Dear dive buddies and friends,
my name is I am Arlene, in fact I am a mountain girl grown up far away from any ocean. My place is called the Summer Capital of the Philippines, Baguio City. The location is about 200 km north of Manila.
You may ask yourself how I got into diving, right? As usual it was not my free will, somebody, guess who, convinced me.
It was during our Christmas holiday in 2006. My today’s hubby a newly Open Water Diver shared his experiences under water, so I decided just to put my head under water to have a look. Finally I took an Open Water course too. That’s how I started.
Seen from today I went from ZERO to HERO in the last 5 years. I did my Advanced Open Water course in Germany. My deep dive was in a freaking cold lake close to Frankfurt, brrrrrr. Diving in a 7mm wetsuit is really fun. Also my Nitro course there was a real night mare. Imagine me a mountain girl and a German style instructor.
Back to another holiday in Philippines in 2009, my husband did the Instructor course, I was really bored that 14 days, so I decided to go for the Rescue Diver course, later this year I became Dive Master and Assistant Instructor. This was the way I could smell already that I want more, I wanted to become instructor. Not more, not less.
In August 2011 it was the right time, I went to Nha Trang, Vietnam, and meet my friendly Course Director Grant Martin. I finalized the Instructor Examination (IE) on August 29, now I reached my intermediate target, OWSI. During the examination I was joking already with the PADI examiner to get his job hehehehe.
As you can imagine I never could have reached this without the support of my friends. So I would like to thank Christian F. Heim, Ben Walzinger and Grant Martin for their patience.
I am not yet where I want to be. You can believe me, I keep you posted. DIVE with ME.
Arlene Ruhland
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