Adventure!

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These are pictures from my first few days here... Hope you like them. I couldn't figure out how to make a slideshow on here... I will keep trying though. Enjoy!

So I just finished a circumnavigation of Mahe island. It's taken about 3 hours and has been quite unexpected but very awesome indeed. My favorite part (hands down) was watching this big family of Rottweilers running along the beach and playing in the water. Man, do I love dogs!

The weather here has simply been rain! rain! rain! and although I seem to be impervious to getting too down about it, it does get quite annoying. It hasn't effected diving and I do find it rather cool looking up underwater, watching the rain pellets beat against the surface of the water.

There isn't too much reporting to do. This week we continued diving and learning our fish which culminated with a fish exam on Friday. We needed a 95 to pass and to begin doing our research. I passed. Yeehaw! I am now an Indian Ocean fish expert...or at least I can pretend I'm one.

Our fish couts are really important in helping determine how healthy the reef is as many of the fish we count feed directly on the corals. Other fish we monitor are for fishing and tourism purposes. It's important to monitor the species that are fished because mmany of tyhem are predators and if they are over-fished it can cause huge imbalances on the reef. Bay Ternae, where we are diving, is incredible. In 1998 it suffered a severe coral bleaching due to high water temperatures and 95% of the reef died. The reef has bounced back however and coral cover is back to about 40% -- good progress for 11 years.

This week we started doing turtle dives where we specifically go look for turtles, but unfortunately, no one found any. The day after, on a none-turtle dive, we found six of them. A little ironic. We also saw two squid.

Last weekend I ate octopus for the first time and it was delicious. This past friday night we threw a big creole barbeque and I must say, it was fantastic. The food was incredible. For desert we literally had sweet potatoes. They were potatoes in this sugary cream sauce. I like potatoes, so I was a fan.

Other than that life has been pretty low-key. I started another book. Atlas Shrugged. I've been wanting to read it for awhile and they had it on the communal book shelf here. Considering it was 1000 pages, I figured it would be good to pick up a book that might take awhile....

Yeseterday I found some ferral kittens starving in the woods and so unbelievable wet that it pretty much broke my heart. I couldn't just leave them outside so I ended up making them some porridge and milk and leaving it out for them. We aren't supposed to feed the cats but the poor things were nothing but skin and bones and i really just couldn't leave them there to die...

In response to some comments:
Leigh, I miss you being my arms.
The bull did have horns, though they were tiny. And yes, it has tried doing it again...

I also got hit by an eaten mango falling out of a tree yesterday after a fruit bat ate it. These things are massive and pretty cool but it scared the bajeeebers out of me. I was really confused as to why there was eaten fruit falling out of the sky. I've been cooking a fair amount and the other day found my own coconut, then husked it, drank the milk, and ate it. It was pretty delicious but the order of operations to get to the actual eating takes awhile, unless, you know, you are Seychellois and then it takes you about 10 seconds. (Took me about 45 minutes).

I wish I had some cooler stories to tell but between the weather and having to learn 100+ fish there hasn't been a whole lot of time to adventure. Plus, when we are on the base, we really can't leave. We do get to walk to the shop which is about (according to another trip member) "a 45 minute arduous treck through the hills" ... it really isn't that bad, but it is a bit of a journey doing it there and back. If I go, I usually only get an icecream but today they had chocolate! So exciting. Rollos are amazing especially after not having any chocolate for WEEKS.

Things I've liked a lot so far: Homemade bread, making bread, time to read, brainstorming for writing, coconuts, Seybrew (the local beer), diving, small sharks, bumphead parrotfish, humphead wrasse, Morray eels, sea turtles,

British drinking games, British expressions, British phrases... ok side note potato chips are "crisps." weird... Also they don't know the difference between jam and jelly... They also don't believe in creamy peanut butter, fluff, or peanut butter and jelly.

Things I miss: My family, Eel pond, the sail boat, friends, faltown, hiking, rock climbing, The loj, nuhoc, clam chowder, lobster bisque, swordfish at scraggy, Scraggy in general, Basset's Island, The Phusion, Water-skiing, QBA, Old Silver, Alaska (ok so that's not at home, but whatever), Bookstores that sell books in English,

Cool things I've learned: how to use a compressor, how to open and eat a coconut, fish and then of course more fish, what I want to do in the fall, what I want to do when I graduate,

Things I want to do before I leave: Go to th UNESCO world heritage site in Praslin, Go to Praslin, Go to La Digue, See a Whale Shark (fingers crossed),

What I hope to accomplish this week: read more of Atlas Shrugged, learn how to survey under water, Figure out a way to go to the Unesco World heritage site next weekend, Boulder, Help GVI start a vegetable patch on base, go fruit picking in the middle of the woods.

cool beans.
Miss you all. Keep the comments coming and put your name! not anonymous!
<3

Wow! It has been so long since my last update. (my apollogies) I am going to try and give a little summary of what I've been up to this last week...

On Friday a whole group of us who had been staying at the same hotel had to wake up extremely early to get picked up by the GVI Staff. It seemed like it took ages for them to arrive even though they got there pretty much right on time. After they picked us and some other people up we drove across Mahe (the main island) to get to base camp. The ride was fairly long and we had to go up some very windy, mountainous roads but the views were always amazing.

Our driver, Mario, along with his wife (Valerie) run base camp. On our drive, Mario filled us in on some local laws ect. ect. The most bizarre was that the legal drinking limit is 8 beers so they advised us to be very careful about walking at night or if we rented a car, driving. Fortunately, there are no roads where anyone can go particularly fast on because they are all so curvy and that death by auto accident is a very rare occurence. (Still doesn't make you feel safe though...)

Base camp is an old government bordering school. I wish I could describe how forsaken the place looks. Old derilict buildings dot the area as if that sort of thing were normal. None of them have roofs because the wood and beams were all stolen/taken for other building projects. The place would be perfect for a game of man-hunt or capture the flag if we ever had enough energy to put something together...

The building we live in is functional, albeit old, and it does have a roof. (Yeehaw!) The building across from us, doesn't so late at night when the moon is out and its eerily still and the fruit bats are making a racket, it's more than a little creepy...

The rest of the afternoon we spent unpacking, going through rules, health and safety stuff, blah blah blah... And then EMMA FINALLY ARRIVED. Half-way through the day, after her plane got delayed (again). She had spent the last several days in Dubai just hanging out by herself which she said was more than a little odd, especially because she's a woman.

The big group of us went out for a snorkel and when we came back we had a nice lunch... I'm not going to bore you with the details...

On Saturday, those of us who were not adveanced open water divers started working on that course which meant we got to go diving! We do all our diving in Bay Ternay and it is absolutely incredible. I love seeing all the fish swim by.

For our advanced open water certification we had to do five dives: underwater navigation, peak performance bouyancy, deep diver, naturalist, and boat dive (which is every dive we do) I did these five dives over the course of the last week and it was amazing how doing each really improved my ability to dive, plus we got to see some really cool stuff.

The procedure for diving off the boat is very regimented and very well organized, which is nice and over the course of the last week we've all adjusted to it and learned the rules and regulations.

I think so far my favorite part has been all the cooking we have to do. I've enjoyed making bread and cookies, calzones, and cakes as well as lending a hand to whoever is making whatever. Hopefully, I'll be able to cook when I get home.

Cool things seen this week: Coconut crabs, 2 meter guitar shark (google it), moorish idol,

Cool things done: Went into the woods and found bananas, used a machete, made calzone from scratch, did an emergency responder course, walked to a waterfall, ate shark (just a bite), almost finished House of Leaves (amazing but very intracate book), went bouldering (awesome), drew a sweet painting for a staff member for her birthday, got head-butted by a bull,

sorry this is so short and lame. I'm giong to have to think of a better way to post what I'm doing because an hour in the internet cafe + skyping makes it really hard to write good posts.

Ciao Bella
- Sass