Below is an extract from her recent email to me Nov15 to 22 week at Blue Ventures.
Well,well,well. I am doing pretty well.
I think about times in the day and what we do. We wake early, if we have a 6am dive. So up around 5, some people have bok bok a donut like timbit, but a little doughy. Then we gear up and dive or boat marshall or shore marshall (jobs to supervise dives). When weget backwe have breakfast at 8.
It is rice and stale bread, thank Jan for the peanut butter, and coffee with condensed milk (sweetend milk). Then you may have another dive or duty at 9.
Then again at 11. Then all diving is complete, unless you have a night dive, then your day starts at 3;30am. Ihave not had one yet. Lunch at 1 for fish, rice, beans. Lectures and study time in the aft. We do ourduties, cleaning, weather data or data entry at 6. Dinner, more rice, fish and beans at 7. Vao vao is before dinner, tells what happened today, coolsitings, cool things going on. After dinner schedulefor next day. Then the power goes out at 9 so we usually jkust goto bed. Washrooms are cockroach heaven after dark, the big Madagascar ones they eat on fear factor. I alkways seem to need toi pee at 11pm. Yikes and have to fed off the roaches. Then in the night we sometimes have a rat visitor. Another unpleasant experience. Ihide under my miosqyuito net, no mosyis though.
It's my rat protection.
We do five days of diving and then must have a mandatory dayoff, where wehear lecturees, can doother projects, some people areteching english in the village. One month from today and I wilkl be home, it is the 22nd today. I did two awesome dives,I have memorized many fish and did two dives at new sites, Lovobe and Nearshore Coco Beach. I had great fish sightings atboth dives and am quickly learning my fish species 150 ofthem. I will tested soon. I have passed my 4 benthic coral tests. I am now qualified to do benthic science dives. I have work to do on myfish though.
Food - yuck. I eat very little, as there really isn't mu8ch choice or flavour. I am always hungry. I am not eating jumk like some of the others.
Forgotto tell you, last week, I won the sorbay award for being nice and giving my 4x4 ride to Max and getting sick Kelly some sprite from the shop.
It's an award giving weekly to someone who is nice and then they allvote and
|I won. Pretty cool, but nothing I wouldn't have done naturally. I
|will be
glad totake to 4x4 back to Tulear, 8 hours as opposed to 26hours like cattle.
Tomorrow night I think I will get to go to a night site, snorkelling and counting and measuring harvested sea cucumbers. It's one of the projects hereto manage the artificial growth of sea cucumbers for the Asian market instead of taking them from the wild.
I have been on my first pirogue ride, a sailed boat withan outrigger. Very fun, very wet, and can be very fast if the wind is in the right direction.
I did my first night dive yesterday at 2:30 am. It was a bit of abomb because we were to go to a site called
007 but either wedrifted offthe reef or our gps did notwork right, so we never did find the reef. However, I loved my first night dive, it was cool how you really could see things. The fish nibble you atnight which was neat. I was anxious, but for noreason. It was just a really cool experience. The sky was full of starsand falling stars and a sliver moon.
We have acoral expert here who isvery excited because she isfinding coral eggs which means the coral will spawn shortly. So we are doing many night dives to see if wecan experience it. Not my might dive as we didn't even find our reef let alone coral spawning. But it was a cool first experience for me. Others were disappointed but we're refreshed by my enthusiasm for my first night dive.
Last night Ireceived the sorbay award a second time for my night dive enthusiasm and for being an enthusiastric interested shore marshall a couple days ago. I have won the award two weeks in a row just for doing what I would normally do. It's pretty cool though. I feel like I won an Academy award.
I am a little tired of living so communal and need a little quiet time once in awhile, but the people here are okay and I am managing. My roomates are quite a neat bunch of kids.
Missing you all at home and getting in the Christmas spirit.
Susan
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