Kia Ora, G'day, Salut, Buenos Dias, Guten Tag, and Hewwo. As you may or may not have guessed being out in the middle of a jungle comes with its own set of challenges. A big one has been difficulty of global communication - texting is pretty alright ("yes mum I'm still alive type thing" except I'm pretty bad at that so hey mum I'm alive, only been attacked by some beefy ants that bite, some of us with bonus holy points are still mosquito bite free - Matt, Lissie, & I - boo yeah), wifi/Internet is very unreliable and has been down in the whole region around us too, carrier pigeons have proven ineffective (usually end up on a dinner plate), and the horse and cart set out untold ages ago and hasn't been heard or seen since. So this may be coming to you from mt hope or Kuching or some other spot where we have managed to scrounge some internets.
So where to lift off from? The rice paddies of Gadingan? The rain soaked and partially flooded streets of Kuching (hi from Aunty Belinda, Cpt Kern)? Perhaps jump shots into the hotel pool? Or the sprawling metropolis of Mt Hope? After an amazing time in Gadingan and a very sad farewell to Ps. Fera, Steph, Benny, Lely, Fisca, Sonny, & Ephan we headed to the skies and Malaysia once again. In Kuching we had a fairly large debrief time, followed by a quick journt of shopping, and topped off with a sauna & swim. Then quickly chased off to bed by 'aunty mum' (who is awesome & stayed up til 1am doing all our washing) and up early for the 2 hour trip to and across the border into Indonesia once again (where Matt was too scared to go the Arrivals counter by himself "incase they spoke only Russian.")
Mount Hope is a completely different kettle of fish (not the literal fish heads and ends we had for tea one night). First off there is way more people and the since the complex of buildings is primarily a school day to day life is very different. Also we have afternoon siestas, very different, but a good time to have some 'me' time or quiet time or even a nap since the whole place pretty much comes to a stop from 1.30-3pm.
With the shear number of people, 140 kids living on site with another 300 or so traveling in each day for school, it is a lot harder to meet and get to know everyone. However, through teaching English classes (we had 4 this morning from 8.20am - 1pm with helping at the bakery from 7am beforehand) we are slowly getting there. Our focus here seems to be a lot more just helping through serving, be that through teaching, baking, cooking, gardening, cleaning, playing with kids, Sunday school, etc etc. Something new and wildly varied pops up pretty much each day.
Now let's be civilized and talk about the weather for it is always an engrossing subject and eager ears await. We have had it blisteringly hot some days, muggy others, rain on one, and mildly pleasant on others. It has been a mixed bag but generally sweating through your clothes is a given. Then add playing volleyball, football, and badminton into the mix and you look like you've had a bucket of water tipped over you - very attractive...
On the iPod this looks pretty long so I'm going to wrap up here. Hopefully I've given you a little bit of an overview and a feel for the place. I'm going to have a bit of lie down, perhaps even 40 winks, before the site wide work time this afternoon.
Keep us in your prayers, a couple of us not 100%. Still a whole bunch of stuff for us still to do. Catch you laters.
Manjoe
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Mark Twain
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