We begin our Scandinavian Odyssey...

     Steve, Eline and I have been so busy, and have been having such a good time that I've hardly had time to sleep, let alone update my blog, but I'll try to share what we've been up to during our first week.  I departed from Washington DC at 7:30 pm after a few hours delay, made my connection at Schipol in the Netherlands and arrived in København at 10 am on August 1st.   Luckily for me, Igor, the European Scholar from last year was arriving at the same time so we were able to meet up and make our way to our hotel together.  He had been to København twice before, so he knew the easiest ways to get around.

       We had come to København as guests of Flemming Thyge (pronounced 'two') and IAHD, the International Association for Handicapped Divers.  Steve wouldn't arrive from Indonesia for a few days but Eline, Igor, Vibe (European '03) and I got to take part in a special training session to be qualified to work as instructors and divemasters with handicapped divers.  We worked for several days with Flemming and two other IAHD members, Daniel Zuidema and Sole Viktor.  The whole process ended with a try-dive experience for three new handicapped divers at a local rehabilitation center.  Flemming really went out of his way to invite all of the OWUS scholars, past and present, opened his home and his dive center to us, and worked hard to make the weekend a huge success.  He also arranged for us to meet Peter Symes, editor of X-Ray Magazine.  It's an online diving magazine, available for free, with a lot of great stuff, definitely worth checking out.  IAHD is a relatively new organization, but we were all very impressed with Flemming, Daniel and Sole, and their aims as an organization.  Hopefully we'll all have opportunities to use our new abilities to help handicapped divers in the future.

     After our last night in København we said goodbye to Igor and Vibe and Flemming took us to meet Steve at the airport, where we caught a Train up to Helsingør.  We spent two days with Christian Rasmussen from fotodyk and Kjell Evensen, owner of Master Dive in Helsingør.  Christian is an excellent photographer, both above and below the waves, and he and Kjell hosted us during our stay in Helsingør and took incredible care of us.  Even though the weather was too stormy for any offshore diving, we got through the entire photo course and got to practice in the pool.  Steve, Eline and I are all of varying skill levels when it comes to photography, but we all learned a lot, and the class got all of us even more excited about improving our photography and videography skills.

     Our next stop was the One Ocean Dive Center in Kristiansand, Norway.  Our journey yesterday encompassed riding in/on a taxi, a ferry, a bus and a train, passing through three different countries (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) and all within 24 hours (barely).  Amazingly, our host Carlo was there to meet our 4 am train and take us to the apartment he is lending us during our week long stay here.  After a few quick hours of sleep this morning he picked us back up and took us diving!  Our first dive was on Kristiansand's most famous wreck, the M/S Seattle.  It's a German cargo ship laying upright at an angle with her stern lying in 25 meters of water and her bow bottoming out at 75 meters.  Obviously we couldn't explore the entire wreck on this first dive.  Even if we had the training to access the deepest part of the wreck, it's far too large to explore in one dive.  We didn't unpack the underwater housings for this first dive, but one of the local divers has posted some pretty good video on youtube:

     So far our trip has been fantastic.  Every host we've had has been so thrilled to be a part of the scholarship, and we've learned so much, and met a lot of incredible people and divers.  The best part is that we still have a month to go before we leave!