It takes a team, innovation. And laughter helps.

I wonder if my bathing suit will last the month. Of course I brought an old one. I noticed today that the stretchy parts are getting thin and loose. Usually the rate of decay progresses rapidly from this point.
It is my only worry, and I am keenly aware of how lucky I am to be able to say that.

I am buoyed by many things today. The last couple days of diving have been fabulous. Both because of the things I am seeing [check out the RPM site for pictures and updates] and because of the many things I am learning. One of my objectives in coming here this summer is to increase my diving competence. I have close to a thousand dives under my belt, almost all 120-150' (note for non-diving readers: this is deep, for air diving), I have experience doing many different kinds of tasks underwater (measuring, drawing, airlifting, chiseling, recording) and dealing with many potentially dangerous or at least troublesome situations (stone-fish, blown O-rings, free flows, lost fins, dropped weight belt, panicking partner, for example). So in some senses I have a great deal of experience. But at the same time, it is limited: with few exceptions, all of my dives have been to work on two shipwrecks, both conducted by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, i.e. using essentially the same set protocols, the same equipment, even diving with the same core group of people. Almost every dive has been a square dive: go straight down as quickly as possible, take off fins and work on the seabed, put fins back on and go straight up at the end of the dive, decompress. The dive plans were simple and repetitive -- no need to think about dive tables, decompression time, or finding my way back to the boat. It's a whole new world for me here in Albania: new equipment, new people, new diving objectives that require very different skills. Some things I expected to challenge me: figuring out which buttons to press on the dive computer, how to navigate underwater, for example. Others surprise me. For example, last night -- after my first day of diving -- I got teased at dinner because I was using my arms while swimming underwater. First of all, I had no idea I was using them. Second, it would never occur to me that this is a bad thing. I use my arms when I swim along the top of the water and I used them all the time, of course, when I was working on the seabed without fins. But underwater and with fins the point is to streamline -- like a fish or torpedo. Arms flailing about only create drag and use up energy and air. Propulsion and maneuvering should be all from the legs. OF COURSE. It made sense the moment it was first mentioned at dinner (though it was mentioned many more times than once, OF COURSE -- the band of brothers grows tight by sharing laughs) and luckily it was easy to implement (years of diving not for naught) But who would ever have thought that I needed to be told how to move underwater?! I assure you, it is not the only piece of humble pie I have had to eat this summer, and certainly not the last.
A small price to pay for learning. And the teasing is with kind intent. The plan is for me to direct a project here soon and the more I learn the better. So I am asking and observing.

I am also asking and observing and learning on land. I am buoyed today by several interactions with people of Sarande. One of today's adventures was conveying the request for a receipt for the 10 minutes I had spent at the internet cafe. It took another 10 minutes, 3 people, and finally an on-line Albanian-English dictionary. And then another 5 minutes for the kid sitting at the front desk to write proudly a painstakingly hand-lettered note of my expenditure on a scrap of paper. The bill was 80 cents. I have to turn in the receipt to my university. But maybe I'll forego that reimbursement and instead frame the original. A reminder of the fun of solving a problem by team using innovative means of communication. And the sense of accomplishment and comradery (sp?) shared at the successful resolution. Actually, now that I think about it, that's the theme of today's posting. This is also how we search for wrecksites underwater.