Last week the volunteers and I decided to spend our time on a trek, us to Poon Hill, and the others to Basecamp! Going into it I imagined that trekking in Nepal would be a lot like hiking through the Rockies in Canada - and I was half right.

This is Georgia from the U.K, enjoying the Nepalese rain after hiking in the hot sun.

As I said, I was half right about the similarity between hiking in Canada.

For the first half, it was completely different. We begun by walking on a dirty/muddy road through towns and villages used by plenty of vehicles and pedestrians alike. As we continued and past the checkpoint the road thinned and began to turn into a cobblestone path. The path would lead us from open country-side to village and back again, over and over. This is one of our first stops at a little shop getting lunch:

The road began to be steeper and steeper, thousands of rock stairs leading higher and higher up the mountain. Regardless of how steep the mountain was, however, the villages never stopped. Sometimes there would only be a few steps of flat ground before another staircase would lead to another area of the village. The way the Nepal people use every square inch of space is incredible. The mountains and hills are speckled with farms and people no atter where you look.

The most difficult part of the climb was spending nearly four solid hours going up one never-ending staircase. We covered distance fast, but had to take many breaks for water and air. After that it was wilderness, travelling around the mountain at about 2200 meters. The air was cool and the vegetation was mostly coniferous - this was  the part that reminded me quite a bit of Canada.

Poon Hill had quite an amazing view, but unfortunatly the last town didn't have power and couldn't charge my phone ...

This month has been an extremely exciting one for everyone in the Projects Abroad Sri Lanka team. Not only because our volunteers have been teaching Buddhist monks, observing autopsies, giving free medical healthcare to the poor at our medical camp, teaching orphans, looking after adults with mental disabilities etc.. but also because we have just started a sports placement in one of the government schools where we send many teaching volunteers.

This government school has 4500 pupils aged between 5 and 17, and until recently there was no, or limited, sports lessons for these kids. After a lot of preparation, chatting and attempting to speak broken Sinhala, myself and the rest of our team arranged a schedule for our future sports volunteers at this government school. We arranged for the volunteers to teach the children a variety of sports, including gymnastics, football, acrobats, athletics, cricket etc.. and we made sure that the volunteers can be flexible while at their placements and they will be free to implement their own ideas.

We recently welcomed our very first sports volunteer, Lisa Van Keulen from the Netherlands. This is a real treat, because Lisa is a national acrobat champion in Holland! On her first day of placement she was welcomed by a class full of extremely excited 12 year olds who were eagerly awaiting their gymnast lesson.

Lisa has now been working at this placement for one month. She has been teaching sports to the oldest and youngest in the school. It is amazing to walk around the school with her because she is famous! All of the kids would like to speak with her and show their gratitude for her hard work. The words ‘teacher, teacher, teacher’ spread around the whole school and some kids even bow to her feet!

All in ...

I recently returned from a month long (as everyone says, not long enough) volunteer placement in Vietnam.  I actually knew very little about my placement before arriving in Hanoi despite my efforts to discover more.  This turned out to be because I was the first volunteer to be placed in the Green Pine Clinic which had yet to open.

The Green Pine Clinic comes under the auspices of R.T.C.C.D. (Research and Training Centre for Community Development) and is being established to assess the growth and development of children in Vietnam.   At this early stage the focus will be on children from birth to six-years but these ages will be expanded in the future.  There will also be provision for antenatal education, individual counseling for families and parent information sessions.  The overall emphasis is on health education and preventative care.  The clinic is to be the first of its kind in Vietnam. Green Pine clinic officially opens on the 1st of June, 2013.

As a Maternal and Child Health Nurse in Australia, I was familiar with assessing growth and development in children but was initially unsure of what role I was to play in my placement.  However, I was surrounded by a dedicated team who were all totally committed to the purpose of the clinic and wished to make use of any knowledge I could give them.  I spent the mornings presenting on a specific age and stage.  In the afternoon we did a practical session on a “pilot” child followed by a general discussion.  Each session always went longer than planned due to the time needed for interpreting.  The days were busy but it was very exciting to be involved so early in such an ambitious project.

The staff throughout the whole of the R.T.C.C.D building ...

Salome Fleur Becker believes that India has to be experienced—something that she discovered as she tries to explain the enigmatic beautiful country that already feels like a second home, to her family and friends back home in GermanyHaving arrived in Madurai and lived here for several days now, I tried to explain to my friends and family back in Germany in the city of Freiburg im Breisgau about life in India.

I was confronted with a big problem when I tried to send them a really detailed description. It is not easy to describe an environment which is totally different from everything you experienced before. How should I tell them about the scent of the spicy food which is cooked at the roadside hotels? How could they imagine the lively traffic chaos, as they’ve never seen people driving on the wrong lane, using the horn even more than the gas pedal because it is the only rule everyone is obeying? 
And every time I tried, I had to start again, because it sounded too negative. Even if the displeasing things are more striking, it is absolutely untrue that India is not a beautiful and extraordinary country. It is extraordinary because its beauty is not made up of anything we are used to.
You can find it in the furrowed face of an old woman smiling a toothless smile as you walk by, or just by looking at the bright tones of red and orange when the sun is vanishing behind the mountains. It is shown in the helpfulness of people who are crossing your way, always trying to do their best, and in the colour of a saree coupled with the clinking sound of the bangles. I think a foreigner has to forget about all her concepts of beauty and lifestyle to be able to see those little but delightful details and to be open minded to absorb differences. There is so much to ...

Less than a week until my trip to Senegal!