foolfillment: the blog

I just picked up a post on the ScotEdublogs feed from Glassary Primary School. The pupils there were set a good challenge - to get their Headteacher from the school to his brother’s house in Tasmania, all by public transport. They had to scour the internet for information about buses, planes, hotels, and everything else they’d need, then present their route to the class. A great challenge and a great use of technology with maths, geography, and other skills.

Even more interesting was a comment left by the Head’s brother - his route from Britain to Tasmania was more challenging than public transport - he cycled all of the 21000 miles from Edinburgh’s Calton Hill to Mount Wellington. Quite a feat!

In August I’ll be doing this teaching thing for real and I expect I’ll find it hard work, there’ll be ups and downs, and I expect I will need to talk about how I’m getting on just to help me through it.

Ordinarily the two people I fall back onto for support most are my girlfriend and my mum, next August though things are going to be different - my girlfriend graduates from vet school this summer and the chances of us ending up working in the same place in August are minimal so she’s going off to do something very exciting instead by volunteering to work as a vet in the Cook Islands for two months from mid-August. I’m very jealous.

She hit a small stumbling block when she found out she’d be the only vet there at the time so asked my mum (a recently retired vet) if she fancied an adventure…

The upshot of all that is that next August when I’m starting my probationary year two of my main people to fall back onto might be larking about on a paradise-like island on the other side of the world!

That’s probably where blogging will come in as a big help. There’s an interesting discussion going on over on Don’s Learning Log about the benefits of blogging and people’s resistance to it, the idea that it is a vanity thing.
The main reason I blog is I find it helps to write what I’m thinking and feeling, putting things into written words give me the opportunity to clarify my own ideas. It then has the added bonuses of people chipping in their comments too and helps me shape my ideas further, and giving the chance to read about what other people are thinking through their blogs, in general blogging just helps me make sense of things. So I don’t do it to make me look good, I blog it because I think it helps me do whatever I’m doing better.

[tags]blogging, teaching, probationary year, cook islands, vet[/tags]

Five weeks at uni, then four weeks at school, three weeks on Easter vacation, four weeks back at uni, before two weeks of exams, three weeks of working, all of which leads up to the time we…

Fly out to Malasia and New Zealand for five weeks!!!

As we arranged, or rather had arranged for us forcibly by our host, we got up pretty early and made our way to the hotel reception and waited for our bus - we were going down to the docks to start our boat tour. We were feeling a lot better by now and were ready to eat some tasty food, we bought a big bottle of water and some snickers bars (really expensive out there - Peruvians don’t seem to eat chocolate so it’s all imported, which is funny when you realise it’s one of the main producers of the coca plant). Unfortunately we left our water on the bus when we got out so we can’t have been that much better.

Once one the boat we got ourselves comfortable inside out of the sun which we knew would get too strong for us as the day went on, and besides a big group of Dutch people had already nabbed the best seats on the roof. A couple of hours later we arrived at the Floating Islands - home of the Uros people. These are small islands, artificially made out of the reeds that grow in the lake. Each island is home to about 8 families, the largest island is Uros island and is considered the ‘capital’ complete with an post office and international telephone. You can eat the reeds as well as build with them - they’re not full of flavour but do taste a little sweet and similar in texture to celery, maybe a little more chewy.

Next we went on towards the Bolivian border but stopped at Amantani, another island, this one more traditional in that it was solid ground and you could walk without wobbling. We stayed the night here with a host family, they seemed very friendly and not used to having visitors - groups usually stay at another village on the other side of the island - and having been performed to by their children (and the obligitory hat held out for money) we were taken off to the main square and then up to the top of the island where there are two temples. As usual these were relating to birth of the earth, Pachamama and Pachatata - Mother Earth and Father Earth. The sunset was superb as we were up there, but by the time we got back to the town it was pitch black and of course, whene else would my torch choose to break!

When we got back to the house we were brought dinner, mostly a vegetable and quinoa soup with some potatoes, yet another different type, this time they were sweet. I polished mine off then had Morven’s who was struggling again, feeling cold and with a bad stomache. Again it was probably mostly down to the altitude, muna tea helped a little. Muna is a native herb that tastes a little like mint in hot water and smelled quite nice too, eased breathing. We tried to go to the toilet before bed but it just wasn’t worth it, the less said about the smell there the better. We did take a photo of it in the morning though.

The next day we got up, had some breakfast and then got back on the boat, had a quick look around Tacquile - another island - but there wasn’t really much to do. By now we were growing tired of being ill all the time and not having anything to do when we were on the boat. It was a long time before we got back to Puno in horribly strong sun. We were grateful to be back at our hotel, even through our new room wasn’t as good as the last one. We again braved the outside world for dinner, Morven though stuck with a pizza while I tried some trout. It tasted delicious, but for the first time I had to make a few trips to the bathroom in the night. We spent the next day in Puno again, but without anything to do. All we did was wander round, at least we had a nice breakfast and we were able to eat it. The day went downhill from there though, everywere we got accosted by shoeshiners and people just asking for money. One boy though almost fooled us - he came up and fancied that we spoke english, eh couldn;t have been more than 6 but came out with ‘where are you from?’ and when we sai Britain he asked ‘What moeny do you have there?’ at which point we wised up and sent him on his way. With nothing to do we got very fed up, very bored, and couldn;t wait till the following day, when we could finally justify going to bed for the night we were very happy. We were on our way to Cusco the next day!

We awoke in Arequipa and quickly left the hotel in an arranged taxi for the bus station. (more…)

by the 8th of July we were back in Arequipa.

We’d been told the day before, by some of the people on our tour to the Colca Canyon that London had won the bidding for the 2012 Olympics. We used Morven’s mobile as an alarm clock on the 8th, and by chance Morven had a bit of signal and we got a message from her Mum saying that everything wa alright at home and not to worry. It wasn’t until we left our hotel we worked out what she meant. (more…)

Something I meant to write about for the last entry was how guilty we felt about our tipping. We had gone to a restaurant for dinner (set menu for about ?1 including a Pisco Sour) where there was a band playing traditional music - pan pipes and the like. As we were leaving one of them came over with his hat, rather obviously asking for our money, not really knowing what to do we threw some change in, it wasn’t until we got back to the hotel that we realised we’d left something like 2p - more of an insult than a tip. Tipping is such an akward thing anyway but when you’re using a strange bunch of coins, you were put on the spot suddenly and you’re not feeling great what more are you expected to do? Anyway, probably worked out in the end with the amount we gave other people who pestered us, we found it really difficult to say no. Now onto the next morning: (more…)

Arequipa is high up. Lima, where we had come from is at sea level, but Arequipa is at 2325m and we were feeling it. Altitude sickness is a funny thing, you don’t really know what to expect, you don’t know if it’ll affect you or not, you can’t really comprehend the idea of it until it hits you. And when it hits you it hits you hard.* (more…)

Despite having the entire night to work out our next moves, we leave it untill the airport boards say final call to check in for our flight to Arequipa, which was when we had our first panic. (more…)

Monday 4th of July 2005.

As I was saying, when we awoke, we were flying over the snow-covered mountains of Chile, stunning to see.
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