Since I got here I’ve wanted to visit a government school. Having seen them on Blue Peter and Comic Relief I wanted to see for myself how cramped the classrooms are and how few resources they have. Up until this week they’ve been on holiday so I only got to go yesterday to Meserani Primary. The school took about 30 minutes to walk to from the road across dust which was occasionally crossed by huge chasms; these are rivers in the wet season. I can only imagine how muddy the dust gets! As we walked, three white girls and a Maasai [View Full Entry]

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I don't know where to start I loved safari so much! Yesterday coming home was such an anticlimax. AND we had no water (it's back on now!) Lewis and Laura sorted out safari last monday with the guy, Tom who chivvied us along to the waterfall last weekend. We wanted to go Ngorogoro, Serengeti and Lake Manyara but the safari lady said we wouldn't be able to fit in Serengeti so we did Tarangire instead. We were picked up by a sooped up extended land cruiser on a almost rainy and cold Friday morning. The drive to our camp site took [View Full Entry]

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This isn't going to be a very exciting entry I'm afraid (I'm still living in innocence of how to get photos onto the computer/can't do it!) School this week has been good and improving every day! My class (the middle class) has now been effectively split into 2 with the clever ones and the not so clever ones lumped with a few girls from reception so I'm practically a full time teacher, luckily Laura swapped from the baby class to mine so I'm not all alone! One of the boys is new and learning English really fast with me and Laura [View Full Entry]

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In case you hadn't noticed...I'm in AFRICA!!! YAY! Here's a whistlestop account of my travels so far. Firstly, Michael Jackson has died. Tanzania found out yesterday. Bad times. We met at Heathrow on Sunday to get our plane to Cairo, which was delayed for an hour and a half before take off, given that our connection in Cairo was 1 hr 45 mins we'd already planned missing our flight and having to stay in Cairo until the next one on Thursday, argh the pain!!! Unfortunately they were very efficient in Cairo and we never got to see the pyramids of the [View Full Entry]

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Belize was lovely. Sunny and blue and warm and sandy. But we were running out of time so we headed off back to Mexico. The bus ride from Belize City to Chetumal went without incident. That is apart from when we had to get out at Mexican Immigration (no stamp this time) and were handed our bags from the roof to carry through ourselves. Being a little bit stupid we presumed this meant we'd arrived at the destination and were being dismissed from the bus to wend our way onto Tulum alone. We got our visas stamped and pressed the scary [View Full Entry]

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The youth hostel we stayed at in Livingston turned out to be not quite so cool as we'd thought at first after all. When we arrived, myself, Sam, Angie, Sarah and an American called Miguel who we'd met in Semuc Champay we were offered a private room which could fit 3 or 4, and 2 dormitory beds. Obviously we decided us girls could have the private room (with it's own shower woo!) and the 2 boys would sleep in the dormitory. Our room had a double bed and a hammock which Angie said she'd sleep in. In the middle of the [View Full Entry]

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I belive last time I write I was in San Cristobal de las Casas. Since then the route has been... 1. Palenque 2. Flores, Guatemala 3. Shampoo-Champagne (Semuc Champay), Guatemala 4. Rio Dulce, Guatemala 5. Livingston, Guatemala (The current location) The night we left San Cristobal more people came to populate the dormitory, which made the scary old man in the corner, who could have passed as Santa if only he had a red suit, slightly less wierd in that we didn´t have to make conversation everytime we were in there at the same time! Someone (might have been me) decided [View Full Entry]

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So here I am, back in Mexico, with my backpack on my back (all 15kgs of it) and the wind blowing the wrong way for the sun to shine at me! I hate the cold! Brr its like September in England when I have to control myself against putting on my scarf and gloves 2 months too early! Athough saying that the sun is actually shining as I type! Woohoo! I managed to do absolutely nothing at all interesting or cultural in Mexico city on Monday except use the internet for 2 hours in 2 seperate internet cafes, for fear of [View Full Entry]

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This intrepid traveller is back on the road and the latest destination was...Cuba! I have to admit I went knowing practically nothing about Cuba except that it is in the Caribbean and the USA doesn´t much like it. Well you can say that again! I wanted to go for the "culture" something of which the Lonely Planet speaks highly of. I have come to realise that when the Lonely Planet bigs up a place for the "culture" that means there´s nothing there. La Habana is, or was, a very beautiful city. The buildings are amazing, but it has the feeling of [View Full Entry]

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Last week was the week of the Fiesta. It all began on Sunday in Ixcatapec with Barbacoa at Adrian´s house (oh my Spanish addled brain had a problem with writing that, it wants to say the casa of Adrian) which is meat, in this case lamb, or possibly horse we were told (joke) is cooked in a pit Ray Mears style and it is yummy! Ali, his young nephew and one of the becarios was so pleased we were there and told everyone all week that we went to his house for the fiestas and that I had 2 beers and [View Full Entry]

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