Thursday, October 9, 2008

Under the sea...

I'll start this entry with the ever-so-gentle reminder that I'll be home for Christmas in less than 2 months! Time here (as I suppose everywhere) is moving at lightning speed. For example, the 27th of September marked MOZ 12's 1 year anniversary in Mozambique and on the continent of Africa. I am still flabbergasted that a year has past since I have arrived to this distant land. I know it's über cliché but it seems like I arrived only yesterday. OK OK, truth be told some days it does seem like yesterday and other days it seems like it has been a year or more. Despite how long it has felt like, we still have little more than a year left before we can celebrate our overwhelming success. Nevertheless, congrats to us for getting to this point!
So how did I celebrate my one year mark in Mozambique? Being the person that I am, I can never do things without fanfare and this most important anniversary for me called for a hullabaloo of sorts. For that, I celebrated by getting my PADI scuba diving open water certification in Barra Beach, Inhambane! Three of my fellow Moz 12 Gazans got their certifications about 2 months ago and have done nothing but talk about how amazing all the underwater fauna and diving is. Being the adventurous sort (I'm here, aren't I?) I decided that this was definitely something I wanted to do and was interested in. After Santa Claus (thank you!) delivered his generous gifts I headed up to Barra with another Gazan, David. We spent 4 full days receiving the theory and knowledge of safe diving and then put this into practice with 4 open water dives where we could practice our skills. Clearly I was not certified yet so our amazing dive instructor, Ina from Sweden, was with us. Some days we had another instructor from England, Lisa, with us so that gave us 1-to-1 instruction which was absolutely amazing. Just a plug for Barra Lodge Dive Centre: it's definitely worth the money and the individual attention is simply amazing. I have heard stories about surrounding dive centres and it sounds like they just don't compare. Definitely hit up Barra Lodge if and when you visit! I know that I'll be back again and again, and my Mother will be one of the people going back with me on a discover scuba diving course!
I left the long weekend a certified open water diver up to 12 meters but I plan on and can't wait to go back in a few weeks to get my deep diving certification so I can dive up to 30 meters. On my dives so far I saw a variety of sealife and fauna such as the world most poisonous fish, the stonefish. I also saw many octapii (sp?), which changes colors with the blink of an eye and to see then swimming and undulating their various color palettes is a sight to behold, lionfish galore, moray eels, giant clams, blue-spotted stingrays, the leaffish, crown of thorns starfish, blowfish, and the very rare frogfish, a relative to anglerfish, just to name a few!
The week directly after my scuba diving fun-for-all was slated as finals week at my school. However because the end of Ramadan fell in the middle of the testing schedule, all exams were postponed a week. This would be great, if the school direction told anyone that they were planning on doing this. Once again, I was out of the loop and learned only by showing up and being like "o que est a acontecer?!"/"what's going on?!" Ahhhh...this place never gets old. I love it. In the end, I had the week off to just hang out, do some reading, cleaning, and mild construction on my house.
Don't really have too much more to write on over here except that my group is finally not the newbie group as the new group of PCTs, MOZ 13, arrived just this past week. I wish them all good luck and a lot of fun in their training experience!
I miss you all at home and hope that everyone is surviving this rocky period of American economic history with a smile on your face. Remember that although times may be rough, there are always people and places worse off than our own. Not to mention that nothing lasts forever, both the good and the bad times. Things will get better.
Love you, and stay strong!
Jon
PS – can someone send me info on what is economically happening at home?? I hear almost nothing and what I do hear is incomplete and murky... jon.d.bates@gmail.com. Thanks!

No comments: