February 1 - Australia: Cairns, Queensland

PADI Assistant Instructor Course - Day 4

Knowledge Presentations

At 8:30, we went to DSDD to finish up preparing our Knowledge Presentations.  Jon was still working on his because it took him a bit longer than he'd planned, but he got it done.  Group A stayed in the classroom with Chookie, and Group B went into the other room with Vic.  Jon presented his "Coral Reefs" presentation second, and I presented my "Peak Performance Buoyancy" last.  We all laughed a lot and had a pretty good time.  It's hard to be serious around this group now.  The room is constantly full of "American" and "British" jokes, and we have an ongoing laugh about humming "Rule Britannia" underwater.

At 12:00 we went home and had leftovers, and at 1:30 went back to DSDD for an afternoon lecture of "Discover Scuba and Snorkeling".

Confined Water Presentation

By 4:00, we were in the pool for our second Confined Water presentations.  This time, Vic evaluated us instead of Chookie.  He doesn't find us nearly as humorous and we can't get him to laugh, but we still have fun.  I presented "Hovering" and I can't quite recall what Jon presented.  But the group joke is that - no matter what assigned problem Jon will have (or won't have, for that matter), he'll always throw in another problem just for good measure.  It's pretty funny.  Regardless, we all passed with flying colors this time.  Literally - we got some great scores.  This is either because we're awesome or because Vic is getting soft.  I prefer the former.

Early Night Home

We were home by 8:30, which was so nice.  To celebrate, we ordered from Pizza Hut and ate in front of the TV.  Then we sat down to prepare our Open Water Presentations for tomorrow.  It's a big day for us because we'll be out on ReefQuest and will have to contend with fish, current, water temperate, depth, and other external elements during our presentations.  And we each have two skills to present.  So we worked kind of hard to get it all together, and ended up calling Chookie at 10:00 to ask her some questions.  Jon finished up and was asleep at 10:30, and I turned in at 10:45.