Met at diving club at 9am and watched three videos about scuba diving. We then had to answer questions about the topics which were things to do with pressure, diving safety and use of equipment. Had lunch from 1 – 2 when we spent about an hour trying on equipment before going into the training pool. We spent about 2 hours in here, underwater for most of it doing exercises we had learnt about in the morning from the videos. Filling mask with water and clearing it; throwing the regulator behind and finding it again, sharing another person’s air and a short time in the deeper part at 3m where we practiced surfacing from a depth. This was very important as ascending and descending has to be done slowly due to the pressures, and descending to that depth required equalising the pressure in the sinuses every metre (the feeling felt in the ears when climbing and descending in an airliner). We were also stressed the point of never holding breath whilst under water, as having a lung full of air at 10 metres and then surfacing whilst holding breath would result in the lungs expanding to twice their size due to pressure – not good!

We finished about 6 and hurried to watch the football in the bar. It was our hotels one year anniversary today so they put on a bit of a special dinner an Egyptian show after dinner.