Again I write a blog and fail to post it for about 3 weeks.... Sorry!
The year started well. Again large numbers of students returned to rowing and others came for the first time and lots of desire for swimming lessons please. Sadly, I learnt the lesson I can’t do everything at the same time so swimming lessons were postponed to April and coaching effort put into the rowing until the first regatta in March. Addu High School were nominated to organise the two regattas one in March and the other in July – we’d even got round to forming a committee! Oh and I’d fitted in diving lessons and got my qualification (3rd time lucky...). Diving is a truly fabulous feeling - I think my ancestor got in the wrong queue when they were offering evolving as life on land or in the sea! Saw manta rays and sharks on my first dive off the house reef. Naturally the memory card was full so had to work out how to operate all the buttons and knobs on the camera housing to delete photos while having a minor over excitement fit - so only have a couple of photos!
Now, I’m not blaming what happened next totally on Baz and Tony (friends from the UK) but I will definitely think carefully the next time they offer to come out and visit! They arrived the day before President Nasheed resigned. We spent the next ten days watching events unfold before it was decided that the project close down while things settled. So I flew out with Baz and Tony and am now back in the UK freezing cold, missing my friends and all the students enormously and putting together a proposal for the future of the project while keeping my fingers crossed that the future will be sooner rather than later.
So hoping, hoping and hoping that it won’t be too long before I can return and continue where we left off.
X Tash
The year started well. Again large numbers of students returned to rowing and others came for the first time and lots of desire for swimming lessons please. Sadly, I learnt the lesson I can’t do everything at the same time so swimming lessons were postponed to April and coaching effort put into the rowing until the first regatta in March. Addu High School were nominated to organise the two regattas one in March and the other in July – we’d even got round to forming a committee! Oh and I’d fitted in diving lessons and got my qualification (3rd time lucky...). Diving is a truly fabulous feeling - I think my ancestor got in the wrong queue when they were offering evolving as life on land or in the sea! Saw manta rays and sharks on my first dive off the house reef. Naturally the memory card was full so had to work out how to operate all the buttons and knobs on the camera housing to delete photos while having a minor over excitement fit - so only have a couple of photos!
Now, I’m not blaming what happened next totally on Baz and Tony (friends from the UK) but I will definitely think carefully the next time they offer to come out and visit! They arrived the day before President Nasheed resigned. We spent the next ten days watching events unfold before it was decided that the project close down while things settled. So I flew out with Baz and Tony and am now back in the UK freezing cold, missing my friends and all the students enormously and putting together a proposal for the future of the project while keeping my fingers crossed that the future will be sooner rather than later.
So hoping, hoping and hoping that it won’t be too long before I can return and continue where we left off.
X Tash