SCUBA has officially begun...

Tues. May 9 - I worked all day at ITT and had to leave there around 4:00pm to get everything ready for our SCUBA class tonight. Joe was suppose to be getting back into town today with his parents by 1pm, so I had originally planned to just ride over to NAS II with him. He never showed up during the day, so I figured he was running really late coming back home from Sorrento. I left ITT and had to meet with the SCUBA instructors outside of the main security gate on NAS II to sponsor them onto base. People that are not military related or have the special pass to get onto this specific base must be sponsored on by an ID holder to assure that they leave base by 10pm every night. This base is a lot more strict on rules and has some totally other ones than the base I live on and work at for ITT does. I got them on successfully and we headed over to the General Education Building for the first 1-hour section of the class. The class is going to be for the next 2 1/2 weeks, every Tuesday and Thursday for 4 hours. 1 hour classroom and then 2-3 in the pool doing confined dives. After that, we will be required to have 4 open water dives at their company in Aci Trezza (home of the Greek mythological Cyclopes Rocks). The class was full at 16 participants and they started the class by giving out the waivers and having us fill out a bunch of paperwork. I honestly thought Joe wasn't going to make it, but he showed up right before they started the first lesson. He's gonna be my SCUBA partner. Class went well and they wanted us to hurry up and get over to the pool for the "real lesson." I was in charge of getting the pool key, but then after that everyone helped unload their vehicle with all of the equipment we would be needing for the next 2 weeks. It took awhile to get everything underway, but we were soon ready to learn how to put the tanks and BCDs together. After fitting everything, we got into the water for the introduction. I was the only person in the class who could not get the hang of breathing in and out of the regulator. It was such a weird feeling and being nervous on top of that did not help. It was really frustrating, but the instructors promised me they would work with me next class and I would get it. I wanted to cry, but I promised I would come back next class. While I was spending time in the pool trying how to breath into the damn thing, everyone else was working on some basic procedures and hand signals. Oh well, I couldn't even imagine doing any of that yet since I would first need to feel comfortable breathing. The class went well though and I knew I'd get it sooner or later. I would talk to Leslie about it later at work one day to see if she had any problems like that when she first learned how. I figured I couldn't be the only person to not be able to figure it out right away. I was nervous for another reason now, I only had 4 more classes to be able to learn everything and get this down. Sylvie, one of the instructors was really sweet and told me she'd personally work with me on Thursday until I figured it out. That was cool. After class, Joe and I went and picked up Pirate from base and we headed up to Taormina to go see his parents before they left. Pirate hadn't met them yet and he had tomorrow off ( I didn't have to be at work til 3 and Joe was still on leave until Fri) so we figured we'd go up there and hang out with them tomorrow morning and afternoon. We didn't get up there until almost midnight so we decided to go grab some beer before we headed to the hotel. There was only one place open, so we went to it. It was a really cool Irish Pub called Time Out. We ended up having an awesome time, of course, and stayed there until almost 3:30am. We stayed at the Hotel Isobella that his parents rented a room for us all and they were staying at. There was a cute little note on the bed saying they'd meet us after breakfast in the lobby at 9:45am. We all crashed and went to bed so we had a good amount of time in the morning to hang out before I had to get to work.

Wed. May 10 - We all hung out and walked around Taormina all morning and early afternoon. The weather was great, a little on the hot side. We stopped to eat lunch at a trattoria/pizzeria. It was so good and the wine was great. I had to be at work by 2, so we packed up and left the town. There was quite a but of traffic, so I ended up running a little late for work. It was cool though. We brought his parents down with us and Pirate and Joe showed them around both bases after I went to work. Work was alright, I got an email from Dr. Cole finally asking if I could call her so we could talk about my internship stuff and graduation. I gave her a call as soon as I knew she in her office and we talked for about a half hour. It was so nice to finally get ahold of her and talk about everything that's been happening lately over here and back at school. She told me that she was going to be leaving Mizzou because she got offered a job at Indiana University starting next semester. She did get her tenure at Mizzou, but Indiana also offered her husband a job. I told her that I would definitely come visit her, especially now that I can visit Kate and Meg if I go up there. She sounded really happy about it, it will kinda suck not being able to come visit here though when I go back to school. I'll miss her for sure though. I will try my hardest to keep in touch with her since she's been a great reference for me for the past 4 years. When I get back into town, I told her I'd head down to see her before she leaves so I can get my internship manual and other stuff that I've turned in. She also told me that I won the "Senior of the Year Award." I thought that was really cool that all my friends and staff recognized my dedication to the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism department over the past 4 years. She told me I can pick up the award when I get down to school. The rest of the night was same old Take 5. Watched movies, made lots of popcorn, played Ping Pong with Smitty, and so on.

Thurs. May 11 - I woke up at 4:00am to go help pick-up Joe's parents and bring them to the airport. After I got home, I went back to bed and worked at ITT for the day. I just helped them catch-up on some work and helped Leah get the weekend trip ready. She is escorting a trip to a spa in Taormina for the weekend so she needed my help getting all the treatments and times ready. It was kinda hectic, but the day went by really quick considering I had SCUBA tonight again. I left work at 4:30 to go sponsor the instructors onto base and get to class on time. We learned a bunch more today and my lesson in the pool went so much better than Tuesday. I spent time with Sylvie on my own to practice breathing into the regulator and get comfortable with being underwater. I'm glad I didn't give up and really felt much better by the end of the night. By the end of class, I worked on clearing my mask with a few of the guys. I think my next class will go much better and I can start to do the underwater techniques and emergency skills.

Fri. May 12 - I worked at ITT Gear-N-Go all day helping Leah again with the Spa Weekend. She was freakin out all day. Near the end of the day, I helped Leslie with a 10-person birthday party in the Rock-Climbing Wall. It lasted about 2 hours and by the end of that time, I probably belayed those kids over 20 times. I was so sweaty, that gym has practically no circulation in there. The kids loved it though, we're gonna start advertising doing parties more often and maybe start charging a small fee for our labor (it takes about 2 or 3 of our staff to help belay everyone for a few hours). It was fun though, but I was ready to get outta there. I finally got back to my room around 6:30 and Smitty called me seeing if I wanted to go eat with him and his friend at the Hard Rock in Catania. I hadn't been there yet so I took him up on the offer. It ended up just being him, our friend Baumann, his Italian girlfriend, and myself. It was good. A typical Hard Rock Cafe, just a little empty since it was still pretty early for Italians to start eating dinner. I ended up just going home and watching the movie I've heard so much about, Hostel. It was retarded though so I went to bed so I could sleep in in the morning.