I'm metragrobolized from all this studying, all this free time, and all this country has to offer.
Here's a thing I wrote in my journal a few weeks ago regarding my first SCUBA dive:
I
sort of was sick on Friday but I got up Saturday morning, suited up, and
backflipped off a boat in the middle of Algoa Bay! The water was really choppy
on the surface so I got nauseous both above and below water. The dive was
something out of this world. We dropped off the pontoons, descended into green
murky darkness and there before our widened eyes unfolded a breathtaking array
of jubilant life: corals, fish, and seaweed. I was astounded. The water was
chilly, about 16.5° C, but manageable. We saw eight spotted ragged
tooth sharks (raggies), a sting ray, a ctenophore, an octopus hiding between
two rocks, and so many fish! I became genuinely sick after we ascended wait
wait go back there’s so much more to say about the world underwater. It was
surprising, breath-taking (not so great when you have to remember to breathe through
the regulator constantly), and beautiful. I felt an explorer wandering around a
corner I’d passed by on a myriad of occasions who finally chose to deviate from
the path. I never considered that I have been ignorant by being terrestrial.
And yet I clearly am. The fish tolerated our presence impassively as we were
rocked and swayed by the current. It was remarkably noisy down there;
apparently the crackling crunching noise is the fish chomping off bits of coral
and grinding it to pieces with their jaws. The bubbles, the waves, our
exasperated breathing, the coral swaying, the sand shifting, the fish gnawing
all contributed to the hence unbeknownst cacophony of underwater. Upon
ascending, the BCD attempted to strangle me as our abilities to remove and
replace our weight belts on the surface was tested. I was so sick and angry. I
swear, climbing back on the boat is the most difficult part of the entire dive.
I was not so enthusiastic about the experience after arriving home due to the motion-sickness,
alcohol, and cigarette smoke of the after-dive lunch. Now I recall how amazing
it was to float freely underwater and explore a habitat as different from my own
as imaginably possible. One of the men we were diving with had an underwater
camera so I’ll likely be receiving photographs of the experience at some point.
I’ll be sure to share the good ones.
For the past two weeks I have been doing embarrassingly
little. Classes are over, exams have begun, but most of my exams are towards
the end of the three-week period. I essentially took the first week off, just
reviewing some of the literature for one class, reading recreationally, and
enjoying some Doctor Who sprinkled down time. The weather was amazingly volatile:
thunderstorms with lightning arched across the sky one hour and ice-cold clear night
skies the next. I drink lots of tea. I redecorated my room somewhat. I sat
bored and thought quite a bit. I know I’m not using my time here to the fullest
but I’m not independent enough to just head off into town on my own and no one
I ask wants to go with me. As exams are finished, everyone celebrates in
drunken revelry which I’m avoiding like the plague. The more time I spend
alone, the more homesick I become. Sigh. I don’t mean to be ungrateful or
wasteful of my time but I don’t really know how to occupy it otherwise. The
complaints of a comfortable first-world brat.Wish me luck on my exams. I have one that is supposed to last eight hours. Yikes.
