Today I woke up up to discover that not only do the bats sleep outside my window, but they somehow manage to aim so that their poo ends up inside my room! I'm just very glad that last night they were sleeping a little further down the wall past the end of my bed, so it didn't land on me in my sleep or something. At least being very small bats they leave deposits that are more the size of mice droppings than the mess left by larger bats. Still, not the best start to the day! After operation bat poo cleanup, it was time for language school again. I had no idea when I signed up just how exhausting it would be. The teachers are lovely but because they are one on one lessons it ... read more

A snippet from my thoughts on arriving in Cambodia last night: So, here I am in Cambodia, my home for the next two months. The ride from the airport to the house felt familiar, having at least been here once before helps I think. Makes it feel slightly less daunting maybe. It's difficult to describe exactly how it feels. Scary is one word that springs to mind though! It's all a bit overwhelming actually. I'm ashamed that I feel a bit like I want to go home already! Everything seems really hard (will I really ride a bike in that traffic? How exactly will I teach the team here? Am I really going to be useful? I don't know anybody here, I'm going to be so lonely! Two months is such a long time!...) A good ... read more

Sadly we have come to the end of the real 'road trip' part of our holiday. Today the RV has to be returned to the folks at El Monte Rentals in Dublin California. Before 11am. Which means that once again we are up and on the road well before I'd normally like to be out of bed. Surprisingly though even after two weeks I'm still doing fine with the early mornings. We actually made it to El Monte early and faced with the choice of waiting an hour for their shuttle, or lugging all our bags on public transport (which would get us to our San Francisco hotel at about the same time) we took the sensible option and decided to relax in their very large waiting room and wait it out. We had the whole ... read more

Today is another driving day. Driving days are so much more fun in an RV! I think mostly because you can get up, walk around, go to the fridge, accidentally leave the fridge not-quite-latched, go around a corner, watch salad and strawberries fly out of the fridge and across the floor (without it waking Stu or Gerry who are napping nearby) and then clean up the mess with one ply toilet paper. It all just makes the time pass more quickly really. Other than the aforementioned spontaneous explosion of fruit and vegetables from the refridgerator today was actually pretty quiet with only two real points of interest for those playing at home. The first being that Craig and I both had our first turns at being pilot and co-pilot of the massive beast of an RV ... read more

At last, the day has arrived. Today we get to pick up our RV and join the hundreds of other tourists making the trek from Vegas to the Grand Canyon. After short training film, a tour of the van, signing about a hundred forms and working out how to take off the park brake, we were on the open road headed for the Grand Canyon. First stop was Hoover Dam. A massive structure which I'm sure warranted more of a look than I gave it, but with it being over 50 degrees celcius outside I was more interested in why the aircon had stopped working in the campervan. Fortunately Gez got it back into action and we able to continue along our way. I must say though, the lady who runs the souvenier shop at Hoover ... read more