to follow it and arise less than a meter from the dive flag. the 2nd instructor gave me his arm compass and sent us off on a mission. pick a direction, swim that way without looking across the water surface, use only your compass, swim about 20 kicks, do a 180 and get back to the flag. i surfaced about 50 cm from it. my dive buddy was meters away and the other 2 didn't do much better, one girl was swimming in circles (quite literally). why did i do so good? i'm the slowest swimmer by far of our group, i have the worst buoyancy control of the 4 of us but because i'm a slow swimmer anyway i just kept kicking at my speed and reading the compass. turns out i got it right because by going slow it adjusts (and you too) more accurately and you stay on course. HUZZAH!!! Instructor Roy was actually extremely vocal in his praise for my compass skills, i felt so awesome.

the swells above us were getting worse and rather than trying to swim across the rough surface Graham said we would just swim in along the bottom of the ocean. so linking it up so we didn't lose anyone we headed in. i was between the 2 big guys so it wasn't hard work (remember i'm the slow one, i was literally being pulled along), so i got to enjoy looking around as best i could and i saw a wandering anemone. looked like a big soft tubular plant with white hairy looking feathers on its head. "cool" i thought as it moved back and forth with the waves. then i felt a squeeze on my hand, i stopped and there was Instructor Graham with his hands in front of him. It took me a sec to see what was the hold up, in front of him was this beautiful tiny little seahorse. it couldn't have been bigger than my whole hand and it floated amongst us 5 divers, Graham gently moved it towards my mask when it started to float away. I was so calm for a moment, it seemed like a perfect moment. We let it float away and continued into shore.

my first 2 ocean dives. better each time and that second time i saw "FISHIES".
i like this scuba thing.

Cook Islands Here We Come!

Carly and I have just booked our flights and accommodation to our first vacation out of New Zealand: We're heading to the Cook Islands!

We're flying out on the 29th of September and coming back on the 7th of October. We'll be staying at a bach owned by my kitesurfing instructor (bach being local lingo for a rental cottage / villa) The idea is to stay in the lagoon most of the week as it offers pretty much everything we need. There's Kiting a plenty and because it's a giant reef, there'll be no lack of scuba and snorkeling fun. It'll be most of the way through the New Zealand winter so we'll likely be chomping at the bit for some warm weather and sun.

We've picked the date because it matches up well with Carly's holidays and it's a nice little birthday present for yours truly.

pool time all done, next stop the ocean

So the last of the pool sessions have finished. the good news is that i have "saved" my last two buddies when they ran out of air. my skills are seemingly up to par, the instructor seems pleased with everyone's progress.

Buoyancy is still hard but i'm told by people i trust that it will improve over time. i was unable to do the optional duck dive recovery of gear off the bottom of the 5 meter pool. i'm not able to equalize as i go down that fast. instructor said it was just something extra to learn and to stop immediately and resurface if you couldn't equalize on the way down. and i'm not too upset to be honest, my dive buddy made it down then couldn't find his respirator got a lung full of water, panicked and rocketed to the surface with an instructor behind him. i passed the duck diving bit though ^^

oh and i can do emergency assent on no air now, well at least i can go up 5 meters ...

Blaise came with me to watch and take photos, poor guy, the instructors realized at the end he was here to watch and said "Oh there is an underwater observation window below us".

DOH! we could have had underwater shots!

speaking of underwater shots, there was a woman doing her underwater photography course and she came with our group to practice on our last night in the pool. our instructor is a pretty laid back guy (with close to 600 dives, movie work, recovery work, research, etc) so he had the 6 of us (4 students & 2 instructors) stand on each others shoulders in a pyramid, 3,2,1. There are pictures of it because he told her he was going to do it so she was there with the camera when we started to build up. The other groups must have wondered what the heck we were doing.
i'll post a pyramid picture when i get a copy.

do not rely on me to be your dive buddy just yet

So scuba lessons are still progressing nicely.
the theory while dull is going quickly and last night we were introduce to Dive Tables. I must say with a little bit of pride I seem to have the knack for calculating dive tables. The two Danish guys sitting next to me kept saying they'd buy a computer but i was whipping through the problems like no ones business.

We got back into the pool tonight, the 5 meter dive pool. The instructors don't understand why i'm not cold in the water, i show up in my two-piece and everyone else including them are wearing poly-prop tshirts and bermuda shorts. Guess the Canadian in me still hasn't lost her cold resistance.

I'm good at some maneuvers like flushing out my mask and replacing my regulator, i've improved to be good at finding my regulator (turns out the issue was the instructor kept using the phrase tummy button which is really belly button but i have it now). Buoyancy needs works, i'm still popping up and down like a cork. It doesn't help that when i go up when i expected to stay down i take deep breathes and flail around which only increases my buoyancy.

what i failed on...and this is why you don't want to be my dive buddy just yet...is buddy breathing. This is when your dive partner runs out of air and comes to get some from you. Now in the real world when diving the first you'll know of this is when your buddy rips your regulator out of your mouth or is pawing wildly at your suit. In the pool they teach us this nice polite method of swimming up to you making two distinct gestures at which point you should have ripped your back up regulator (the octopus) off your jacket, turned it right way up and be aiming it towards their face. Yeah ... i failed to respond to Roy's (the instructor) signal until he did it twice. Ooops.

But on the plus side when i was signaled to do the same to my training buddy by the instructor he handed me the octopus upside down. You breathe from an upside down regulator you'll have a mouth of water. Now at the time i swear i felt my instructor pulling/pushing my side when i was doing this but i was kind of focused on getting the regulator turned right side up while still blowing "little bubbles" so i didn't really pay attention. When we resurfaced he pointed out to my training buddy that you can't hand the octopus upside down or the mouth of water thing occurs. He however did congratulate me on recognizing the problem and resolving it on my own. He was pulling on me because he had his spare out right side up and was going to jam it in my mouth if i choked on water. YEAH!! i did good on that.

Buoyancy coming full cirlce

I went through the Red Cross swimming program as a kid. My parents drove me to lessons, i swam huge amounts of distance. I couldn't do that much swimming now without some hard core training i might add but i digress. I distinctly remember failing a badge, I think it was grey, and the instructor trying to console me by saying "its just a factor of buoyancy kid, you need another year to gain more buoyancy (wait for puberty then you'll float)".
She was right, by the next year i did it no problem.

I had my first scuba lesson last night, we only played in the 2 meter pool but thats totally cool, as the instructor pointed out, if you panic and forget to breath using the regulator at least you can bounce up to the surface.

1)so the flippers contrary to the fears of the shop keeper worked out fine.
2)the mask which seemed to fit well in the store and when i wore it in the pool to do laps has a small quirk. when my head gets completely wet (and my hair) there is water slowly filling the nose area. they said to bring it back before the lesson tonight and we'd try a different one.
3)my scuba outfit (tank, regulator and buoyancy compensator(BC)/think flotation device) which i'll use the whole course was knocking my head last night. in one of those "you should have mentioned it" moments the co-instructor will fix it for me by shifting it farther down the BC jacket.
4)Buoyancy ....
and you wondered where this was going.

i'm now too buoyant.

in our pool time we were learning the basics, how to put your regulator back in if it fall out, finding you regulator, inflating and deflating the BC. nothing major, nothing that could hurt us. things were fine until we were told to sink to the bottom of the 2 meter pool so we could swim around the floor. Awesome! i thought. So the instructor heads down demoing the release of air, then the co-instructor, then my 3 swim mates head down. Ready to take the plunge i hit the release valve on my BC, the air goes shooting out, i go down, down, down and then sort of bounce back up. what the heck? i try letting more air out of the BC but its completely empty. i start doing a rather jerky air flailing, feet kicking thing trying to make myself sink. finally in disgust i just turn my head down and start kicking to the bottom. finally make it to the bottom, the instructor give a thumbs up to start swimming and while waiting for my turn i slowly float back up to the surface. NUTS!!! now we were told beginners tend to be more buoyant because we are inhaling more air than we need due to nervousness but come on!
the co-instructor met me on my second dive to the bottom and he grabbed my BC and started mauling my left side, a few seconds later the other instructor had me by my right side. cool i thought they're going to fix the stupid BC so i can sink. they ended up dumping weights into each side of it so i would stay on the bottom. i'm going to need an pretty hardcore weight belt i think. i wasn't even wearing the wetsuit yet and i'm floating this easily, the wetsuit just adds buoyancy.
and how much wetsuit am i going to be wearing in the ocean btw? 14mm, 1.4cm of neoprene, i'm going to bob around like a buoy.

an open letter to my folks

Dear Mom and Dad

Thanks for making me a switched on adult. Ready to try many things even if I'm not sure they'll work. Ready to try and problem solve a situation when it happens. And always prepared with a smile and good grace.

Whats all this about you ask? Well I think my folks raised me well. I don't always keep a cool head in situations that directly involve me but I'm really good in situations that I can step back from. Let me give you an example.

Sunday morning in Hamilton, I awoke, showered, ate a little breakfast and rounded out my gear for another day at the Nationals (a tournament played over 3 days for Blaise's miniature armies he paints and plays). I walked out of the cabin to find Blaise, A. and J. surrounding A.'s car. I next noticed the long metal coat hanger pulled into a long straight piece...yes some of you know where this is going...Blaise was working industriously away at getting it between the window and door.

"You didn't," i said to A.
"Yep," he replied, "last night, i guess i was tired."

A.'s keys were locked into his car on Easter Sunday morning in Hamilton and we needed to be at the competition in about 30 minutes.
"We have AA," said R., A.'s wife.

The men were pretty convinced their method was going to work, A. owns a rather old car. Plus the guys in the cabin beside theirs had come out with a suggestion for straps and some sort of door thing.

I wandered over quietly. I really didn't want to get involved in this manual event but curiosity got the better of me. I walked to the back window and looked in. Yep i saw the keys in the ignition and all the buttons on the doors in the locked position.
I thought about it, its a pretty old car, was the trunk tied into the same system?
I quietly moved to the back and pushed the lever in and pulled the trunk. It didn't move but for some reason i thought to try again. I pulled even harder and the trunk opened up about an inch; the reason it didn't open the first time is the spring system is shot and you have to really haul on it to get it open.

I entered the trunk, crawled over the back seat and was leaning in to grab the keys when A. or J. says "Why is Carly in the car?"

Cue the laughter, it went on for a bit. I retrieved the keys, popped the door locks and went out to present them with a smile to A.
"I swear I tried the boot," he said.
"Oh it was really heavy, it felt locked the first time I pulled on it," I replied trying to make light of the situation.

As I walked back to our cabin I felt really good about it and I suddenly had an image of my folks smiling at me. So thanks mom and dad, you raised a smart cookie and she loves you too.

Last day of Term 1

Where did 10 weeks go. Seriously what the heck happens to time when you age. I remember as a kid a week seemed to last forever, heck bedtime seemed long. Now as an adult time flies by me at top speed.

Term 1 has been in no uncertain terms awesome. We had parent/teacher/student goal setting/interviews on Monday and Wednesday and the feedback i have received has been awesome. Parents say kids who last year were down are coming home talking about stuff going on at school. Better yet, both the girls and boys are going home and talking about the stuff they do with Carly in Language (and they don't hate it!).

I was worried about giving out writing assignments with due dates (i only handed out 3 in my defence)because that is not what Montessori was about but both the kids and the parents are loving it because a lot feel worried that their kids won't be ready for state high school so deadlines for them are helping their kids get ready.

Parents say the classroom culture/environment is way healthier this year. My teaching partner R. says he is loving the way we are getting to all the kids in both language and in math. As one teacher last year doing both he felt it was a lot and some stuff was getting missed.

We even had a talk about next year and he was surprised/eager to find out that i would be interested in teaching next year. we are at 33 kids (32 now, D. in Year 8 left for USA on Friday) but next year we'll be at about 38-39 kids. He said we should try and get stuff sorted before he leaves in June for his training. Fingers crossed and all that sort of stuff.

my only downside this term was trying to match up my Montessori literacy with the state curriculum for my Literacy Check in week 9. R. keeps telling me not to worry, i know i got some stuff spot on, but i know i'm going to get a slap on the wrist for some other stuff. The reading records i should have done in term 1 i have no excuse for, i'll do those in term 2 but some of the other stuff like spelling assessment just isn't done in Montessori. R. says "don't worry" but i just tell myself to plan for it next term, try and show some improvements from the comments i'll get and move on.

If there is a tearful post about the curriculum hates me later this month, that means i got a lot of comments on stuff i need to change...here's hoping it won't be that bad.

Busy as Can Be.

It's been a very hectic last couple of weeks at Casa Canadiana. So many cool things happened that it's time to dig out my favorite typographical convention, the Bullet!

• Work: I wrapped up working remotely for IBM Canada and started with IBM New Zealand. I miss my boss already (she was a fantastic manager and friend) but we still chat thanks to the global Instant Messaging network. If only there was more than an hour of overlap between our business hours!
• Wes: Wes got a Work Visa!!! Thank goodness. He had been scheduled to leave the country at the end of this month, so him getting a visa for a year is a real relief.
• Home: Well, right off the top, our friends J and B came to visit from Christchurch. They stayed with us for the weekend and a bit, we played board games, ate well and generally overdid it on many entertaining aspects of life. Their visit was the perfect time to put together a last minute...
• House Warming Party! On less then a week's notice, I whipped up a BBQ to celebrate the creation of Casa Canadiana, we had probably 16 people or so show up through out Sunday. It's quite amazing when you realize that we didn't know most of these people 6 months ago. It's even cooler when you realize that they've become quite good friends over such a short period of time. I'm not sure if it's Kiwis, if we fell into the right groups of people or if it's just our charming disposition, but we have a more active social circle now than we did in Canada!
• Now we're in the middle of preparations to spend Easter in Hamilton at the National Wargaming Convention. Yes, we'll be spending Easter playing with our "Tactical War Dollies" as one of our kiwi friends puts it. We should have some time to explore the region and hang out. Really, it'll be a good excuse to get silly with some friends in a town we don't know.

So there we go. Not much new to report otherwise, my welding classes have finished for now, though I'll likely be signing up for another session simply to get more time with the tools. it's probably not much of a surprise that I can't actually rent a welding rig for cheaper than the classes are costing me. My project (the topic of a later blog post) is coming along nicely and I'm pleased to report that no major injuries have occurred.

On another note, given that I now work 8-5 most days (add commute time etc) communicating with North America will most likely be done on weekends. Given how busy we've been lately, we've been rather lax in contacting friends (we're sorry!) but should rectify that soon.

The Fire starter

HOLY SMOKES!!!

my mom sent me this little tiny fire starter. It essentially a piece of metal striker and an artificial flint. Works when wets, sparks 3000C, starts fires easily, etc.

Well fire making with spindles and hearthboards had gone OK with smoke and punk (ash ember) but no fire. Likewise real flint and a metal striker had produced really hot sparks but no fire. I felt like we needed closure on the fire making so when that fire striker showed up i knew it was a sign.

Now i know my mom meant for me to use it in camping (and trust me i will) but i felt like it might work for the kids for the closure. So i started with an assorted age group of 4 kids and 40 minutes later i was forced to dump my 2 buckets of water (see I'm a prepared safety-oriented teacher) onto their fire. SUCCESS!! the year 8 boys also succeeded and so did the next group. in fact this thing is so awesome I'm thinking I'll need another one for two reasons: 1) it works so freaking well, 2) it may be good for 3000 strikes but with large groups of kids using it for fire-making its starting to wear down.

The year 8 boys are already trying to think of ways to convince the principal to let them have a bonfire down in the courtyard next term. Hmmmm, i see persuasive letter writing, planning (ie. contacting fire department to get a fire permit), cooking (they want to cook on it), etc. hmmm i smell project.

Dear mom, when you find another one of those, please purchase and hold it for me until there is another mailing to NZ. Love Carly.

Montessori Retreat

So poorly planned on my part i admit but i had a paid for Montessori retreat in Upper Hutt the same weekend J and B came from Christchurch. Blaise, bless him, was a real trooper, taking up the bulk of their entertaining while i was at the retreat.

Did i mention he is awesome? he is.

The retreat was different then i expected. i've attended government retreats when i worked back in Canada for Multiculturalism. There is a lot of food, networking and some useful training or really good conversation. Knowing that i guess i should have been prepared for this weekend but i guess i was just expecting workshops.

the cabins were rustic but at least i got the top bunk ^^
The food was plentiful and quite good in my opinion. I _LOVED_ the networking. i learned so much about Montessori teaching just through casual conversation between the other attendees and myself between regular scheduled stuff and meals.
The moderator is one of the most turned on, knowledgeable woman on Montessori according to all the attendees. When she runs a workshop at a conference you want to be in it. She has the manuals memorized, can come up with a solution to almost any class problem, etc. I'm sad to say though i didn't come away with much from the scheduled stuff. I am now hooked up to a google group for Montessori teachers in NZ and i found out about an awesome book for presentations and projects.

I don't know, i guess i was expecting something more like a workshop. One of the teachers in my school (but in the class next door) mentioned i should definitely go to the conference in April 2010 (which is workshop oriented) but i pointed out i don't know whats going to happen beyond December 2009 with my position. Well that is a long-term thing.

I was glad to get home i enjoyed the house warming bbq Blaise had arranged. didn't i tell you he was awesome!