My day started off with a mistake. I thought that I had my diving orientation meeting at 6:30am. Turns out it was 6:30pm. I took a taxi to the dive shop at the early hours of the morning, expecting an early morning class, before regular diving trips that are always early in the morning. When I got to the store I saw that it wasn’t going to open for another 2 hours and I realized the mistake I had made. I didn’t let this stop me from trying to make the day my best yet though, and decided to walk back to the hostel, instead of wasting more money on another 20-minute taxi ride.
My walk took about 3 hours, not including multiple stops along the way. I made my way south through suburban areas, desert valleys and along the San Diego River. I sat by the water and saw fish constantly jumping out of the water and splashing back into it. This was phenomenal to watch and I got a great tan from the warm Californian sun!
The ocean is a place that just magically pulls me towards it. In a way the ocean it so relaxing and I can stare at the waves crashing in for hours. Especially because there’s huge waves here at Ocean Beach. And with those huge waves there come a lot of surfers. Every other person is walking down the beach trail in a wetsuit. It gives this place a really great vibe. People seem genuinely happy and really friendly.
The city is so green and environmentally friendly, and when I got back to the hostel my bike had already been delivered. I ordered it with a bike company the night before and got a discount as a guest of the hostel. I biked around for a while and made my way back to the diving school to go to the orientation, for real this time.
Ocean Enterprises is the name of the diving shop/school that I’m getting my certificate with. When I went entered the store there was a really friendly Mexican girl that helped me get set up for class, my certifications and my 2 boat tickets for the dives. After taking care of that I went upstairs, where the classrooms are located. Besides me there was only a Hawaiian girl that joined the Navy here in San Diego. There’s some kind of big training area for the Navy here and there’s at least 3-4 Navy people in my class. Our instructor (ex-Navy guy) introduced himself and told us more about our upcoming course. In the advanced open water program you go on a shipwreck dive, a night dive, a deep dive, a underwater naturalist dive and a navigation dive. I can’t wait to start on Saturday!!
The other people in my class are mostly locals or Navys getting their advanced certifications. One of the Navys has a shocking similarity to Ryan Gosling. An all American boy. We should buddy up for diving, I bet he could pull me out of the water faster than anybody else in my class!
After the meeting was over I biked back to the hostel through the warm winds of San Diego at night. I really enjoyed the ride along the water and there were all kinds of early 4th of July fireworks going off all over the city. This could easily become a home for me. Perfect weather, great people happy life.
calitripping 
I hope you ended up with “Ryan Gosling” as your buddy and you took photos!!