Hello again, again from a cafe here in Amed. It’s been three months since my last missive and not too much has changed. The weather’s still perfect, the rice fields are still beautiful, the volcano still looms, and I’m still diving and not doing too much else.

There are several well-trodden conversational paths in Amed, one of which is about the way time seems to pass here. Most people in my cohort here could not really be said to be busy, certainly not by the standards of our former lives. And yet, the days do seem to fly by. Diving occupies most mornings, followed by food and idle chit chat. At that point the sun is generally beating down, so you while away a few hours reading, napping, working, or lounging by the pool. Then there’s dinner to be attended to, and with diving the next morning it’s early to bed for most. And that’s how, without really doing a whole lot, you can really fill your days!

My main mission for the first couple of months here was to prepare for the freediving instructor course I was planning to take. The plan was taking it very slow, to remember how to freedive again and to get my body re-adapted to depth. And that’s pretty much what I did! I’d planned on doing a several-week coaching program to help me hone my skills before the course, but between a few extremely welcome visits from friends and a very unwelcome couple of weeks with a cold I ended up postponing that until after the instructor course.

That time spent with friends was great though! Amed is a sleepy town but there are a handful of fun things to do, and lots of beautiful roads to scooter up in the surrounding hills. Left to my own devices I tend towards the extremely active schedule I detailed above, so having other people to help motivate me to explore is a real bonus, on top of the delightful company. The other thing I was looking forward to when coming here was making friends and then actually sticking around long enough to hang out with them, and that has also been lovely! Many of the freedivers who are here long term live here seasonally, spending 3-6 months here, then maybe a season in the snow, a couple months at home, going off to other idyllic destinations for freediving competitions, etc… So some of my new friends have left while I’ve stayed, but pretty much everyone has plans to come back, and it makes for a nice larger social group with a rotating in-person cast.

So, the instructor course! I’ve known pretty much since I got into freediving at the beginning of 2020 that I wanted to eventually work as a freediving instructor, but I took a slow and cautious road to it. There are a handful of performance requirements to become a freediving instructor, like holding your breath for 4 minutes, swimming 100m in a pool on one breath, and diving 40m deep. I’ve been able to do those things for a while now, but I wanted to broaden my knowledge, do some work as an assistant instructor, and feel rock solid in my diving before taking the course. Sometimes I have a pang of regret that I left it a couple of extra years, but realistically this was always going to be the way for me. And when it came time to do the course, the preparation certainly paid off.

It’s a reasonably intense process, 9 days of being at the dive center from 9am to 6pm with one rest day in the middle. You teach theory in the classroom, skills in the pool, and diving in the ocean, with your instructor trainer and other instructor candidates as simulated students. The ocean teaching sessions get very, very long (I think our max was around 5 hours), as 4 instructor candidates each take turns taking 3 “students” through some portion of their course. And then, sprinkled throughout, you also have to do all of your own performance requirements. When taking an instructor course you actually have one year from finishing the course to finish performing the requirements and get certified, but I wanted to make it a point of (perhaps misplaced) pride to do them all during the course, first try. That’s exactly what I did, and misplaced or not, I do feel proud. The 3 months I spent as an assistant instructor in Sydney were also really useful, helping me feel at ease during the teaching portions, even though I still had lots to learn.

So now I am officially certified as a Molchanovs freediving instructor, and with a couple of extra days tacked on after, also as an AIDA freediving instructor. I’m excited! At this point I’m allowed to hang out my shingle and just start teaching courses, but in my usual slow and steady way, my current goal is to get a job teaching at a freediving school so that I can get lots of experience teaching without having to worry about all the ancillary stuff that comes with starting and running a business. There are a few good schools here in town and with any luck I’ll manage to land a job with one of them.

First, though, I’ve got that postponed coaching program that I’d intended to do before the instructor course. I’ll be spending the next 3 weeks getting coached and trying to really refine my own diving, and I’m very excited about that as well. I’ve hit a bit of a plateau with my deep diving, and need to go back to basics and focus on improving my technique and body awareness. Even though I’ve known that for a while it’s very hard to do on your own, and having outside direction from some extraordinarily experienced coaches should be huge. After a few sessions it’s already been a bit of an up and down process, excitement about progressing mixing with frustration and embarrassment about not being as good as I thought I was or would like to be. But that’s all part of the deal, and I’m taking it as a mental challenge to let go of expectations and just focus on putting in the work. If you know me well at all you’ll know that that really does not come naturally to me! It’ll be a good test of whether I’ve matured at all since my long-lost days as a tennis brat.

And with that, you’re more or less all caught up. I’ve also plateaued a bit with learning Indonesian but I’ve got a decent little base and try to screw up the courage to use it when I can. I should really sign myself up for actual in person lessons but hey, one vector of personal growth at a time. What I’m currently telling myself is that I’m laying the groundwork now and then when I line up a job to come live and work here I’ll make Indonesian a point of emphasis and really get fluent. Only time will tell!