Crossing the finish line. November 17, 2005

Vladimir Soto regales us with the latest success in Madiha:
so it happened! yesterday at around 4:30ish we finished all the requirements for open water for 19 students. please put your hands together for the following guys:
gamini
indika muna singhe
amila
prins
damith
mahesh
srinath
jayanthadas
indika g
ravindra
chathuranga
janaka
vajira
roshan
indika pradeep buddhika
tushara
chamin
oksman

christopher and i are in the midst of a happy dance and no, you can'tsee pictures of that.

the gods, definitely in poya mood, were feeling groovy and the weatherwas the best it's been in probably two weeks. we did half the guys on the 15th and the rest on the 16th, yesterday. with the last group we had only one boat and made two trips. on the second one the weather changed so abruptly and drastically we were on the verge of canceling the dive, but decided to take a chance given the guys' excellent skill level and the fact that we had only one more skill to go, cesa. alas, we made the right choice and we have now 19 newly certified open water students amongst the team's ranks.

please wear your undies backwards or whatever other good luck practice you keep in your treasure boxes so we'll be able to see them all the way through the divemaster program.

the guys that won't be able to make it this round are thusitha and wedage. wedage will hopefully finish up with the university students. as soon as i come back from india probably around nov26, i'll set up independent study groups. these will consist of a few university students plus madiha divers. this way i can audit the classes instead of trying to figure out a few dozen people i need to coordinate to be in the same place at the same time for classes along with the essential translators. hopefully thusitha 2 will be able to get certified on the next round. having the university students help us out with the study groups will alleviate my time constraints while keeping the classes moving.

as for the memorial mapping, phil was able to go out with terney two mornings ago and made some progress. the conditions were not good. one meter visibility and a lot of surge. we still need to do one more outing to finish the map. hopefully terney will be able to take care of that next week with a couple of our newly certified divers.

all this wouldn't have been possible, of course, without the brilliant fairy dust francesca has incessantly sprinkled over the project first to get it going after answering j&k's call for action, secondly to get most of us here and thirdly to get the madiha guys sitting squarely and attentively through hours of classes, scared her whip might crack too close to their behinds. tom, thank you, thank you, for the great video footage and letting us learn some good teaching tips while we saw you teach. brandon, your logbook will forever be an inspiration for these guys. you should have seen their faces light up when christopher told them yesterday's entries were the first step to getting their logs to look like yours.

sorry for the amateurish large file slip. arak made me do it. it's just the ball shirts meant to make you smile. here they are again as small gifs. btw, as per rachel who is studying sinhalese, the correct spelling should be pahvima.

November 17, 2005