Week Without Walls

(WWW)



This past week was our Week Without Walls (WWW).  Week Without Walls is a concept where students travel throughout Europe and Asia to learn and interact with a different culture and to do some community service.  At least that is the idea; some of the trips do turn into a week of touring.

 

This year we had groups going to:  England, France, Italy, Austria, Nepal, China, Cambodia, Tanzania, scuba diving, Oman, and Dubai based activities for students.

 

I was assigned to the scuba diving trip.  Why?  Because everyone knows that I'm a diver.  I wasn't happy about going diving with 40 odd students.  Yes, I love to dive, but not with kids and not while they are learning.  I did my share of grumbling to other colleagues about how I didn't want to go, and how I would have loved to have gone to England, Italy, or Nepal.  And come next year I know how to fill out the form for Week Without Walls. 

 

Grumble, grumble I packed my dive gear and got ready to go diving.  Stewart, the guy arranging the scuba diving expedition had me down to take the Advance Course;  I laughed at him and said that I wasn't going to take the Advance Class; I told him that there wasn't a class that he could probably offer me.  Yes, I was a little snobbish, but I wasn't happy about going diving with kids; and next year I would fill out the WWW form differently.

 

I was up early, met the bus and off to Fujairah  I went with 3 other chaperones and 39 students for a week of scuba diving.  Grumbling and wondering if I was going to get to do any decent diving during the week.

 

We arrived at the Miramar Resort 2 1/2 hours later and the journey began.  Wow!  I was impressed with the organization of  Divers Down, the dive shop that hosted us for the week.  They had the kids broken up into different groups and had the entire week mapped out.  The students were rotated between class/theory, confined dives in the pool, and open water dives in the sea. 

 

The kids started the minute they arrived.  All of the groups worked well and everyone stayed on their time schedule.  It was cool to see the students get involved and be excited to learn how to dive.  I was very pleased with the way things were organized and ran.  I have to say that because I have assisted with many classes in the past and I was wondering how this was going to work out with numbers, different grade levels, and skill ability.  I was very impressed.

 

And grumbling me; I thoroughly enjoyed the week!  I was able to jump in and dive with the group doing Specialities and with the Advance Class (O.K. so I guess I did semi do the Advanced class again at least I didn't have to do the course work.).  This meant that I was in the water early in the morning and did some awesome dive sights.  I was able to join in on some of the Open Water Classes and do a couple of dives with them.

 

The diving was great.  The life in the gulf in Fujairah is wonderful.  The visibility is never very great, but enough that you can see.  I was able to see lots.  Some of the highlights were large Honeycomb Eels, schools of Barracuda, pipe fish and other small items.

 

I got to dive some great sites.  I did Inch 1; Inch 2 (both wrecks); Three Rocks, and The Cemetery.

 

Since I was all ready certified as a diver I had a great week.  I was able to dive when I wanted, worship the sun, read my book, and interact with a great group of kids.  It was a very successful week.

 

And next year I know how to fill out the WWW form!