Aussie Expats Update – Scuba-Certified and University-Free!

Hello world!!

Posting this is a massive success, so excuse me while I indulge in a moment of well-deserved elation. I’d hoped (but didn’t think I’d actually managed it… and I didn’t) to get this out yesterday as part of our ongoing Friday updates, but the day got away from me, mostly due to a tough exam I had to work on. BUT I have got it out today, and that’s a real cause for celebration. Especially because what was holding me up was my Australian Literature exam… and I have FINALLY finished it, my last assessment for the trimester.

I now have three weeks of blissful freedom before starting Trimester 3 in late October, but as I’m only going to be doing one subject (a politics course called ‘Sex, Crime and Corruption’—I’m sure to get something interesting for future story ideas out of that one!), it really does feel like I’m heading for a long break before full-time uni starts back again next year. HURRAY! Of course, this means that I’ve planned out a multitude of things to do that I’ve been neglecting recently in favour of surviving uni: whether or not any of these lofty plans actually come to fruition is yet to be seen, but it’s still fun to be making them.

So, what’ve we been up to? Well, we spent last weekend out at Lake Tenkiller, which, as you can see, is a bit of hike from us, but we were more focused on the goal for the trip… getting open-water certified! James had a work trip to Kansas City that week, so I drove up to Oklahoma City on Friday afternoon to collect both him and the necessary scuba gear, then we motored our way out to Lake Tenkiller. Despite some small hiccoughs along the way—such as not really knowing where exactly our accommodation was—we got up to our little cabin, cooked ourselves a delicious dinner thanks to a Trader Joe’s stop in OKC (I got the cookie butter everyone, I GOT THE COOKIE BUTTER and if you’ve never had it, it’s pretty damn good), and crashed out relatively early.

We were up nice and bright the next day, keen to spread Saturday exploring the scuba park of Lake Tenkiller. Luckily, the lake is predominantly rock-bottomed, which means that the visibility was excellent—as excellent as it can be for a lake, while still being paltry compared to the ocean!—for our weekend adventures. Not only that, but Oklahoma decided to turn on some beautiful weather, with heat and sunshine all round, as well as some definitely warm water temperatures, which meant we decided not to even bother wearing wetsuits. We did a total of three dives on Saturday morning (the limit we could dive that day according to the rules of our training organisation) and had a great time applying our previously learned skills in the lake, which not surprisingly, is far superior to using them in a community pool!!

Our wonderful instructors from Blue Water Divers in OKC, Brad and Weeds, took us on five different trips around the scuba park in the lake over the course of the weekend, complete with an old school bus, a plane, a helicopter, a number of boats… and a creepy detached baby’s head that seems to just show up in different places around the park.

We were also fortunate enough to get the opportunity to also get another qualification under our belts on Sunday morning, as Brad and Weeds were happy for us to work through the requirements for Peak Performance Buoyancy: so I guess we now have no choice but to get a wriggle on and complete some more courses! Of course, after all of that excitement (and the looooong drive home again), we’re spending this weekend doing a whole heap of nothing, and loving the hell out of it. I’m keen to get some more books read, some writing done, some napping in… Bring on this uni break!

Looking forward to getting some more blog posts out on a few interesting things in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!!

— Ana.

p.s. I’m strongly considering playing around with my wordpress themes and mixing up the look of my blog. If you have any advice (or think it’s great as is), I’d love to hear from you!