I did the two day Red Cross Standard First Aid course this weekend, payed for by work (yeah!). They are hopefully also paying my salary for the time as well. :)

The last time I took the course was 10+ years ago. DH needed to take it for work, so I figured I might as well take it at the same time.

It was dreary. We both worked full time, and doing the 9am to 5pm two day course over the weekend made the longest work week EVER!

I didn't enjoy the course. It was both boring and overwhelming. I learned some, but not a lot of it stuck.

I was a bit worried about this course, expecting it to be the same. But it was great! The main instructor was a woman in her 30's, a nurse (or maybe not quite yet qualified), and was very enthusiastic. She had good stories of real-life situations. Like don't remove a person's helmet, unless they aren't breathing and it's in the way (a guy told her that he removed a bike helmet from a kid hit by a car, and the kid's brain fell out. :( Kid died of course. The second instructor was very pregnant with that lovely pregnancy glow and couldn't talk for long periods without running out of breath!

I didn't know anyone else in the course, so I kind of teamed up with another woman who was there alone. We did any group exercises together - rolling over, bandaging, etc. We even had to do a skit in front of the whole group - I was a woman having a miscarriage and she was the first aid help. We actually did well, the instructor was pleased with our scenario.

It was a big class, 28 the first day, and 22 the second. Had some creepy weird people, childcare providers, and some families with teenagers.

And the class ran until 3:30pm the first day, and just before 3pm the second. Instead of beating each topic to death, we went though it quickly and throughly. Much nicer than being stuck there all day! Got to use a training defibulator - I had never even seen one before. That was neat.

So I'm good for 3 years now. Yeah!