The final blog written on the journey home

Having now been travelling home for the past 27 hours (!) I’ve had a lot of time to reflect about what I’ve experienced and achieved over the last five months. One word springs to mind: LUCKY! I feel so lucky to have been able to make such an important and life changing trip. I feel lucky to have such supportive family and friends and such an understanding employer. I feel lucky that I am at a point in my life where I have the freedom and finances to make the time to do this trip. And I feel lucky to have been raised to have a ‘can do’ attitude that’s allowed me to face up to many fears and to overcome them in the past five months. Thank you to everyone who pushed me to do this – it was the best decision I’ve ever made (with your help!)!

I feel like I have had the time to reconnect with myself and my values. “I’m too busy” is a horrible excuse that gets used all too often in Western society (and is only sometimes the case!). It’s down to priorities, what you see as being more important at that point in time, so it’s been nice to have the luxury of playing around with my priorities to find the best fit with my values and beliefs. I am so much happier now – I feel great and I believe that I have changed for the better. I feel like me again!

So far I’ve figured out the following: 

• I have done some charity fundraising over the past couple of years (Kilimanjaro, Nepal, Great North Run) but raising money isn’t enough. I need to reconnect with the things that are important to me and actively try to make a difference (as I have tried to do over the past five months). I used to voluntarily visit an elderly lady once a week when I lived in York. She really benefited from this (it helped her speech after a stroke and gave her company) and I enjoyed hearing her stories (even if I did hear the same stories each time!). I contacted Age UK when I moved to London but then the old “I don’t have time” excuse crept in and stopped me from volunteering. Thinking back, I am cross at myself for this so this needs to change.  I will look for meaningful volunteer projects once I am settled in my new job.
• I have loved working with the children in India and Vietnam. I have always known that I will raise children at some point in my life but it has become even more apparent to me that there are so many needy children in a world that is already over-populated. Maybe adoption/ fostering is a route I need to go down in the future. 
• I have re-discovered my love of animals. I have re-learned the joy that animals bring through the unconditional love that they give (I say unconditional but they certainly seem to love you more when milk/ food is on the cards!). “I’m never at home” was always my excuse for not getting a pet but I don’t have that excuse in my new job! We’ll see! 
• Linked to this, I have become a vegetarian. Having sat next to (and listened to) a live chicken in a box on a 4 hour bus ride in Belize and seen how the cows and rabbits were treated at the boarding house in India (I hasten to add that they are not mistreated but they are certainly not happy!) I feel satisfied with my decision. 
• For some reason, my physical and mental health were not always near the top of my priority list before I went away.  I spent my life feeling stressed and tired, I didn’t make as much time for the gym as I should and I didn’t always eat the healthiest food if I ran out of time to cook (there’s that old excuse again!). In India Molly taught me some basic yoga and I have found that this is very important to my health. I had previously tried yoga and found that my mind was too busy with other things. I now feel clear enough to feel the benefits, both physically and mentally, and I will look to continue this in the future along with attending the gym more routinely and making time to cook healthy and well balanced food.
• Having practiced water conservation both in Belize and India I see how I should better police this when I am at home. I am good at not leaving the tap running etc when I brush my teeth, however, I need to reduce the length and frequency of my showers! 
• At home I am terrible at plugging in electrical appliances and leaving them on to charge for a lot longer than necessary (my phone stays charging overnight most of the time!). Having survived power cuts galore in India I need to make sure that I don’t abuse the amount of power available to me in the Western world. 
• In the past five months I have found a side of me that is very resourceful. I have survived without most of the comforts of home and, more than that, I have enjoyed it. I hope that this stays with me and I don’t fall back into bad habits fueled by Western living. I am, however, looking forward to washing my clothes in a washing machine!
• I need to make sure that I spend more time outside – I love being outside but I certainly don’t make enough of the nice days or the nature spots that are right outside my door (this may link in nicely with the pet idea a few points back!)!

Other personal development:

• I have learned the 50 states of USA (well, Molly and I had to pass the time on the long train journeys somehow!)
• Having spent 7 weeks in India finding ways to entertain the girls during their school holidays, I have a new found respect for my parents and grandparents! It’s not easy!

As I near the station at York, I want to say thank you to everyone who has been following my blog over the past five months. I believe I have got some of you into trouble for reading it at work – sorry about that! Documenting my experiences, thoughts and feelings has been cathartic (in India in particular) and allowed me to free a creative side for writing that has been trapped for a long time. It’s felt as if you were all there with me a lot of the time so I hope you have enjoyed the ride as much as I have!

I will sign off with one final thought. I have met so many people on my travels who have said to me “I wish I could do what you’re doing”. If volunteering/ travelling sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to do them my advise to you is JUST DO IT, no matter how many reasons you can find for not doing it! It’s been the best experience of my life and I hope that you all get to experience something similar in the future – it’ll change your life, I promise you that!

Aside from teaching.......

Aside from teaching I have:

• Tried to make pottery at Bat Trang Pottery village. It's harder than it looks and I spent the whole time waiting for Unchained Melody to come onto the radio and Patrick Swayze to wrap his arms around me! I did, however, get messy, destroy my pottery (resulting in the tutor having to make me a cup from scratch) and then paint said cup only for it to break on the flight from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh. Oh well, guess we'll have to go pottery painting in West Hampstead when I'm back, Mum!
• Visited the Water Puppets theatre. It's a tradition that dates back to the 11th century in Vietnam and was a beautiful display of some of the stories of Vietnam (from Dragons and Fairies to fans and Indian inspired dancing).
• Visited the Perfume Pagoda. Apparently everyone in Vietnam will visit this set of pagodas once in their lifetime as it's very sacred.
• Watched an Homage to Vienna at the Opera House in Hanoi. Trang and I were sitting in our own box  and really enjoyed the music of Mozart, Schubert and Ravel.
• Assisted in a lesson with Efirst, who teach English to university students. The lesson was on 'starting a conversation with a foreigner' and it was very interesting to be able to give my insight on how and where to approach a foreigner to practice English. This was particularly interesting to me as, only a few days before, I had been stopped by 6 students near the lake and 'interviewed' so that they could practice their English. Happy to help!
• Tried and failed three times to get to Ha Long Bay. There was a big storm on Saturday that lasted through to Tuesday morning which meant that all of the boats were pulled back in from the water. I am now in Ho Chi Minh but have rearranged my flight to Hanoi to get me back in time to try one more time on 27th June before I fly home on 28th. I'm desperate to see it so I hope the storm Gods are kind this time! I did, however, get to the movies (twice!) as there wasn't much else to do as most of the stalls and shops weren't open.
• Made some lovely new friends who have looked after me and made me feel really at home in Hanoi. Whenever I go out with any of my friends I am always collected from my house and taken into town. Drinks are bought for me and dinner is usually paid for. The hospitality and generosity shown to me over the past month has been staggering and very much appreciated!

Tomorrow I will visit some of the tunnels that were used during the war, the day after I will (hopefully!) get to Ha Long Bay and then I will be flying home after 5 months of amazing adventures! I can't quite believe how quickly it's gone!

Food in Vietnam - yummy!

RICE, rice and more rice! Although at least I don't have to eat rice for breakfast here, only lunch and dinner!

In the mornings I go downstairs to a little makeshift cafe in the courtyard of our apartment block. As soon as Egg Sandwich Lady (I'm ashamed to say I never caught her name!) sees me she sets to work on making my omelette to go inside the crispy roll along with some salad. She has a tiny bit of English (mainly numbers that I believe her young daughter has taught her) and she has a heart of gold - she only charges me 8000 dong (24p) for the sandwich. She kept hold of my sunglasses for me for a whole day when I left them at the table one morning. The first thing she did when she saw me the next morning was produce my sunglasses from her bag. She also let me borrow he phone once and wouldn't accept any money for the (local) call I'd made.

When I'm at school I get lunch every day at about 11.30am. I eat with the children in one of the school rooms. The lunch is brought in every day and I believe that it's bought from someone down the road. It comes packed like a Bento box and contains all sorts of goodies! I usually have an egg in some form as I'm still not eating meat, peanuts, morning glory (which is like spinach but better and full of iron!), tofu (which I've started to love now!), cabbage, lots of rice and green leaf soup (I'm still yet to find out what the leaf is!). Lunch is usually followed by a bit of melon, watermelon or huge grapes.

Dinner is served at the office at around 6pm, before the university students arrive for their lesson with Matt. Dinner is cooked by Mr. Son's nephew who lives with us. It's usually pretty tasty. It includes more rice with morning glory that comes with a dipping sauce and egg (omelette with mushrooms usually), fish or chicken. The food is served 'family style' except it's not the same family style that I'm used to at home. At home it's normal to get as much food as you'd like on your plate, finish it and them go back for seconds if required. In Vietnam it's normal to take only one mouthful at a time from the food in the centre of the table. This means that we go back for another mouthful from the food on the table with the same chopsticks that have just been in our mouths. I always found this a little strange but that's just the way they do it!

I had some wonderful food at a vegan restaurant called Loving Hut where they tried to imitate (quite successfully) fish and pork. I have no idea how they did it but it was the best meal I've eaten in Vietnam! I also had (vegetarian) Bun Cha which was pretty delicious. They give you a plate of thin rice noodles and a bowl of soup along with a plate of 'salad'. The salad is totally different to a salad at home as it seems to include nettles and other leaves that we'd never use at home. Tastes great though! I hope to try Pho on Friday when I have lunch with Trang - it's so famous that it would be a shame if I leave Vietnam without trying it!

Fruit-wise I have eaten pineapple and mangoes here that taste divine. The pineapple is so beautiful that you can eat the centre as it's so soft! I've also had some lychees which are delicious, mang cut (mangosteens) which taste strange and dragon fruit which is very yummy. I had a pink dragon fruit which was much nicer than the white one. I've also eaten lovely watermelon and another melon that's native to Vietnam (but I can't seem to find the name as I write this). The grapes here are huge and very sweet - lovely!

Update on teaching......

Firstly, sorry it's taken me so long to do a blog update - I've just been having too much fun to stop and write it all down!
I have finished my 3 weeks of teaching at the school now and I've got to say it was an amazing 3 weeks! I met some wonderful people (Thuy and Phuong Anh, two teachers who helped with translation in my 6-7 year old class, have been absolute stars!) and the children have grown a lot in this short time.
A couple of weeks ago I taught the older (12-16 year olds) how to say "the dog ate my homework" which I hope the other teachers find as funny as I did. If nothing else, it built a lovely rapport with the students and allowed me to teach them a lot more about Western culture as well as furthering their English. In one session we were learning about meeting new people from different cultures and the children were interested to learn that people in India only eat with their right hand as they use their left hand to clean themselves.
I have spent the most time with the 6-7 year olds as they have lessons with me every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning as well as every day at 2pm. Minh is a funny little boy and I've watched him grow a lot in the past 3 weeks. He can now say "please can I borrow the ball" as he loves to play with the beach ball that I bought as a teaching tool that they play with in break times. He and a couple of the other children have also learned the word "careful" as I use it all the time when they lob the ball towards the very expensive projector and interactive board! Every time they do something that they know they're not meant to now they will instantly turn to me and say "careful"! It's very sweet! Minh is also the biggest daydreamer and is very easily distracted. He will even lose is focus when eating lunch and is always the last one to leave the lunch room. Last week the children were eating a pork steak and it was hilarious watching Minh try to eat this as he's missing his two front teeth! As we were eating with chopsticks I had no way of helping him to cut it up so all I could do was watch and try my hardest not to laugh! He managed in the end!
Thai is a funny young boy who fluctuates between angry and aggressive one day to sweet, caring and thoughtful the next. His spoken English and understanding is quite good as his older sister is also in the class and I think they practice at home too. He is the cheeky one who always needs to be reminded to be quiet or to focus but I have no doubt that he will be good at English in the future. When it's time to sleep (after lunch) he always fights with Tien Vinh over a blue pillow. I'm sure it's as soft as the other pillows but they both seem convinced that it's the best! A simple game of 'rock, paper, scissors' seems to settle the dispute most days.
Tien Vinh has a lovely temperament. He gets excited and jumps around, however, he's about as graceful as a buffalo! His English is very good, he loves drawing (and will draw and colour a picture in about 4 minutes - not good when the rest of the class takes about half an hour!) and is great at bingo. In my final week we played a couple of games of word bingo which included all of the words that we had learned over the few weeks since I've been teaching. He won the first game and was incredibly excited, screaming "BINGO" at the top of his lungs for a full 20 seconds before I asked him to sit back down so we could continue!
Thao was brand new to English when she started with us 3 weeks ago. She had never learned letters or numbers which made it very hard as everyone else had at least the basics. She is very shy and under-confident when talking in English (although she will quite happily natter away in Vietnamese when she's in the lunch room) and she doesn't like joining in with our games. I had a breakthrough in the last week when she came up to me and said boldly "thank you" straight to my face. I have no idea what she was thanking me for but it made my day!
Hoang Linh is a little bit older than the other children in the class and his English is a little better. He doesn't really like to engage in the lessons very much and would prefer to do exercises in his book (he and Ha Linh have a different exercise book to the rest as they are more advanced). I take a 30 minute lesson with Ha Linh and Hoang Linh every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to work with them on some more complicated English as I am aware that they get bored in the beginners class. During breaks he likes to lie on the floor and play with the ball (sometimes at the same time!). He loves the soup at lunch and will sometimes have 3 bowls and he loves Oreo biscuits which he brings for break-time quite often.
Ha Linh is the oldest girl and likes to take on the Queen Bee role. Thao can often be seen mimicking her or following her around like a little sheep. In the lunchroom they take great pleasure in whispering to each other, looking at me and laughing knowing full well that I don't understand. I once asked one of the Vietnamese teachers to translate for me - apparently they'd just said that Miss Jenny looks like a man! Kids can be so lovely, can't they?!
One thing I have found interesting is that the children here learn American English. I find that I have to translate myself before teaching the children (the pronunciation of 'vase' and 'tomato' and the spelling of favourite/ favorite and colour/ color stand out). In India it was easy as they learn English English (it was Molly who struggled when she would use words like 'trash' or 'period' instead of 'full stop') but I have found that it's kept me on my toes here.
All in all, a great few weeks. I've learned a lot about how children learn, how quickly they learn and how different they all are in their abilities and needs. 

Vietnamese traditions and beliefs

I had a great chat with Thuy, the other teacher that I have been working alongside with the 6-7 year olds (I need someone to translate for me as they know very little English) about the Vietnamese funeral tradition. At the weekend she had been at a party celebrating the life of her Great Grandmother. Thuy explained that there are many parties associated with someone's passing. Firstly, there is a wake after the funeral. 3 days after this there is another party and then 49 days after the funeral there is yet another party. The Vietnamese believe that the person's soul is trapped in the house after death so, at 49 days, the family all get together and throw a party that is designed to help the soul to leave the house and go to heaven. Depending on the lunar calendar there may be a party 15 days after the funeral but this was too complicated for Thuy to explain so we just left it at that! There is then a huge party 1 year later and another 2 huge parties in the following 2 years. Every year after that the family gets together and celebrates the life of the person who has passed away. Thuy and her family were celebrating the life of her Great Grandmother who had passed away before she was even born! How wonderful that they're still celebrating all these years on!
As I was fascinated by this conversation I then asked if there were any traditions related to birth. Thuy told me that 7 days after the birth of a girl the family has a party. They also throw a party for the boys but this is held 9 days after birth. Apparently this is different because it is believed that girls have 7 souls whereas boys have 9 souls. This is why the numbers 7 and 9 are very lucky in Vietnam.
We next went on to talk about university and finances. In the countryside people can expect to earn about 1-2 million dong (£31 to £62) per month from agriculture. On this kind of money it's hard to afford the cost of university. The government does help by giving a loan but it is still difficult. If students move to the city for university then they should expect to pay 1.5 million dong a month to rent a property. Student accommodation (that sounds like student halls in UK) is given to the poorer students for a reduced rate of 400,0000 dong (£12) per month. So the government does try to help the poorer families to get to university but, as in the UK, most students need to get a part-time job to help to pay their way. Teacher training courses are free (the government pays the fees)  but, once qualified, teachers will only start on 3 million dong (£91) per month. This will only increase to a maximum of 6 million after many years of experience are gained in teaching. Teachers are currently asking the government for more.
Now that Alex has gone, I have been asked to work with some university students in the evening. I come up with a topic of conversation each evening and we discuss and debate around this topic. The first one I picked for yesterday was organ donation (I wanted to really challenge their beliefs and their English!) and we had a very interesting session. We discussed about blood donation, the types of organs that can be donated and the physical and emotional effects of donating organs on you (live donor) or your family (donating your organs after death). I then posed the questions "should an alcoholic be given a new liver if they are still drinking?" and "should an alcoholic be given a second donor liver if they destroy their own liver and the first donor liver". This struck up some very interesting conversations and the students became very aware of the dilemmas that healthcare professionals find themselves faced with every day. To me the most interesting conversation of the evening came out of a point I made about 'opt-in' donor registers vs 'opt-out' donor registers. I'd mentioned that in UK we have to opt-in to donate our organs but in countries like Spain and Austria it is assumed that you will donate your organs unless you opt-out. The Vietnamese students were horrified at this as it goes against their beliefs about the next life. It is believed that, if you donate your eyes after death, then you won't be able to see in the next life. You need to die complete to be complete in the next life. This fascinated me as it's the main reason that Vietnamese people do not donate organs. Some Vietnamese have now overcome these fears and started to donate blood - there is an incentive for this in that if you need a blood transfusion and you have previously donated blood then you can have blood for free. If you have not previously donated blood but you need a transfusion then you need to pay for it. This linked nicely into the main debate - "As there is a lack of donors on the donor register, should we get paid to donate organs?". Once again lots of brilliant ideas were thrown around. One side asked how you would price each organ and conveyed the potential for a black market and for an increase in murders for organs and the other side stated that it would increase the number of donors, thus saving countless lives. Needless to say, we are all still sitting on the fence!
Today we discussed volunteering and specifically the types of volunteer opportunities available, how we find out about volunteering, whether you should be expected to pay to volunteer and how we could increase the number of people willing to volunteer (26% of adults in UK volunteered at least once a month last year).  I also posed the question "should companies give employees 6 months off every 5 years to volunteer". It was another interesting debate with one side talking about how the employee will 'find themselves' and learn/ improve skills in time management, team work and communication as well as learning about different cultures and different potential client bases (depending on the job). The other side argued that it was too expensive to keep a position open and/ or to train someone to take over the post in the short-term (or in the long-term if the employee decides not to come back after the 6 month period). Once again, we were on the fence. Thankfully none of us need to make this decision currently!

The first week in Vietnam has flown by.........

I've been in Vietnam a week now, and what a week it's been!
The teaching is a little easier now than it was at the beginning of the week. To be honest, I was a little out of my depth teaching the 6-7 year olds as I've never taught that age group before and none of them speak any English. But we've been playing lots of learning games (most of them with the ball I bought for them) and things have got a lot easier. It's been interesting to see the progress that most of the children have made in such a short space of time (with their English and their catching skills!) and we're all beginning to feel more comfortable with each other, even if we cannot effectively communicate with each other! The hardest parts are disciplining the children (how can I explain why their actions are unacceptable if we don't speak the same language?!) and motivating the children after nap time. Most of the children take a long time to wake up after their nap but they are scheduled to have an English class with me every day immediately afterwards (somehow I always managed to get the session immediately after lunch when I was at work too!). I have a few classes of 8-9 year olds per week and they understand me a lot better. We have been learning about clothes this week so we've had fun drawing our outfits and learning how to describe what we're wearing. I had one class of 12-16 year olds who could understand me very well but who brought their hormones with them into the classroom. Once boy, the youngest in the group, looked down his nose at me the whole lesson and was cocky when I asked him questions. When it came to working in pairs I made him come and work with me as punishment for being rude! We discussed what we had done at the weekend and all of the children, with one exception, said they slept late and then watched TV and spent most of the weekend being bored! Guess teenagers are the same in every country!
Between 10am and 11.30am the 6-7 year olds have playtime. On Thursday I brought in some leftover craft materials that we hadn't used when making the costumes for The Wiz and we made masks. It was really interesting to see how the children applied themselves to this. One child, Ty, likes to cause issues in the class (he doesn't like to share), overreacts to most things and gets angry very easily. However, he took the most care in his mask making and painstakingly stuck sequins onto his cardboard in a beautiful pattern whereas the other children just threw glitter around and hoped that some of it would stick! He was calm and focused - it was lovely to see! Now I just need to figure out how to get this behavior to show through in English class too!
On Thurdsay evening I was invited to a meeting by Efirst.vn English Centre. I was met by a group of students who are all learning English and told that I was the guest of honour! I was sat down at a table, given a drink and asked to talk about myself in (slow) English so that everyone could understand. The students all asked me questions about why I was volunteering, what I was hoping to do in the future and what my feelings were of Vietnam so far. It was a very strange experience as I was centre of attention and everyone's eyes were on me! We played a game of 'Who am I' so that they could practice their new words that they had just learned in class and then they asked me if I would like to come to their social event next Saturday with will most likely be either paintballing or indoor rock climbing! Brilliant! On the way home Trang, one of the girls, asked me if I would like to join her and her friends for a coffee on Saturday (yesterday) - we had a great time! Everyone here is so friendly and I am so happy that people are inviting me to do things!
Yesterday I took a quick 2 hour class (actually, it was the slowest 2 hours of my life as getting English out of these kids was like getting blood from a stone!) and then headed into the old quarter of Hanoi to explore. The old quarter was actually less hectic than I thought it would be. The streets were wider and the street sellers were less aggressive than I'd expected them to be. I had wanted to go to the Water Puppets but they were sold out so I have booked a ticket for next Sunday. I also booked my trip to Halong Bay (22nd June for 3 days) and when I got home I booked my flight to Ho Chi Minh City on 25th for 3 days. I'm very excited! I tried to find the Botanical Gardens (we had driven past them on the way to the old quarter) but I accidentally got lost. After a while I came across another lake (my fourth of the day, or so I thought) and decided to find a taxi to take me home. At that point Alex cycled by and told me that this was actually West Lake and I should just follow it round to get home! I was already halfway there so another hour's walking would get me home! I had a lovely time walking by the side of the lake, it was very peaceful and relaxing, if a little hot (38 degrees, my nose isn't happy!).

My first few days in Vietnam

When I arrived at Hanoi airport I was expecting to be collected by the manager of the charity that I would be working with. After about 5 minutes of looking around I realised that he wasn't at the airport but I assumed that good old Asian timekeeping was to blame so I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably in for a long wait. The taxi driver standing next to me asked me if I was waiting for someone and instantly volunteered his phone so that I could call to see what was going on. Good job that he did - it turns out that Mr. Son (the manager of the charity) had come to the airport to get me but then received a call saying that his Mum was gravely ill and he needed to leave to get to her bedside. Non-one was coming to collect me so Mr. Son texted the taxi driver's phone with the address of the office and a contact number for Xung at the charity who would meet me there. The taxi driver was a great help - it was a wonderful introduction to the hospitality shown by the people of Vietnam!

Once I arrived and dumped my bags Xung took me out for lunch at a street vendor down the road, he bought me pineapple, lychees and coconut ice-cream (way more food than I would ever possibly eat!) and left me to rest for the remainder of the day. I was in heaven! He told me that I he would meet me at 9am the next day and we would run through my schedule for the coming weeks. At 9.45pm the headteacher from the school came to the door and told me that she'd pick me up for school at 7am the next morning and I would be teaching until 7.15pm. Panic set in as I had nothing planned (I had no idea who I would be teaching or at what level as this Vietnamese trip was planned very last minute)! She then told me that I could teach them whatever I wanted as there was no set plan and no set curriculum. Double panic!! She told me that I would be teaching 6-7 year olds so, once she'd gone, I quickly fired up my laptop and searched for children's songs, children's games and lesson plans for teaching English to people who didn't speak a single word!

Of course, as is always the case, the reality wasn't as bad as I'd initially thought it would be. I was given a book on arrival and told that I would teach from that. Phuong Anh, a Vietnamese student teacher, would be there to help and translate for me and we would only teach for two hours in the morning then the children would play for an hour before lunch and sleep. The teachers also get to sleep every day from 12.30pm to 2pm - brilliant! In the afternoon I taught the 6 year olds again before spending 2 hours with the 9- 10 year olds and 2 hours with the 12- 16 year olds. Phuong Anh once again proved that the Vietnamese people very lovely as she offered to take me out into Hanoi and show me around next weekend. She loves to sing so we may even end up in a Karaoke bar after seeing the sights!

Today I only taught for 3 hours. I worked with the 8-9 year olds first and then watched Ice Age (which I still haven't seen all the way through!) with the 6 year olds until lunch. After a little sleep (woohoo!) I taught the 6 year olds before coming home at 3pm. Now I'm desperately trying to plan for tomorrow's lessons - I have felt like I've been on the back foot since I got here so it will be nice to be a little prepared!

The children are all on school holiday at present so all of the children that I am teaching are part of the summer school. The parents pay for these lessons. I am yet to find out how the school is funded throughout term-time but I know that, however they are funded, they are doing well as they have A/C in the rooms and an interactive whiteboard!

I am living at the office of the charity in a room with a British girl called Alex. Things are quite disorganised but we have a young man who stays with us and prepares dinner in the evenings (he's the nephew of Mr. Son), wifi and A/C. It's relative luxury compared to India! There's a huge Jackfruit tree outside, fruit markets just down the road and countless pharmacies just in case I need them (although that would be a shame considering I made it all the way through my time in India without getting sick!).

I have booked my ticket home - I will be flying back on 28th June to arrive on 29th. I will be going straight back to York but will be back in London on 11th July for several days. I can't believe that that will have been 5 months of travelling by that point, it's gone so fast!