35 Dives and Counting

It's hard to believe that 10 days ago I got to Koh Tao as an 18-dive Advanced Open Water (AOW) and now I'm a 35-dive Rescue Certified Dive Master Trainee (DMT). I spent the morning in the pool today doing confined with a new class of Open Water (OW) kids - that's three + hours in the pool for anyone counting - and then spent the afternoon on the last two dives for my AOW class. Yes, I'm assisting two classes at once! Anthony is giving me marks of 4/5 for the assists on his OW and AOW, which is really quite good for the first assists. The new OW class is with Rich, so I'm sure I'll have more to say on that later.
The AOW class was 6 or the 7 kids from that first OW class I was writing about before. Yesterday we took them out for three dives (deep, navagation, and night) and today for two (multi-level and naturalist). I got to play on my own on the multilevel so I was just swimming around Hing Pee Lee at 25 meters for 40 minutes alone - it was fantastic! It has gotten to the point now though where when I'm on land I feel like I'm on a boat and my hands are permenantly pruny.
It's a tropical storm at the moment so it's rainy and "cold", but of course you can dive through that. It's made the boat rides good fun though ;)
Last night we went out drinking and dancing at Choppers, a bar down the road in Sairee Village - really good fun. Tonight we might head out to Mae Haad and hit up Dirty Nellys. Tomorrow I'm on the morning boat though so I'll need to keep it somewhat under control. Island life as a DMT is actually busier than one might think.
I wish there was some way to really describe what this is like in words... even pictures wouldn't manage it. I really love diving and right now my whole life revolves around it - that's all I really need to worry about and it's just fantastic. Even when the dive sites have bad visability and it's rainy you just don't notice it - even washing the gear isn't much of a chore. I haven't even left, I'm not that close to leaving (1 month) and I can't wait to come back in 2007 and get my instructorship (IDC) and do an internship. Maybe work in Aus/NZ/Maldives, where ever will take me for a year... I don't know if I could do this with a kid and a partner, like Anthony, but for your twenties, what better way to live?