On March 1st, the day before we left Kauai, Aimee, Wylie and Willie finished their open water diving certification.  Waking up at 6am was an early start for the kids.  Willie was in the routine of waking up before the sun rose to catch an early surf session while the waves were still glassy and clean.  However, with online school, the kids had taken to sleeping in late and staying up late to do their school work at night.  After dragging them out of bed, they caught a few more minutes of sleep on the hour drive to Kolao Landing, just past Poipu.

Guillaume, who spoke with a very heavy french accent, was their instructor for all three certification days.  At first he was a bit challenging to understand.  It wasn’t until the end of the first day, that they figured out that “exile” (say it with with the accent on one “xile” and drag it out over 4 seconds) meant to “exhale”. “Air” could mean “air” or “there” or “here” or “hair” which are all important words when learning the basics of scuba diving.  On land, he was very animated and used lots of gestures.  Luckily, there is a universal underwater sign language used when scuba diving. We miss Guillaume but we find ourselves still speaking like him on many occasions. One of our favorites is  “Lay feesh they ide to protect of you” which translates to “the fish hide to protect from you.”

il dorme…

Se réveiller…

la preparación…

L’équipement…

fini!