Training: Day One

I've finally met the rest of the group. There are people from all over the globe which has been amazing. Portugal, Trinidad, Jamaica (yah man), Poland, Oklahoma, to name a few. My roommate is from Scotland and we'll both be youth counselors.  We met the rest of the group at 7am while waiting for our ride to our first day of Personal Survival Training.  I'm loving all of the accents but sometimes I feel rude asking some people to repeat themselves. Sometimes I just smile and nod. Oops.

Our instructor for the course, Barry Walker, is an easy going bloke who used to captain a ship in the 60s I think, and has been on all sorts of different ships. He said that for the last 7 years he has worked here doing all sorts of training courses. The first part of the day we talked about various emergency situations, and he emphasized life jackets like crazy and successfully made me frightened to death of drowning or dying of hypothermia. Or walking into a non-ventilated area with bad air and dropping dead from lack of oxygen. It happens. Yay. Ummm, do I still want this job? (Now, Mom, stop worrying! I'll be okay!) But then he showed us silly videos of people failing at getting onto boats, and it lightened the mood.

We had an hour off for lunch so a few of us wandered beyond the doors of our little training school to a market close by. The last time I'd been in a place like that was in Florida. Lots of little trinkets to buy, fresh fruit, and apparently a mean bowl of minestrone soup according to Mackenzie. Afterwards we all got a crash course in lifeboats and got to experience going lowered down in one. Rocky and uncomfortable to say the least. Once we were in the water it wasn't so bad. There were otters in the harbour and it was a beautiful day.

Now we're back in the hotel, relaxing, cleaning up before we all meet for supper at 7:30. Many are still jet lagged, myself included, because despite my fantastically comfortable bed, I kept waking every few hours. Tomorrow we'll be getting into a pool while wearing survival suits and practicing with a boat to some capacity. We're hoping to explore the city a little bit after that session. Should be fun!

That's pretty much it! I'm liking it all so far.
Love and miss you all back home and wish you were here.
(I'll add pictures later.)