Well, the original plan was to go to Thailand with GYFGU and do their Thailand Adventure (Bangkok, teaching English for 1 week, stay in a Buddhist monastery, learn Thai cooking and the final week would be on a beach on Koh Samet). Then around Easter this year .... I had a flare up of the EM, which gets worse when the weather or my environment is warm and **humid**. This reminded me how painful and debilitating this condition can be, and the weather conditions in Thailand would be, yep, you've guessed it, warm/hot and humid.
One of the reasons for this CB is to escape the period of the UK weather which exacerbates the EM - the central heating in buildings in the winter and the warm, dampish type of weather we have at that time of year. I could not contemplate a whole month in an environment in which I could not keep me and my lower limbs cool enough, enduring the very conditions I am aiming to escape from, so regrettably I had to withdraw from the Thailand project.
So, I had a whole month to play with. Plans changed to going to Western Australia, and seeing their coastline and country. I also had 2 more full months allocated to being away - well, what to do?!? The GYFGU project at the Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary just outside Adelaide looked just the thing - a completely new place of work, away from offices, phones, people needing my attention and actions. I also have it in mind to use this volunteering placement to "test out" a potential new career/employment after the CB. So, I will be working with kangaroos, wallabies, potoroos, platypuses etc, and living and working alongside the staff at the Sanctuary and being there after the public has gone home. Can't wait :)
I visited the Adventure Show in London at the beginning of February and went to a seminar on "meaningful career breaks". Now being an eternal tourist is all very good, as long as you can be a responsible one, but I wanted to do more for my 4 months than just travel and lie on a beach. I have a great facility for using the English language and can spot a typo 100 yards away; I have done TEFL courses both at my current place of work and with i-to-i.com. Therefore when I saw the month-long GYFGU project teaching English in Rajasthan, the desert state of India, I knew that was what I wanted to do. The climate will suit me, I will do something I hope/know I am good at, and will also get work experience, again with a view to a complete career change when I return to the UK. So India, here I come!
The rest of the time I intend to stay in Sydney, walk my little socks off (always being careful to take care of my deformed feet (see my website for details), and go into the Blue Mountains and surrounding area. I hope to meet up with a contact I have made through my TCS website, who also has a version of TCS - meeting other people with this condition is always interesting and educational, and makes me realise how lucky I am to be able to do this CB.
For the month before India I am in New Zealand. It is a country I have always wanted to see, for its natural beauty, for its adventurous activities, and for its unique culture. More about this in the planning blogs in the future (that's saying I haven't really got an agenda about it yet :))!!
Kalispera for now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment