Fun Dives!

Hello from the Seychelles!
I'm down to less than a week to go here on the GVI volunteer project and it's hard to believe that ten weeks can fly by so quickly. It's been a wonderful experience, making new friends from all over the world, diving and doing research almost every day, and learning all about a country I'd never visited before.
Some of the coolest things I've picked up are the little things - how to cook for 30 people, bake bread from scratch, how good a hot shower really feels after a month of nothing but icy wet blasts, and how to hover upside-down two inches from a coral while writing on a slate. Also I'm finding facebook really addicting...
Our research seems to be done - we've completed the surveys on all the dive sites despite the monsoons blowing out our diving for almost a week - and it's all fun dives from here on out. On Friday, my buddy Chris and I found a school of about 30 mobular manta rays and 5 spotted eagle rays and followed them for a while. It was a sprint to keep up with them even though they were lazing along, swooping up food in giant graceful loops, and I was huffing and puffing when we gave up the chase due to dive time limits and ascended to the surface.
Yesterday, was another fun dive and while we did see three sharks, a giant stingray, two bumphead parrotfish and a turtle, we spent more time as a group messing around with each other. At one point in the dive, I don't think anyone had a complete set of their own fins - every time someone stole one of mine, I'd just grab one off the foot of whoever happened to swim by. I got tankhumped and did some myself and I laughed so much into my mask, I must have snorted half the Indian Ocean!
We have one more day of diving left tomorrow, then we have to clean up the camp and pack to leave Wednesday. We've been together so long it seems kind of unreal...
I'm supposed to be doing research on Madagascar right now (I'll be there Thursday, so you'd think I might be working on it a little harder,) but here I sit, writing this entry and procrastinating. Just not in the mood, I guess...
Ho-hum, maybe I'll go buy a chocolate milkshake!
Bye for now,
Clement