3rd Update

SO out of nowhere another week has passed, and in less than a fortnight now we’ll be back in, what I hear is a very rainy, England. The weather is still nice here and the hot patches are broke up with regular cooler cloudy spells, and the odd bit of rain. The rain doesn’t mess around in the Maldives we got caught in the rain on a 2-minute walk home from school on Tuesday and we were all saturated by the time we got home!

We decided at the start of the week not to go to the neighbouring island as accommodation, food and ferries to the island would be a bit too costly for only a couple of days and decided to spend the weekend on Lhohi instead.

            On the day of writing my last blog I mentioned the Euro’s and how we should be playing in the final tonight. Unfortunately our footballers on £200,000 a week, still cant hit the target from 12 yards, yet again, as we lost miserably in another penalty shoot out, and the locals didn’t half let us know about it as well! We seem to have settled in with some of the older people on the island now, having only really known the children through school before.

            I really wanted to write this week and say that the food had became more varied and exciting… but I think England were more likely to win the Euros! (Small note to any of our parents are reading this, if we see a single noodle or grain of rice in the next 3 months serious actions will be taken)

            This week we started our islands football tournament, as we each took charge of a house, in a vague attempt to help them out. I took Blue house (the team with the big kid), Fretters took charge of Green (reigning champs) and Stolly took red house (the team that tries hard (being polite there)). After an uneventful series of group matches we reached the final, as Mourinho’s blue house took on AVB’s greens. In essence, the first 30 minutes of the final were relatively boring as green scored a controversial penalty to take the lead. After half time my team were awarded a penalty for a passback (for all the galdem reading, that isn’t a penalty).  The penalty was converted and with just 5 minutes to go the score was 3-2 to the blues. Then as Fretters went to attend to an unconscious child, some of the local people supporting green decided to take green off the pitch in outrage at the penalty. Some of the house started crying in anger and the game between 7-10 year old kids became somewhat feisty. There was about a half an hour break in play, with people arguing left right and centre, until the game eventually restarted with new referees; not that it made any difference as the game finished 3-2. None of us could believe what had happened in a kid’s football tournament but the entertainment value was priceless, and its shows how seriously the Maldives local take their football.

            Yesterday we spent a day on biology practical with some 17 and 18 year olds at the school. I imagine the practical’s couldn’t be much more different to England as it consisted of rowing out into the ocean, and snorkelling around the reef whilst spear fishing. All of us had a good time and Fretters even managed to catch a fish with a spear (he hasn’t shut up about it since). One of the locals managed to catch and octopus as well which we enjoyed in some sea food noodles last night. We’ve spent a fair amount of time this week off snorkelling around the coral reef and seen an array of fish and turtles, as well as some eels and a giant stingray, which would have seen Steve Irwin tremble in his grave!

            Cricket this week has been somewhat limited due to the football tournament, but in the only session of this week the 4 against 4, England vs. India tournament continued. In a game with some massively controversial fielding England were set a target of 27 to win in 6 overs. England eventually won after slipping to 10-3, but managed to win on the very last ball with an unbeaten 17 from the last batsman, meaning England now lead India 2-0.

            We had the pleasure of results day on the island and despite one or two anomalous results everyone seems pretty pleased with how they got on which is the main thing, and hope everyone else did well too as I haven’t had a chance to speak to anyone at home yet.

            After finishing the kid’s football tournament, we have the luxury of not getting up at 5.30am anymore for football coaching. Instead we get a lie until its breakfast time or until the builders decide to start work with electrics drills outside our room at 6am. (Living in the nicest and newest house on the island so can’t really complain.)

            Its our last full week in Lhohi this week, but still plenty to look forward too as the senior football tournament kicks off, and our English teaching program begins to draw to a close.

Gradually developing bear features

Dodge

2nd Update

Another week has flown by and already we have been away nearly two weeks. We moved into our new house the day after I posted my last blog, which is far nicer than our temporary accommodation was.  We have two double rooms both with en suite, although Stolly seem to be struggling with their hard mattress (mine and Fretters is marginally softer). Rooms are constantly cool with a fan in each one and there seems to be a lack of mosquitos in the new house as well. Saying that we had a mini scare this week as the first night in the new house I woke up with what appeared to be around 150 mosquito bites over my legs, arms and back (picture above). Still not entirely sure where the rash/bites have come from but suspect it was an allergic reaction to the mosquito killing machine in the room, as since that’s been turned off the rash has gone down. The bathrooms are nice although there is no hot water on the island, the pipes smell of egg, and I found a baby scorpion whilst showering on Thursday morning! The atmosphere in our café seems can best be described as quirky, with some ‘different’ characters, who get moody when I fail to finish the mountain of rice they provide us with. The food has become slightly more varied in the sense we now had 3 different curries, one that was too hot for even the experienced curry eaters in our party to eat, but the rice and noodles remain the main daily dish.

           The weather has been hotter this week than last week and we seem to have avoided some of the rain that we had for a few days in our first week, with temperatures being constantly 32c plus. On Friday morning, we played some cricket with some of the Indian teachers, with home made bats and stumps. In the first ever international match in Lhohi, England came out on top and now lead India 1-0, with nearly daily games to follow.  Friday night was a unique experience as well as we were invited to a Wedding reception on the island. We weren’t really too sure what to expect as we turned up at the school for the reception, but all the classrooms and the yard was transformed with new decorations, and the food wasn’t too shabby either, so all in all a good night.

 

The football sessions are in full flow now with daily morning sessions (except when England had played the night before) at 6am with the younger students and the occasional afternoon session with the older kids. There are a few exceptional footballers in both sets of groups and you can see some of the younger kids have the potential to be great players when they’re older. The older kids never seem to tire though and as were gasping for breath on the floor, they seem like they’ve just started their warm up.

We also began our English classes this week, with an hour each day Monday-Thursday for mixed ability students. The girls are a lot better at English than boys as they seem to be able to concentrate for more than half an hour, but many of the children seem to speak better English than some of the locals, and all seem keen to improve to a certain extent.

On our trip to the atoll capital Manadhoo last week, me and Fretters made acquaintance with an English teacher from India, who initially invited the 4 of us to go snorkelling on his island. It now turns out we are going for a two night stay there next weekend, to snorkel, and teach English in school on their island, so we seem to be in high demand (not too sure why if you saw our lessons!)

Yesterday we had the chance to go to a totally uninhabited island and snorkel around the reef whilst trying to catch some fish. It was definitely a lot harder than it looked, as we managed to catch an impressive 0 fish between the four of us. Thankfully some locals had already caught some fish for us so we enjoyed curried fish and chicken sausages for lunch. We had to row there and back and on the way back managed to catch an impressive look at the sunset from the middle of the ocean.

That’s it for another week and I’ll blog next week just before England’s Euro final, after we ease past Italy tonight, and Germany in the Semis!

Still Not a Bear 

Dodge

First Update

Apologies for the lack of posts this week, we only arrived on Tuesday and struggled to get hold of any Internet connection. We arrived in Maldives airport on Tuesday morning, full of energy after a cracking point against France and a flight on an Airbus!  As we arrived we were told we had been booked onto a seaplane to take us over to our island. The views on the 45-minute journey were incredible as we flew over 100’s of islands, both populated and deserted. After a quick speedboat ride we reached our island Lhohee, and moved into our temporary accommodation. All the houses on the island are very basic, with poor hygiene facilities. Hopefully we shall be moving tonight, as a special 2-storey guesthouse has been built for volunteers, which appears to be considerably nicer than where we are staying currently. All the food is provided for us in a local café, which offers rice and noodles with the occasional curry, with a friendly but slightly crazy atmosphere provided by Café owner Ahmed aka Jet. Nice added bonus to the café was the 2-metre projector screen that shows the Euros every night, though all the locals seem to be supporting France, Germany and strangely enough last night Sweden! The locals seem to be treating us like celebrities with children camped outside our house constantly and friendly greeting from all the locals. Every morning at 6 we play football with the kids, and we are hoping to start our English teaching program tomorrow! The majority of  locals speak a poor standard of English, but some do show occasional fluency.

The beaches and the landscape on the island are incredible, with coral reefs providing excellent snorkeling opportunities and over the last few days Pash and Fretters have spotted many a fish, turtles and even a stingray. There are lots of mosquitoes about but thankfully they have avoided me so far and chosen to feast on Pash instead. Over the week ive been compared to Shane Warne and David Beckham by the locals, which are somewhat (very) optimistic comparisons, however Colly’s comparison to Wayne Rooney is a great shout! Everything is very cheap with bottles of Fanta and Coke costing around 35p, and big bottles of water even less. We visited the local Police station on the capital island today which could not have been more different to England, with guards relaxing in Hammocks and 50 inch plasma screens with PES 2012 on, and surround sound; the kind of Police life I imagine Paul expects. Hoping to get another post done in the next few days to talk about the football and English programmes we will have started this week.

Dodge

Just arrived at the airport and waiting for Pash, Colly and Fretters to arrive. A nice 17 hours of flights/transfers to look to today!

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So its just 2 days to go now and finally starting to get everything packed and airline tickets printed off etc. When we arrive in the Maldives we'll hopefully be boarding a seaplane to fly off to our island, so will upload so pictures from them when we arrive on our island come Wednesday. Just a reminder to follow all the updates for this blog on here!