Men at work (not the band)
Time is rapidly running away with me, having just counted and there is only 8 weeks until my scheduled flight home, very scary how quickly (and sometimes slowly) the last seven months have gone. Before I get to retrospective, introspective and any other spective you can think of, my boat house is still progressing at a quite frankly startling rate now. As previously explained the poles were put in the ground but we had a problem with no power to weld the roof onto the poles, but as you can see from the picture here electricity cables are being laid as I write, well probably not now as it is dark, and will reach the site imminently. If you have followed the intensely exciting progress of my (it is now officially mine, well in my mind anyhow) you might have some idea of how huge this might be in my world. If I had ever had any idea how much work would need to be done to get rowing started here I think I might have run for the hills long ago! But now every step feels like a great achievement and bolsters my enthusiasm for life in general and rowing here in particular. I am now constantly humming the hymn "One more step along the world I go" annoyingly I cannot remember many of the words but the first line is pretty apt for life here.
Shaufa and Unesha not listening to me!
I have a lot of very exciting things coming up, not least the arrival of the fantastic Mr and Mrs Loveridge, in November for their pre-Christmas month long sojourn in south Asia. I am looking forward to showing them exactly what it is their wayward daughter has been up to for the past few months. Also on looming rapidly on the horizon are another couple of visitors, who are equally (perhaps more but don't tell my parents) exciting. At the end of this month Guin Batten (the original Maldives rowing crusader) and companion (more details in the next couple of days) will be arriving for a flying visit to me and my swimming troops in the North and then off down to Addu to see the results of Tash's work over the past few weeks culminating in an intern island rowing regatta. Good times all round!
With exams for all the children going on at the moment, Eid holiday and then the big school holidays coming up, all my superstar swimmers are very busy and I thought I would heap on the pressure with swimming tests next week before we wind up the swimming programme for the foreseeable future, sad times. Following a break over Eid, Republic Day, Victory Day and a few other public holidays (there seems to be quite a few more public holidays here than in the UK) I am hoping to run intensive learn to swim courses for those who are on the much sought after waiting list for swimming lessons. Fingers crossed I will be ably assisted by another volunteer with these but as with everything, confirmation is still to come. My hope is that everyone who wanted swimming lessons gets at least 12 lessons before I leave, some have already had significantly more and are up in arms that I am leaving, makes me feel very loved! Who could resist carrying on teaching my cheeky Saturday ladies who star in the photos and video below (breaststroke leg kick on the beach - you cannot beat sand to teach the leg kick!)?
In yet more exciting news I am off to another island soon for a few days to have a bit of a recce for another potential site for a rowing club, which has me bouncing off the walls with anticipation so I will fill in all the details as soon as I can and with pictures of baby turtles!
In yet more exciting news I am off to another island soon for a few days to have a bit of a recce for another potential site for a rowing club, which has me bouncing off the walls with anticipation so I will fill in all the details as soon as I can and with pictures of baby turtles!