Stupidity

Okay, so I just looked back and realized how very little I have told you about my amazing experiences here in Vanuatu. I am really mad at myself right now. So much does go on here, and it all just kinda clumps together to form one big memory. I could have sworn that I have related most of the stories that go on but really I have said so little.
Lets see......I shall start with some of the diving stories. Open water diving students are always good at providing a few good stories. My last student was this middle aged lady that was so excited to start diving. She was pretty good in the water but then she forgot some of the basics when trying to complete underwater navigation. We started the exercise on the bottom of the dive site (12m down) and as she started navigating she forgot about her buoyancy and started drifting to the surface. I couldn't stop her and have her drop back down so I just emptied my jacket to make myself as negatively buoyant as possible. I then grabbed onto her BCD and tried to act as a weight. She took no notice, and so here I was hanging upside down underneath my student who was navigating a line. I felt like a remora fish hitching a free ride. My attempt really didn't work to well and we ended the exercise in about 4 meters of water. It then took a good 5 minutes for her to get back down to depth. I am sure it would have been quite amusing to see me curled up in a ball hanging from my students BCD.
Another good story comes from when I was leading two new divers from Asia. They were a bit nervous and not to sure about scuba diving still. We dropped down onto the dive site and started to enjoy ourselves. They stayed quite close to me (to close to where I was kicking them...annoying!) and they started to act a bit more confident. We were coming to the end of the dive and we came around the side of a huge coral head. Underneath at the bottom of the coral head there was a 3 meter leapord shark. It was gorgeous and we were probably less than 2 meters from it. I turned to my students to make sure they saw it (it was VERY hard to miss) and they were just staring at me. I pointed to the shark to show them and they refused to look at it. It was so strange, here I was freaking out because I have always wanted to see one of these sharks and they weren't even going to look at the thing. I wasn't sure they knew what it was so I decided to give them the shark sign. Yeah.....that wasn't the best move. I gave the sign and pointed to it and both of the diver's eyes got huge. I was surprised that niether one of them tried to shoot for the surface. Luckily the shark swam off so my divers calmed down a bit. After the dive on the surface I tried to figure out what they thought it was or what they were thinking, but they were just nonplused and really didn't say much about it. They were some of the strangest divers I have taken diving.
A fun dive that I did happened with a large group. We were doing a drift dive, and I was chosen to lead it since Chelsea refused to lead it (her navigation skills are not to the standard of mine...haha). We had about 7 divers and then the 3 instructors, and I was not excited to have the responsiblity of getting 9 people back to the boat on a drift dive. I was religiously following my compass and feeling good about everything and sudden I hear a frantic tapping on one of the divers tanks. It ended up being Chelsea trying to get attention (like always) and she was pointing to a hige dugong appearing from the right. It was headed straight for one of the divers and he had no idea he was about to have a collision. I quickly got his attention and pointed at the dugong. It was a little late and as he turned his head he got a huge whump on the head from the dugong. His reaction was priceless, as it should be. If I was bumped by a 4 meter animal underwater I would freak just a bit too. Anyway the dugong just joined our group and come up to people to be scratched and socialize. It ended up following us for the majority of the time, which ended up getting me very upset. Of course, everyone was focused on the dugong and had no interest in where I was leading them. They totally disregarded me and refused to follow me. I ended up angerly beating my tank to try to get their attention and of course that didn't help. It was like trying to herd a bunch of cats, it was not happening. Anyway, finally I got Chelseas and Logans help and we managed to cohearse everyone back on track. I ended up getting us directly back to the boat and everyone had an amazing dive. I have to admit that it was one of the top ten dives I have done here.
The other day I had a different kind of dive. Some people might say that I had a 45 minute underwater date with a 46 year old married lady. Haha......yeah anyway she was an intro diver and she was really excited. However as soon as she hit the water that excitment became nervousness. I could tell she was not confident at all and very unsure of everything. We started to swim off and she just blanked out and started drifting to the surface. I grabbed her hand and pulled her down. I could tell as soon as she realized I was down there with her (physical contact) she calmed down a bit. That being I just decided to hold her hand the entire dive. She was fine with that and ended up having one of the best times of her life (her words). At one point of the dive I loosened my grip to see if she would release to dive on her own, but that just made her tighten her grip. Needless to say, after 45 minutes my hand was quite sore and tired. She ended up doing another dive and she luckily had enough confidence to swim on her own for that one. It is times like that, that being an instructor is so rewarding.
I know there are other good diving stories but it is late here and that is all my brain can think of at the moment. I will write more soon, and I will also write about life on land here. It is an amazing place, filled with some amazing people. Though I must admit that I miss all the amazing people back home in the States.