This week has passed by so quickly I can hardly believe it!

Friday was an exciting experience as we hit the water for our pool drills! The pool drill for my airline went as follows: First, we identify all the features of the life vests. Next we don the life vests and inflate. Only half the vest inflates and we then manually inflate the other half. Next we jump into the pool, swim into the center, and link arms to keep together and warm. After staying in that position for a few minutes we then swim to the other side, climb out, and deflate the life vest. We hand the vest to our instructors who throw it back into the pool. We jump in after it, don it again, and manually inflate it. Finally we swim across the pool again and climb out! It’s very exhausting, but I enjoyed it! Did I mention we do all this while fully clothed?

The rest of Friday was spent on normal safety procedures such as the pre-flight demonstration. Being a Canadian company we are required to give the demonstration in English as well as en Français. That’s not terribly easy for most of us, as Vancouver is not in a French speaking part of Canada. None the less we were able to learn it all before the drill! The French announcement itself is played from a recording when we don’t have a French qualified FA aboard, and we learn to do the follow along with the demo by picking out keywords in the announcement. The drill for the Demos was completed on Monday.

Tuesday saw the exam that covered all of our Safety Procedures. This exam was by far the longest and hardest to date, and apparently it’s the hardest of them all. Of course I was able to get through it thanks to diligently paying attention and studying relentlessly. By the way, has anyone seen my social life? I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.

Once the exam was finished we dove right into Emergency Procedures. This covers subjects like evacuating the aircraft as quickly as possible while yelling out things like “EMERGENCY, BEND DOWN, STAY DOWN! URGENCE, PENCHEZ –VOUS, RESTEZ PENCHER!” Of course we aren’t required to know the French part unless we can speak the language and want to be French Qualified. Although I don’t yet speak enough French to become qualified, I’ve decided to learn the commands in both official languages anyway.

On Wednesday however, we put down the emergency procedures and picked up first aid. The entire day was essentially all reading and power points. Mind numbing, I know! Luckily Thursday was spent actually practicing CPR and other first aid activities. Tomorrow morning we’ll have an exam on it all and get our certification. Once that’s complete we’ll start up again on the Emergency procedures.

The best part of the week however was today (Thursday!) That’s because our trainers turned off all the lights and came into the room with a birthday cake and sang happy birthday! To Me! (and a classmate!) Her birthday was yesterday and mine is next week. It was so very nice of them considering they went out and bought the cake out of their own pockets. Am I working for a great company, or what?

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