MP, WD...

Hmm... I threw that title up there when I first started writing this post, presumabley to remind me of a particular point of interest. I no longer have any idea of what they stand for. Will get back to you with a full analysis as soon as I remember.

I was sitting in the Grade 1 class after lunch when Zoe had to leave the room for a minute to grab something from April. All the kids started talking and moving round and getting fidgety, so I thought I should probably make myself useful. So...

Clownfish...

Cindy kindly invited us over for dinner, and said we could stick around for as long as we wanted afterwards to chill out in front of the tv after the hectic first week. We were hooked after the word 'dinner'.

Lemurs...

So let me tell you a bit about the compound and the other teachers living there. I keep forgetting that there isn’t a default level of psychic communication between us, and hence me knowing the background information doesn’t actually mean all of you automatically do. I’ll pace the compound out later, but for now let me just say it’s pretty big. It’s surrounded by a huge concrete fence with barbed wire strung along the top at the front, and shards of glass cemented in around the sides and back. It would be intimidating… except that’s the way all the houses are here. There’s almost two completely separate levels of habitation; the huge houses that belong to those with money – think prison fences, German Shepherd type dogs, night guards – and the shacks and makeshift places everywhere else. It’s frightening really, that a lot of these places look like cubby houses thrown together with bits of wood and iron roofing. And we're living in houses big enough for...

M is for Moon

That’s twice now that Zoe’s left without me in the morning because I’m too slow to get ready. Ah well. I don’t mind walking over by myself, and I do have a bit more leeway about when I have to get there. I’d rather have a proper breakfast, especially because we still lack sufficient lunch materials. I went straight to the Grade 4 class again, to keep working with Ju Yeoung and Ha Yeoung. This time Rachel came along too (she’s the one who was originally meant to be working with them, but is a lot busier than me so I got the job), and brought some resources to work through. That made a huge difference, she had a picture dictionary and some Spanish/English flash cards. It did amuse me that to teach them English we were using resources intended for a completely different language. It must be hard for them though, because they also learn Kiswahili as part of the school curriculum, which means that they’re learning a new language through a new language. Anyway, we got them laughing and joking and I think they’re beginning to really enjoy the sessions. Which is a good feeling for me, as I’m going to be working on a regular basis with them.

So, I had a break, and went to the computer room to catch up on all this a bit so that you guys don’t get sick of continuous “I’ll finish this post later” references. Obviously, I am there now, so nothing else has happened yet.

AAAAaaargh ok I take that back. Zoe's grade 1s just arrived for their first computer lesson. Helped to get them all into the right program - Letter Detective - and have been going round giving them a hand with it. I realise that they need the stimulation of bright colours and noise, but having 22 sets of sound effects all playing at once is uhm... distracting. They're very cute though. I was explaining to Artemis that she has to match up the right letter so that the monster will eat it and be happy, but she said she didn't want to play that game because then there'd be no ABCs left. Ah, kids think about things in the most beautiful way.

Blah.

Due to the fact that I’d stayed up until two in the morning so that my family could ring me, Zoe didn’t bother with more than the obligatory wake up at 6:30am, knowing full well I wasn’t moving for quite a bit longer. Finally dragged myself out of the house just in time to get over to school before the bell went, not that it would have really mattered me being late as I don’t take a class for roll call or anything. In my semi-conscious state I was unable to think far enough ahead to have scraped something together for lunch. Sigh.

Went straight to the Grade 4 classroom to spend some more time with the two Korean kids...

Other than that I've had a pretty low day. Just felt that way.

Oh wait, afterschool we had the first staff meeting/prayer session - we have one every Wednesday - which was great. It was a good opportunity to spend some time with teachers that we don't cross paths with during the normal school day, and to discuss problems we've been having or chat about what's been working well. Steve (Director) spoke to us about pacing ourselves and not burning out after a few months. Which I think is still relevant to Zoe and I even though we're only here for a few months. I know I'm likely to try and fill every moment of available time with something because of that very fact. The meeting was also a chance for those of us waiting for work permits to get an update on where things are at. Mine is still being held up on some technical issue. Hmmm.

Some of the parents had got together and cooked us a huge lasagne to share across the compound, which was fantastic and quite a relief to us all. It's unbelievable how supportive they are, they're really making sure we know how much they appreciate us being here.

I spent an hour this morning helping in the grade 4 classroom, working with two Korean kids that speak no english. Ah I'm learning not to make assumptions every day. When they asked me to spend some time helping them each day, I figured that basically we'd be able to communicate even if they didn't understand everything. Instead, it was like starting from scratch. It was a huge challenge, because I found that they were so used to people rabbiting english at them (none of which they can process) that they very quickly tuned out if I just talked at them, no matter how many ways I tried to explain something to them. But that's ok, it was challenging in a good way. They were meant to be writing an outline of something they did in the holidays so as to later write a story about it. But I had no capabilities to explain 'holiday' to them, to ask them what they did, or anything. Still, we managed to work things out in the end enough for them to get basic sentences down, although I have a feeling they didn't really understand what they were writing. So after a while I switched methods completely, as I felt that it really wasn't important whether or not they did the worksheet but instead we needed to get some communication happening.

Funny how you revert back to the things you're most comfortable with,

(Tbc as befitting almost every post I've started so far... sorry! I'm trying ok)

Arrived safely in Africa, though not without another amusing adventure. Ah life is fun when you're terrible at forward planning. Zoe and I had been staying with a family, but have now moved into our house on a compound. Unfortunately, no gas right now so cooking is... a challenge. But we have running water, so I'm happy.

There has been no electricity for a while, hence the lack of updates. Plus I've been trying desperately to settle in (not so easy it turns out) and all that. But, I have been keeping everything written up, and will backdate posts onto here as soon as possible.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. :-)

At the exact moment the clock ticked past midnight, I was sitting on a cusion in a house in a compound in a city on the East Coast of Africa making a big giraffe poster for Zoe to put on her classroom wall. First time I've ever done that on my birthday.

She'd already long gone to bed by this stage, but when I finally finished, I found a lovely note attatched to the mirror, made out of scraps of laminated paper that she'd written on while I was drawing above creation.

Don't Fight Africa

All week Cindy has been reminding us DFA. I have no trouble with that concept, although I think Zoe's finding it a little harder. I love the attitude over here - you just accept whatever happens, it's a very calm way of living. Today was our day to move into our house in the compound, and as you can imagine meant quite a few things to organise. Given that we're in Africa, this meant quite a few things to go wrong.

Lisa, another SIL staff member, picked us up early in the morning to go shopping for supplies. There were two ATMs within a practical radius. Neither of them would read Zoe's card. Therefore, we were relying entirely on the small amount of cash we had out. This meant for some strict budgeting, which meant we had to keep track of our total the whole way through. Kind of tiresome in a fun way.

After that we went back to Cindy's, where we packed our stuff, then I went out to play with the girls...

The main agenda for today was picking up Zoe from the airport, as she was due to arrive at 2:30pm. Cindy got really worried that there was something wrong, because after disappearing to my room at 6:00pm last night, there was still no sign of me by 10:30am. Obviously she doesn't know me well enough yet. If you want me up for something, you have to wake me up.

Anyway, she showed me round the SIL headquarters, took me around Dar a bit, out to lunch with some of the other Hopac teachers, then to the airport. She had a book on here, I spent the next hour and a half memorising more swahili from the signs. I have to say, I've seen enough of that airport to last me quite a while.

This is Africa

So, after nine years of dreaming, I'm in Africa. Really quite an unsettling feeling. I shall give you a view of the sunrise as I saw it from the plane. Didn't sleep on the flight, there was far too much to think about, so I was awake for the whole period of the sky lightening and all that cool stuff, which was nice.

Again, due to my strong dislike of preplanning, I was not particularly well prepared for arriving in Tanzania. I got stuck getting a visa because I only had pounds on me. They wanted it in US dollars. I thinks they're silly. US dollars are not the way to go right now. But of course, it is not my place to complain...

This is Dar es Salaam from the sky. Not a very good photo, but the only one I've got so It'll have to do.

POXIED!

Today was another quiet day. My last one for a long time I suspect. I have no distinct memory of what I did in the morning. I think that means I did very little. After lunch I played a long awaited scrabble with Beryl and Alex and Monty the scrabble computer, and was deemed a genius by said computer for scoring 56 points for one word. Yeha! (Poxied, for those curious, and I had it on a triple word square). It plays you cool music too, when you score over 50 points. I felt special.

After lunch I continued my trend of doing very little (how pleasant) and yeah... did very little. It's funny, there were a number of families I should have spent at least a day with, considering I'm not over from Australia all that often. I mean, I spent three years of my childhood here, they haven't seen me for years. But I ended up not even telling most of them that I was in England. Although I would have loved to spend time with them, it was more important to me to enjoy my days with Beryl and Alex, and I didn't want my trip to the UK to be a tale of rushing back and forth from one place to another. Still, would have liked to catch up with Kyrie, Ben said he had a great time seeing them again, but the logistics didn't work out.

Anyway, just before dinner Peter arrived, a priest from Malawi that I was very excited to meet. The four of us sat around and chatted for quite a while about this and that, and he told me a lot about Malawi and said I'm welcome to come and visit if I do end up making my way through there. Very kind of him, and I'm really hoping I can. Especially because Timill told me that Malawi does have Ultimate league somewhere in the country (which is more than can be said for Tanzania) so I'd love to get to that! Just because I'm a lunatic. But hey, it's as good an excuse as any.

In verse

I was asked, before I left,
My home and my country,
To sometimes write these daily notes,
In fluent poetry.

And so, as you can clearly read,
I took those words to heart,
This is the first, and not the last,
Of such a rhyming part.

To Battle then, a charming town,
Of Hastings one might say,
Where 'England' changed so drastically,
On just a single day.

...
...
...
...

From there to Bodiam we went,
A castle on a lake,
...
...

I sat and watched three children play,
Mock races on the grass,
And thought of us as little kids,
Oh how the time does pass.

But then I realised life is not,
About just sitting there,
My nineteen to their eight and ten,
I clearly didn't care.

We rolled down slopes, crawled backwards up,
Were chickens, sheep, and fleas,
Spun circles then tried hopping straight,
Got grass stains on our knees.

But all too soon time ran its course,
And broke my childish spell.
I dashed off to catch the bus,
A much enlightened Shell.

Where in the world is my bro?

Ha! I know where Bennie is! Well, I know where he was on the 8th of August. I guess that doesn't actually tell me where he is now. You can cover a lot of ground in six days. Anyway. Got a letter from him, sent to Beryl and Alex's. Sadly the letter has a dire warning on the back that it will bite me if I open it before the 27th of August. So I haven't been able to read it yet. Because it's not the 27th of August. But I was able to discern that Benniebutthead posted it from Lietuva, ie. Lithuania, almost a week ago. Hmmm.

Ten points for anyone who can guess where he is now.

Voices from home

Skyped it up, and spoke to all at home today. All at home being everyone except J-dogga. Thanks Jimma. Nice of you to miss talking to me again! It was really nice to chat with them all though, as last time I rang I only got onto Cat. Spoke to Richo first, as he picked up the phone.

"Who is it?"
He really needs to learn to answer more politely.
"Hi Richman! How are you? What have you been up to? I'm so glad you're home this time!"
"Did you bring me back a pot of gold?"
"Uh... no..."
"Did you get me a leprechaun then?"
"Uhm..."
"Or at least a four leafed clover?"
"Not exactly..."
"Nice sister you are Mish"

Miss you too Titch.

So, Richo told me a bit about what he's been doing. Kind of.

"Did I tell you about the play thing I did at school?"
"No."
"Yeah. I did a play thing at school."
Pause while I wait for elaboration. It is not forthcoming.
"So... what did you do in it?"
"Just play stuff like we always do."

Very informative. Just in case you want to send me an email sometime Rititch, I'm still wondering what exactly your role in this 'play thing' was.

Mum was next in line, was especially good to talk to her as she's been in Seattle for the last two weeks at a medical conference. It went really well, which I was glad to hear. We chatted for a bit, then she told me that Richo had written a letter to the Macquarie Dictionary requesting that they investigate a potential error. Mum read it out to me, and I typed it up as she was talking because it was so brilliantly hilarious. Richman, you're a champion.

During school activities I read your dictionary a fair amount. I'm writing regarding a possible misprint or mistake in the Macquarie Dictionary. A scanned copy of the page in which the mistake is made is attatched although I took the liberty of writing it also to ensure you receive it.

'a' - Used in the following ways: 1. before a noun means a single but not a particular member of a general group. 'She is a woman.' 'Do you have a pen.'

The problem is that it's not very enlightening (to the receiver of the definition) to use the word you are trying to define in the definition. Is it acceptable to do this? Perhaps the only way to explain or define a word that is not definable without using itself in the definition is to use an example or examples. It is certainly not easy for a human to be able to comprehend a word that has been explained using a definition involving the word in question. This mistake is in fact quite a common one. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts about this.

Return address on rear of envelope.

Yours sincerely,

Master Richard Phillips

He is eleven. And does actually read the dictionary. Remember Titch, I want to get an email from you as soon as you hear back from them.

The phone was then passed onto Dad, and we talked about various matters. Apparently Mum has been getting highly frustrated because all her news about Ben and myself comes through Cat (and occasionally James) via facebook. This of course means she's always weeks behind where we actually are, a detail especially aggravated in Ben's case. As a result of this grave indiscretion on our behalf, she has been driven to acquiring her own account as an attempt to keep better track of our whereabouts. (I am sorry Mum. We do try.) As Dad so beautifully put it:

"She's just registered for facebook. I don't think she has any friends."

I'll be your friend Mum.

Finally I got to have a word with Cat. Ha. Anyone who knows Cath will realise that one does not have 'a word' with her. I may not talk much, but she sure does. I love listening to her ramble though, so it works out nicely. We talked for quite a while, but I don't think either of us were anywhere near finished with the conversation when Beryl and Alex called me for lunch. Slightly frustrating as she purposefully took the phone last so that we wouldn't have to stop for anything. But still, we had a good chat. I miss my little sis. Am a little nervous that there will be no niche for me to fit back into when I get home though, if the stories I'm hearing from the frisbee field are anything to go by. Oh dear. Please share Flip.

So... what did I do then? Had lunch, spent a bit longer on the computer. Quite a bit longer actually. Went upstairs to have a nap, (Beryl and Alex always have one in the afternoon), but couldn't sleep so did some drawing. Had dinner. Soup. Yum. Spent almost two hours chatting with B & A about Irish history and everything I picked up from the trip. They had a fairly good idea of it already, so were able to fill in some gaps. It somehow became 11:00pm, so yeah. Off to bed. That was about it for the day. Lovely and uneventful.

Temporary Temporal Setbacks

There are no such thing as delays. There are only Temporary Temporal Setbacks, and we should all learn patience.

I cannot claim the best night's sleep, but it created an entertaining memory and hence I am content with being tired. We were both packed and ready to leave within approximately six minutes of having woken up, which shows you exactly how much we wanted to stay in that place. Again it was bananas and bread for breakfast, a habit I seem to have passed onto Zoe as well. Paid Zoe back the €10 I owed her. Realised I now had no money for the bus ticket to the airport. Borrowed €6 back from her.

We were on separate flights because British Airways gave me a free return ticket to anywhere in Europe, whereas Zoe had booked hers much later, so we split up after going through the departure gate expecting to see each other in little over an hour.

All flights out of Dublin were delayed due to fog etc, so it wasn't until about three hours later that we met up again in Heathrow. Beryl and Alex were there to pick us up. :-)


"This route is beautiful"
"It is lovely, isn't it. That's why I call it the scenic route, unless you bash into it."

Quite a night...

Woke up to find Zoe back safe and sound.

"Hi Zoe, did you get back ok?"

Yep. Sweet. All is good. Went back to sleep.

Was bullied into getting up half an hour later by Josh, as we were running close to missing breakfast again. Am very glad we didn't - that place serves good food!

Went back to sleep while Zoe moved all her stuff from her poor battered suitcase into a new pack.

Had to get up as we had only been able to get two nights there so had to move hostels. Said goodbye to James, reminded him to visit Carshalton. He promised he would.

Went over to meet Monte at his hostel. Complete nonappearance on his behalf. Tried to fall asleep on the couches. Zoe would not let me.

Went and booked into new hostel next door. Went back to see if Monte had magically appeared. He hadn't. Zoe wrote a note to leave at the desk for him. He appeared.

Went and met up with Kelly. Had lunch at crepe place. Yum.

Walked to Christchurch. Did not go in because of entry fee. Was just as happy sitting outside looking at the outside. Would have liked being part of the building crew for a church like this, the architectural structure was fascinating. Got distracted by herring gulls, spent next fifteen minutes attempting to get photos of them in flight.

We then visited Trinity College to look
at the Book of Kells. We made it about twenty steps into the grounds before getting caught up watching two performers doing Irish dancing. Apparently they were filming a promotion for Eurovision Dance Comp. Whatever. I was just happy watching them. They were really good, and it was interesting to see how they dealt with dancing on cobblestones.

Posted some stuff back to Melbourne. Cannot say what because it's a surprise for someone/s.

Met up with Josh. Had chips in cafe. As if you needed to know that. Clearly, I'm not in one of my rambling moods. Possibly a good thing.

OK ok I'll try and write properly. So, this new hostel Zoe and I were booked into... it wasn't very flash. Understatement. It was at the absolute bottom of the scale. Everywhere else was booked out, and we figured we'd just deal with it for this one night. It was pretty terrible, five flights up a dark staircase and off down a dingy corridor. Obviously we'd paid for both of us, but there didn't appear to be two free beds in the room...

I like the date today.

It's a lovely feeling to have a couple of days without plans. I'm much better at travelling that way, and although the last week has been great, I need the quiet time if I want any hope of getting all this stuff down. So I'm using the next few days to catch up on all this and get something worthwhile up here for you guys to read. Plus there'll be photos when I get back to London. Patience.

In search of eloquence...

I've decided one of the best things about not drinking is that one can be terribly annoying simply by way of being the only chirpy one the next morning. I may have been tired, but I wasn't hungover. Being obnoxious is terribly fun sometimes. My conscience stepped in at one point to ask whether I should feel guilty about adding to their misery, but of course I shot it down pretty quickly.

We left Killarney at 8:15am. After a week of crazy travelling, I'm no longer voluntarily waking up at dawn. In fact, getting me up is requiring more and more force from those around me as each day progresses. In otherwords, things are back to normal.

First stop for the day was at the castle of something or other (tbc) where the Blarney stone resides. For those unaware of its significance, kissing the Blarney stone is meant to give you the power of great eloquence in speech. The castle is situated in the most lovely grounds. To get to the stone you climb up a spiral staircase way up high to the battlements, where a guy holds onto you and hangs you backwards to reach the stone. You have to lie down like this to kiss it. And they have an official photographer, so you can get a photo and a certificate authenticating your claims of having kissed the stone at the visitor centre when you descend. I went right up to the top for the view, but did not kiss the stone. I like being quiet.


We wandered around for a bit, with the others taking photos of the grounds and me getting distracted by a little waspy-fly thing (will have to work out what it is...) on a patch of some kind of wild geranium. It's times like that I wish I had a good camera on me, it was really struggling to cope with such fine focus.

Toured the Guinness factory, which was interesting but the beer was wasted on me. In fact, on most of the girls in our group, so as a result a couple of the boys downed three or four free pints. As you can imagine, they were pretty pleased with themselves. This here is a view of Dublin from the top. Not enough green. I want to go back to Carshalton.

County Kerry

From Annascaul to Killarney...

We stopped at a lake and Mike told us where the name Annascaul comes from. As the story goes, a girl called Scaul (Abhainn an Scáil) and her two sisters were playing in the fields when they saw some soldiers approaching. Scaul sent her two sisters running to safety, and swam out into the middle of the lake to distract the soldiers. (Odd choice in my opinion, but that's how it goes). The soldiers shot her from the shore, and ever since it's been named after her. Translates to Scáil's River.



Got taken around the National Park by horse and carriage. Charming, but just made me miss being on horseback. Anyway. Here's a picture of its feet.








Hmmm beautiful. Sorry it's a lot of photos and no information right now, but I have to upload the pictures before I leave England, can catch up on the writing anytime.

Inconceivable!

As I mentioned earlier, I flew to Ireland without any real reason for doing so. I now have a reason for flying back. In fact, I could justify coming back solely for this one thing.

We went to the cliffs of Moher.

I will give you a couple more clues.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

"Look, I don't mean to be rude but this isn't as easy as it looks, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't distract me."

"You mean, you'll put down your rock, and I'll put down my sword, and we'll try and kill each other like civilised people?"

"You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha..."

If you haven't guessed by now then you haven't seen the movie. And if you haven't seen the movie then you're terribly deprived and must remedy that situation immediately! I had no idea that these cliffs were in Ireland. It was amazing, I can't describe how awesome they were. I'll put up photos, but they're not going to come close to the feeling of lying seven hundred feet up on a ledge looking out at the cliffs. It was incredible. I could have stayed there all day.

Ok ok my excitement about being on top of those cliffs rendered me unable to order this post correctly. Earlier doings...

Abbey ruins.

Don't really know enough about them to give you an interesting story.

Maybe it doesn't have an interesting story.

You're probably sick of my interesting stories by now anyway.

Fertility spring.

Drink and ye shall be... well... fertile.

Yeah.

Ireland seems to like this kind of thing.

Mike told us about the Potato famine. I shall retell it to you. At some point. I'm good at these promises hey.