I headed straight to the Big Blue dive shop upon arriving in Koh Tao to organise the next few days. The next day I completed an Emergency First Response (senior first aid) course, which was really easy. The following day I began my 2 day course to become certified as a stress and rescue diver. The theory for this course was fairly straight forward. Personality types, detecting and dealing with stress in others, assisting divers and panicked divers under water, rescuing swimmers and divers on the surface, recovering unconscious divers and search and rescue for missing divers. I the practical side of this course was not as straight forward. Generally the people I had to 'rescue' were either unconscious or panicked and doing their best to drown me. Assisting divers with problems underwater went fairly well, with a range of issues such as cuts on poisonous stone fish, entanglement, divers losing their mask, divers out of air, divers losing their fins and taking off all of their equipment underwater. The assessment for the course was the following day, and was much the same but victims were more aggressive under water and I had to coordinate a search for a missing diver, find them unconscious on the sea bed, bring them to the surface and treat them. A really tough course physically (if the student hasn't been bruised, made to bleed or vomit in the water the instructor isn't doing their job properly), but very rewarding and some great skills to have when under water.
That night was Christmas Eve, we had dinner at Big Blue's restaurant followed by a fairly festive evening (which ended at 5am in my case). I took it fairly easy the next day - phoned home, got out bed for lunch and then again at about 5pm. Went out for some Christmas drinks with a few people at a very relaxed place on the beach called Fizz, getting home at a more respectable 1am.
I'll upload a few photos when I've got a faster Internet connection.
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