So this is it: my last day at UKSA. Which means it has been five months almost to the day since I first arrived, waaaaaaaaaaay back in February. And it has gone so fast. The time before Egypt seemed to go on and on, back when it was the marathon six weeks without a day off. Then Egypt happened, and that went quickly in itself. But since coming back everything has just flashed by and I don't really know where it's all gone. I may try and have a look see if I can find it today, otherwise I'll just have to accept that it really has been nine weeks since I came back from that hot, sunny place.
Having said that, the weather this week has been rather amazing (for England) beautiful mornings have sadly been more often than not covered by cloud midway through the day, but then the cloud disappears towards the evening. And nothing is here to suggest that it will be otherwise today. Should be good.
I know in the last post I said I'd answer some questions, but I don't particularly have any answers as yet, so I won't.
I'm looking forward to being back for a couple of weeks, it will be good. But it has been an amazing five months. Rather splendid. I'm extremely glad that I went ahead and did the course, its been awesome.
Last night I went down to the south of the island with some friends from the Christian side of things and we had a BBQ on the beach as the sun set, from about 7 to 10 we were just sitting on the beach, eating, laughing, chatting, playing football, messing about in the water and generally having an excellent time. It was well good and I couldn't think of a better way of spending my last full day on the island (whilst still on the course).
I should add here that in a couple of weeks I shall be back on the island, this time to work. I won't be working at UKSA, but I'll be working at a centre just up the river from UKSA, so I'll still be able to pop down and see all my friends from time to time. So in a sense this isn't goodbye, but it is the end of a season. And even though I've enjoyed it immensely, it will be good for it to end as it will mean that I'm ready to go and work. WOOP WOOP.
Got to go and have breakfast now otherwise I spend half an hour stuck behind a long queue of kids. So I'll be seeing loads of people again soon, until then... (I have no idea what to put here, so I'll leave it hanging)
Saturday, 2 July 2011
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Three Days Left.
So. It's been five months. Crazy, eh?
So where am I? What's changed? Who have I become? To be honest I haven't thought about it much, that will have to wait for my final blog post, when I've spent some time thinking over those questions. (I will do one last post hopefully on the last day of the course, when everything is finished.) That's not to say that I haven't been thinking about what's happened, only that my thoughts have been more directed at what has happened.
I walk down the pontoon and think of the first time I walked down it; I go into dinner and remember the first meals I had at UKSA - how quiet it was, how simple. I didn't even know half the people I do now at that point. I go sailing and I set my sail automatically, my eyes flick from going forwards, to my sail, to water traffic and back again, I keep my boat flat, I adjust the five essentials, and I tamper with my sail controls to tune the sail correctly: I can't remember learning how to do it, it feels like I've been known how to do it since the beginning. Still, I can remember the first sessions I had sailing: beam-reach to beam-reach, wobbly tacks, aching head, being so pleased that I could dry-capsize. Then I kayak and I know I can roll now, I could tell you how best to get the most speed from it, how to keep it going straight, or how to turn a sea kayak. And still every time I go out I improve a little more: the theory I know, I practise; what I can do, I practise more. I needn't go into windsurfing: I plane, I fall in, I get up and do it again. And again. And again.
All around UKSA ghostly memories walk around, replay themselves in my head, times fast forwards to the present day and flows back again. And why? Because it's coming to an end? My life for five months is about to come to an end, and five months is such a small amount of time, but so much has happened. It's flashed past, especially this last half since I've come back from Egypt. And now it nears its completion.
I'm looking forward to spending some time back at home, but I'm also excited to be coming back to work here. With this step nothing will ever be the same again. I can never unlearn what I've learnt, even if the worst were to happen and I never taught anyone so much as a single lesson, these five months would leave a scar on my life, living on in the practical skills that I cannot choose to keep or forget.
But should I continue, which I intend to, then I can step from strength to strength, gaining in every day experience and confidence, growing each year in ability and technique. This time comes to its cut off day, soon the training ends.
So where am I? What's changed? Who have I become? To be honest I haven't thought about it much, that will have to wait for my final blog post, when I've spent some time thinking over those questions. (I will do one last post hopefully on the last day of the course, when everything is finished.) That's not to say that I haven't been thinking about what's happened, only that my thoughts have been more directed at what has happened.
I walk down the pontoon and think of the first time I walked down it; I go into dinner and remember the first meals I had at UKSA - how quiet it was, how simple. I didn't even know half the people I do now at that point. I go sailing and I set my sail automatically, my eyes flick from going forwards, to my sail, to water traffic and back again, I keep my boat flat, I adjust the five essentials, and I tamper with my sail controls to tune the sail correctly: I can't remember learning how to do it, it feels like I've been known how to do it since the beginning. Still, I can remember the first sessions I had sailing: beam-reach to beam-reach, wobbly tacks, aching head, being so pleased that I could dry-capsize. Then I kayak and I know I can roll now, I could tell you how best to get the most speed from it, how to keep it going straight, or how to turn a sea kayak. And still every time I go out I improve a little more: the theory I know, I practise; what I can do, I practise more. I needn't go into windsurfing: I plane, I fall in, I get up and do it again. And again. And again.
All around UKSA ghostly memories walk around, replay themselves in my head, times fast forwards to the present day and flows back again. And why? Because it's coming to an end? My life for five months is about to come to an end, and five months is such a small amount of time, but so much has happened. It's flashed past, especially this last half since I've come back from Egypt. And now it nears its completion.
I'm looking forward to spending some time back at home, but I'm also excited to be coming back to work here. With this step nothing will ever be the same again. I can never unlearn what I've learnt, even if the worst were to happen and I never taught anyone so much as a single lesson, these five months would leave a scar on my life, living on in the practical skills that I cannot choose to keep or forget.
But should I continue, which I intend to, then I can step from strength to strength, gaining in every day experience and confidence, growing each year in ability and technique. This time comes to its cut off day, soon the training ends.
Sunday, 12 June 2011
Dan? Dan? Oh there you are :D
Yep, it's me. Again. And such a lot has gone on since the last blog, not least of which is that I now have a job over the summer at a watersports centre up the river from UKSA. It's much smaller, but as I've been saying to everyone: UKSA is a rather-unique, oddly-massive centre so I was never going to be going somewhere that was its equal. This centre is focused more on sailing than anything else, and, from what I've seen of the team, they're amazing. Really nice, really welcoming, lots of laughing, yea, looks like it's going to be a good summer.
What else has been going on.
Last Saturday I had a group from Aiming High, which is a project or system that allows disabled kids of greater or lesser disabilities to get a chance to do watersports for free/reduced price (one of the two, not sure which, think it's free though) I was with one other instructor, one who had been on my original instructor training at the beginning of the course and who now is working at UKSA, it was cool to work with him again. We had two kids and their parents but only the kids did the activities. It pretty much works on asking the kids what they want to do and then seeing if we can do it. In the end we took them windsurfing in the morning, which was loads of fun. We had a few water-confidence/board confidence games where they sat on the boards in the water and did some games, like playing catch, or gladiators (where they had to stand u and rock the board until one of them fell in, leaving the victor to fall in after them usually) Then we got the sails out for the boards and got them windsurfing. Their balance wasn't always great but both of them did amazing and were actually windsurfing (by that I mean we walked them out from the shore, pointed them towards land, helped them get the sail up and then they held onto the boom and the wind pushed on the sail and took them back to the land) They both really enjoyed it and did extremely well. Then we went back to UKSA for lunch and got changed out of the wetsuits and back into nice dry clothes.
In the afternoon they decided they'd quite like a pool session (much to my relief :D ) and so we spent the afternoon in the swimming pool. We took a few kayaks in there with us to play around with and there were some balls in there too. It was just a giant splash around and lots of fun. There was a weight in the pool which was ridiculously heavy. There isn't a gentle incline to the deep end but a sudden drop towards the end of the pool; if you held onto the weight and stepped off the ledge into the deep bit it would drag you to the bottom and you could walk on the bottom. Which is very, very cool. I then took it a step further and standing with my back to the ledge I held the weight to my chest and let myself fall backwards. It's strange to feel the weight pushing you down, but if you kept your eyes open you could imagine what i would be like to be chucked into water with a heavy stone around your legs or any other heavy object you'd care to imagine. Quite a cool thing to see, especially see multiple times as I'm sure most people would only see it once... for the first and last time. It did kill my eyes however and when I got out of the pool they were horribly red and painful. Lots of washing with freshwater and trying not to rub them later and by the end of the evening they were ok. I can only remember one previous time where they were that bad, and it's not good memories. I was too young to really understand it or put up with the pain then, but I still remember sticking my head under the tap at home to try and rinse the water from my eyes, and not wanting to stick my head under the water. It was a long drawn out affair from what I remember. :S :S
And then this week we've been cat sailing, no NOT sailing little fluffy things that would scratch us into pieces if we even tried it, but catamaran sailing, i.e. two hulled dinghies. They are scary as. They go ten times faster than normal dinghies and when capsized you end up two/three metres from the water which you HAVE to fall off. There is no such thing as a "dry capsize" as far as "Cats" are concerned. There are also more ways of capsizing it. You have your basic "wind push it onto the side" capsize. You also then have pitch-poling and cartwheeling (which THANKFULLY we did neither of) Pitch poling is when both the hulls go under the water and produces the same effect as when you slam on your brakes on a bike, it flips up forward onto its front and everyone gets thrown forward. And when you're sailing in fairly gusty wind and trying to go as fast as possible (which is pretty fast in a cat) even the idea of pitch poling is terrifying. And I'm pretty sure you all know what a cartwheel is... just imagine that happening to a cat... yea... yea, i know.
Let me explain trapezing to you: you get tightly strapped up in a harness and, when out on the water, you clip onto a line which runs from the mast to the hull, put your feet on the side of the hull and push out, so the only bit of you touching the boat is your feet. And you're attached to the boat... combine this with capsizing, pitch poling or cartwheeling and you get thrown about all over the place, swung around the front of the boat or anywhere in fact. As I said we were fortunate that this never really happened to us, but still... :S :S :S There was one capsize where I fell off the hull and slammed into one of the shrouds (metal wires that hold the mast up) with my neck. It's still a little sore but there was no big damage done, thankfully it had a plastic coating. Another time the hook of my harness got caught on the side of the hull and I was left suspended in the air with no way of getting down (there was no purchase for my feet to push on to lift myself off) I did get myself off eventually but phew, close one. Had the cat fully inverted then.... Now this is all making Cat sailing sound ridiculously dangerous... it's no more dangerous than windsurfing or kayaking in whitewater or getting whacked over the head by the boom, it's just because they zip around so fast that it feels scarier when you're on them it's NOT that they're more dangerous. Well we had the assessment for the cats and I passed which is cool. So I'm cat endorsed (meaning I'm qualified to teach people to sail cats now).
At the moment there is the Isle of Wight Festival on and so yesterday I went up to Medina Valley centre to meet up with some new friends and after a little bit of food we got some canoes out and went for a paddle up the river to watch the festival for free :D :D (tickets can be over one hundred and fifty pounds) The site is about 200-300 metres away from the centre's pontoon so it wasn't a long journey. You could see the lights and one of the big screens so you could kind of watch it. Much preferable to going in though and having to pay stupid amounts of money. On the river it was really busy with loads of boats moored up and people on the decks watching, drinking and dancing... well not so much of the dancing, mainly just drinking and watching. (in that order.) Very chilled out. On the opposite bank there were crowds of people who were camped out and listening in from their free spaces. However if you put a foot on the side of the bank which the festival was on you got mobbed by security guards. Crazy.
And yea, i think that's everything I was going to say... I have three weeks left now :O :O :O three weeks of five months. It's going to be good.
What else has been going on.
Last Saturday I had a group from Aiming High, which is a project or system that allows disabled kids of greater or lesser disabilities to get a chance to do watersports for free/reduced price (one of the two, not sure which, think it's free though) I was with one other instructor, one who had been on my original instructor training at the beginning of the course and who now is working at UKSA, it was cool to work with him again. We had two kids and their parents but only the kids did the activities. It pretty much works on asking the kids what they want to do and then seeing if we can do it. In the end we took them windsurfing in the morning, which was loads of fun. We had a few water-confidence/board confidence games where they sat on the boards in the water and did some games, like playing catch, or gladiators (where they had to stand u and rock the board until one of them fell in, leaving the victor to fall in after them usually) Then we got the sails out for the boards and got them windsurfing. Their balance wasn't always great but both of them did amazing and were actually windsurfing (by that I mean we walked them out from the shore, pointed them towards land, helped them get the sail up and then they held onto the boom and the wind pushed on the sail and took them back to the land) They both really enjoyed it and did extremely well. Then we went back to UKSA for lunch and got changed out of the wetsuits and back into nice dry clothes.
In the afternoon they decided they'd quite like a pool session (much to my relief :D ) and so we spent the afternoon in the swimming pool. We took a few kayaks in there with us to play around with and there were some balls in there too. It was just a giant splash around and lots of fun. There was a weight in the pool which was ridiculously heavy. There isn't a gentle incline to the deep end but a sudden drop towards the end of the pool; if you held onto the weight and stepped off the ledge into the deep bit it would drag you to the bottom and you could walk on the bottom. Which is very, very cool. I then took it a step further and standing with my back to the ledge I held the weight to my chest and let myself fall backwards. It's strange to feel the weight pushing you down, but if you kept your eyes open you could imagine what i would be like to be chucked into water with a heavy stone around your legs or any other heavy object you'd care to imagine. Quite a cool thing to see, especially see multiple times as I'm sure most people would only see it once... for the first and last time. It did kill my eyes however and when I got out of the pool they were horribly red and painful. Lots of washing with freshwater and trying not to rub them later and by the end of the evening they were ok. I can only remember one previous time where they were that bad, and it's not good memories. I was too young to really understand it or put up with the pain then, but I still remember sticking my head under the tap at home to try and rinse the water from my eyes, and not wanting to stick my head under the water. It was a long drawn out affair from what I remember. :S :S
And then this week we've been cat sailing, no NOT sailing little fluffy things that would scratch us into pieces if we even tried it, but catamaran sailing, i.e. two hulled dinghies. They are scary as. They go ten times faster than normal dinghies and when capsized you end up two/three metres from the water which you HAVE to fall off. There is no such thing as a "dry capsize" as far as "Cats" are concerned. There are also more ways of capsizing it. You have your basic "wind push it onto the side" capsize. You also then have pitch-poling and cartwheeling (which THANKFULLY we did neither of) Pitch poling is when both the hulls go under the water and produces the same effect as when you slam on your brakes on a bike, it flips up forward onto its front and everyone gets thrown forward. And when you're sailing in fairly gusty wind and trying to go as fast as possible (which is pretty fast in a cat) even the idea of pitch poling is terrifying. And I'm pretty sure you all know what a cartwheel is... just imagine that happening to a cat... yea... yea, i know.
Let me explain trapezing to you: you get tightly strapped up in a harness and, when out on the water, you clip onto a line which runs from the mast to the hull, put your feet on the side of the hull and push out, so the only bit of you touching the boat is your feet. And you're attached to the boat... combine this with capsizing, pitch poling or cartwheeling and you get thrown about all over the place, swung around the front of the boat or anywhere in fact. As I said we were fortunate that this never really happened to us, but still... :S :S :S There was one capsize where I fell off the hull and slammed into one of the shrouds (metal wires that hold the mast up) with my neck. It's still a little sore but there was no big damage done, thankfully it had a plastic coating. Another time the hook of my harness got caught on the side of the hull and I was left suspended in the air with no way of getting down (there was no purchase for my feet to push on to lift myself off) I did get myself off eventually but phew, close one. Had the cat fully inverted then.... Now this is all making Cat sailing sound ridiculously dangerous... it's no more dangerous than windsurfing or kayaking in whitewater or getting whacked over the head by the boom, it's just because they zip around so fast that it feels scarier when you're on them it's NOT that they're more dangerous. Well we had the assessment for the cats and I passed which is cool. So I'm cat endorsed (meaning I'm qualified to teach people to sail cats now).
At the moment there is the Isle of Wight Festival on and so yesterday I went up to Medina Valley centre to meet up with some new friends and after a little bit of food we got some canoes out and went for a paddle up the river to watch the festival for free :D :D (tickets can be over one hundred and fifty pounds) The site is about 200-300 metres away from the centre's pontoon so it wasn't a long journey. You could see the lights and one of the big screens so you could kind of watch it. Much preferable to going in though and having to pay stupid amounts of money. On the river it was really busy with loads of boats moored up and people on the decks watching, drinking and dancing... well not so much of the dancing, mainly just drinking and watching. (in that order.) Very chilled out. On the opposite bank there were crowds of people who were camped out and listening in from their free spaces. However if you put a foot on the side of the bank which the festival was on you got mobbed by security guards. Crazy.
And yea, i think that's everything I was going to say... I have three weeks left now :O :O :O three weeks of five months. It's going to be good.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Another post... eventually
It's been getting longer and longer between posts. I don't know why, I just keep thinking I'll leave it till tomorrow and then.. well.. on "tomorrow" i think the same thing... :S :S
So I won't go through everything I've been doing. It would take too long and I have half an hour before the computer room gets shut.
Last week was lots of kayaking, mainly because the wind picked up and it wasn't safe enough to take kids out in dinghies or to do windsurfing. It was surprising how two groups OF KIDS, one older and one younger could be so different... and the younger group were the better one: they got on the water and were better than the older group were at the end of the session. Incredible. But still, that's how it was.
Then for the last two days I've been keelboating, getting ready for the assessment (two days long) on Thursday and Friday. There's been lots to take in and when you're trying to take it in when you're on the water it can be quite hard. Certainly today I got quite confused several times.
Oh! I know. On Monday LAST WEEK, I had a day off. However I can't drive and no one could drive me anywhere so I couldn't go windsurfing. I became so bored int he morning I resorted in going to Ops (Daily Operations i.e. the centre of all the watersports sessions throughout the day)and asking the Chief Instructor and another Senior Instructor if there were any jobs I could do.. yep, that's how bored I was. Though they seemed quite surprised when I accepted their joke of "you could wash our cars." So yep, I spent my Monday morning washing cars. Yay :D :D well it was something to do...
Then on Saturday a Church group came.. I say a church group I mean a group who were linked by their church. It wasn't a whole church, nor a church youth group. Although youthgroup and UKSA could go together very well I reckon. It was very cool to have them and due to the considerations of Steve he put me with the group for that day (their only day) and I had a great time. We did raft building in the morning, which was well good, though it descended rapidly into a big game of pirates towards the end and the adult team actually dismantled our (kids team) raft. Don't worry, it backfired, as the next race was one where we had to race each others rafts (not so easy to do for the adults who only had a half-assembled remnant to paddle). Then in the afternoon we walked into town and got the most amazing milkshakes ever. Then on o the waterfront and a spot of crabbing.. without much luck I'm afraid. We caught a few strange fish but the nearest we got to catching a crab was when I (yes ME :D :D) hauled up my line and there was a whopper crab, with a shell as big as my outstretched handspan, hanging on it. Unfortunately I was so surprised and excited that I dropped it again.. before anyone could see it... thankfully my quick thinking saved the day; I lowered the line directly where the crab had hit the water and caught it again, giving other people in the group a sight as proof that I had caught it, even if I still didn't get it half way up the wall before it detached itself again... and that was crabbing. Then it was the end of the day.
Also on that day (Saturday) was Dr Who. Those of you who watched it: WHAT!?!?!?! are they intending to leave us with that for another few months and then play the rest of the series later on in the year!?!?!?! that's crazy!!! >:( >:( grrr... the ending was good... the rest of the episode average. Matt Smith's acting... excellent :D :D
Not much else has really happened..... I had a good chat with a certain Jono Payne yesterday, which was nice. I stood on the decking overlooking the sunset on the water of the river Medina and it was rather splendid. I think Joanna may well think there is some sort of conspiracy going on though... the second time in two weeks when a member of my family has got Jono out of washing up.... oops... sorry.
Right time to go.
Night.
So I won't go through everything I've been doing. It would take too long and I have half an hour before the computer room gets shut.
Last week was lots of kayaking, mainly because the wind picked up and it wasn't safe enough to take kids out in dinghies or to do windsurfing. It was surprising how two groups OF KIDS, one older and one younger could be so different... and the younger group were the better one: they got on the water and were better than the older group were at the end of the session. Incredible. But still, that's how it was.
Then for the last two days I've been keelboating, getting ready for the assessment (two days long) on Thursday and Friday. There's been lots to take in and when you're trying to take it in when you're on the water it can be quite hard. Certainly today I got quite confused several times.
Oh! I know. On Monday LAST WEEK, I had a day off. However I can't drive and no one could drive me anywhere so I couldn't go windsurfing. I became so bored int he morning I resorted in going to Ops (Daily Operations i.e. the centre of all the watersports sessions throughout the day)and asking the Chief Instructor and another Senior Instructor if there were any jobs I could do.. yep, that's how bored I was. Though they seemed quite surprised when I accepted their joke of "you could wash our cars." So yep, I spent my Monday morning washing cars. Yay :D :D well it was something to do...
Then on Saturday a Church group came.. I say a church group I mean a group who were linked by their church. It wasn't a whole church, nor a church youth group. Although youthgroup and UKSA could go together very well I reckon. It was very cool to have them and due to the considerations of Steve he put me with the group for that day (their only day) and I had a great time. We did raft building in the morning, which was well good, though it descended rapidly into a big game of pirates towards the end and the adult team actually dismantled our (kids team) raft. Don't worry, it backfired, as the next race was one where we had to race each others rafts (not so easy to do for the adults who only had a half-assembled remnant to paddle). Then in the afternoon we walked into town and got the most amazing milkshakes ever. Then on o the waterfront and a spot of crabbing.. without much luck I'm afraid. We caught a few strange fish but the nearest we got to catching a crab was when I (yes ME :D :D) hauled up my line and there was a whopper crab, with a shell as big as my outstretched handspan, hanging on it. Unfortunately I was so surprised and excited that I dropped it again.. before anyone could see it... thankfully my quick thinking saved the day; I lowered the line directly where the crab had hit the water and caught it again, giving other people in the group a sight as proof that I had caught it, even if I still didn't get it half way up the wall before it detached itself again... and that was crabbing. Then it was the end of the day.
Also on that day (Saturday) was Dr Who. Those of you who watched it: WHAT!?!?!?! are they intending to leave us with that for another few months and then play the rest of the series later on in the year!?!?!?! that's crazy!!! >:( >:( grrr... the ending was good... the rest of the episode average. Matt Smith's acting... excellent :D :D
Not much else has really happened..... I had a good chat with a certain Jono Payne yesterday, which was nice. I stood on the decking overlooking the sunset on the water of the river Medina and it was rather splendid. I think Joanna may well think there is some sort of conspiracy going on though... the second time in two weeks when a member of my family has got Jono out of washing up.... oops... sorry.
Right time to go.
Night.
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Navigate here...
This week has been taken up by Navigation. That is five days solid theory; in fact much of it reminded me of maths... so five days solid of maths lessons... well, more interesting than that, but in essence, that is what it was. The first day was pretty much all covering what we'd been told before, however we had three other peeps doing a different course doing it with us, and they were all starting from a pretty basic level. In truth, we all were, but the three of us on our course probably had a better foundational/background knowledge.
We were doing loads of chartwork and plotting courses, which sounds simple (drawing a line between two points) until you then realise you've got to account for how the tide will be moving you and affecting where yo end up, on top of that you then have to adjust your course to allow for leeway (how the wind/waves knock you off course) and all the calculations and notations for everything add up to create a rather complex and large topic to get your head around. Other than chartwork, which also included pinpointing your position on the sea, variation, deviation and such abbreviations as SOG, CTS, DR, EP, we also looked at the subjects of meteorology, tides (in even more depth, i.e. how to work out what is too shallow for your vessel, how to extrapolate information from a primary port to work out the tidal heights and times of a secondary port, how to work out how high a tide will be at any given time, involving graphs of tidal height, how strong a tide will be at any given time, the direction of a tide and how to account for it when planning a passage) sound signals (day and night/fog), day signals, light signals and patterns, buoys (IALA A and B) distress signals, collision regulations... etc...
So yea, lots and lots of information, however, it's required little effort on my part to grasp and learn it. It has all just made sense and clicked together, plus there is something quite cool (in a sad way) of standing over a chart with a pair of dividers, a plotter and a pencil and working out your course... even if it was on a training chart with fake names and places.
This morning didn't feel like I was going to have two one and a half hour exams.... but I did feel like I was joining in with everyone else who is having exams at the moment. I think my exams were probably the best though.... if you finish early you can go, four questions, you could stand up, results before leaving the exam room, simple... yep, everything you could ever want in an exam was right there. And yes, in that first exam I was there for an hour and got 100% :D :D :D :D :D I have never got 100% in a proper exam before (if you could call this a PROPER exam lol) unless you count that fluke at GCSE where I somehow got 100/100 UMS marks for all my science papers.... I'm not complaining but I was pretty sure there had been a mistake or they'd confused my results with someone elses.... ah well
In the afternoon those of us on the watersports course got the second test, the others will get it when they do the practical side of the course next week, we only get the theory. This turned out not to be a one and a half hour written exam but an appraisal and evaluation of knowledge through spoken answers. Basically our teacher was there and read out the questions which formed the written paper we technically should have been doing and we answered verbally, together, to confirm to him that we knew everything that was needed to pass. I'm sure I don't need to say that he was satisfied and passed us. So YAY!! :D :D :D :D And big respects to all you people out there slogging through hundreds of exams. I'm here hoping you do well.
What else has gone on this week... Cell group on Wednesday as normal, all good. Friday I had Catalyst Plus, which also was good. I ended up walking to it because I didn't want to get hot and sweaty on my bike; also I knew that Christians being Christians I could almost CERTAINLY get a lift back if I didn't have the baggage of a bike... either that or I'd have a long, cold walk home late at night to ponder my stereotypical assumptions of Christians and how they might need adjusting ;) Thankfully they held out and I got a lift home :D :D :D lol
Yesterday I went to Ryde for the first time to a church service called Connect2 (at least I'm pretty sure it was called that) that was all good. Some of the youth peeps I know have a band which does worship and hey were playing, so I was mostly going to support them. They're a great bunch and it will be well cool to see where this leads them and how they'll grow. I also wonder if once upon a time certain elder friends of mine started their journey in a similar place.
What else have i done this week... oh I KNOW! I went to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. And, I'm relieved to say, it was well worth the watch. It was rather good. The only thing I think could have been improved on (other than a few scenes which were a bit pointless - MINORITY/FEW though they were) was it could have done with a central main character. There were main characters, defo, but one central character who was a goody... it was kind of supposed to be Jack I felt, but I don't really think Jack is a character who works well being the centre of the story, which is why in the original trilogy you had Will. Jack jumps everywhere, it's almost confusing sometimes. ON the other hand, Depp did marvelously well and Jack was just as he always was. I really liked the film: I'd buy it. Oh and you didn't necessarily NEED to have watched the first three to see this one... though I'd recommend seeing the first one just because it's amazing and will give you all the characters... having said that... seeing the trilogy first would probably be HELPFUL... oh and an extra note... the last line is a classic (maybe cliched, but made to be "not cringey") and is rather wonderful.
So yep that's been my week... or highlights of anyway... this coming week it's back to assisting/instructing after a day off tomorrow. Then sometime towards the end of the week we start our keelboating endorsement training (three days practising/two days assessment) which is all cool... all cool.... So I'll see when I can next gather myself to blog... until then... :D
We were doing loads of chartwork and plotting courses, which sounds simple (drawing a line between two points) until you then realise you've got to account for how the tide will be moving you and affecting where yo end up, on top of that you then have to adjust your course to allow for leeway (how the wind/waves knock you off course) and all the calculations and notations for everything add up to create a rather complex and large topic to get your head around. Other than chartwork, which also included pinpointing your position on the sea, variation, deviation and such abbreviations as SOG, CTS, DR, EP, we also looked at the subjects of meteorology, tides (in even more depth, i.e. how to work out what is too shallow for your vessel, how to extrapolate information from a primary port to work out the tidal heights and times of a secondary port, how to work out how high a tide will be at any given time, involving graphs of tidal height, how strong a tide will be at any given time, the direction of a tide and how to account for it when planning a passage) sound signals (day and night/fog), day signals, light signals and patterns, buoys (IALA A and B) distress signals, collision regulations... etc...
So yea, lots and lots of information, however, it's required little effort on my part to grasp and learn it. It has all just made sense and clicked together, plus there is something quite cool (in a sad way) of standing over a chart with a pair of dividers, a plotter and a pencil and working out your course... even if it was on a training chart with fake names and places.
This morning didn't feel like I was going to have two one and a half hour exams.... but I did feel like I was joining in with everyone else who is having exams at the moment. I think my exams were probably the best though.... if you finish early you can go, four questions, you could stand up, results before leaving the exam room, simple... yep, everything you could ever want in an exam was right there. And yes, in that first exam I was there for an hour and got 100% :D :D :D :D :D I have never got 100% in a proper exam before (if you could call this a PROPER exam lol) unless you count that fluke at GCSE where I somehow got 100/100 UMS marks for all my science papers.... I'm not complaining but I was pretty sure there had been a mistake or they'd confused my results with someone elses.... ah well
In the afternoon those of us on the watersports course got the second test, the others will get it when they do the practical side of the course next week, we only get the theory. This turned out not to be a one and a half hour written exam but an appraisal and evaluation of knowledge through spoken answers. Basically our teacher was there and read out the questions which formed the written paper we technically should have been doing and we answered verbally, together, to confirm to him that we knew everything that was needed to pass. I'm sure I don't need to say that he was satisfied and passed us. So YAY!! :D :D :D :D And big respects to all you people out there slogging through hundreds of exams. I'm here hoping you do well.
What else has gone on this week... Cell group on Wednesday as normal, all good. Friday I had Catalyst Plus, which also was good. I ended up walking to it because I didn't want to get hot and sweaty on my bike; also I knew that Christians being Christians I could almost CERTAINLY get a lift back if I didn't have the baggage of a bike... either that or I'd have a long, cold walk home late at night to ponder my stereotypical assumptions of Christians and how they might need adjusting ;) Thankfully they held out and I got a lift home :D :D :D lol
Yesterday I went to Ryde for the first time to a church service called Connect2 (at least I'm pretty sure it was called that) that was all good. Some of the youth peeps I know have a band which does worship and hey were playing, so I was mostly going to support them. They're a great bunch and it will be well cool to see where this leads them and how they'll grow. I also wonder if once upon a time certain elder friends of mine started their journey in a similar place.
What else have i done this week... oh I KNOW! I went to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. And, I'm relieved to say, it was well worth the watch. It was rather good. The only thing I think could have been improved on (other than a few scenes which were a bit pointless - MINORITY/FEW though they were) was it could have done with a central main character. There were main characters, defo, but one central character who was a goody... it was kind of supposed to be Jack I felt, but I don't really think Jack is a character who works well being the centre of the story, which is why in the original trilogy you had Will. Jack jumps everywhere, it's almost confusing sometimes. ON the other hand, Depp did marvelously well and Jack was just as he always was. I really liked the film: I'd buy it. Oh and you didn't necessarily NEED to have watched the first three to see this one... though I'd recommend seeing the first one just because it's amazing and will give you all the characters... having said that... seeing the trilogy first would probably be HELPFUL... oh and an extra note... the last line is a classic (maybe cliched, but made to be "not cringey") and is rather wonderful.
So yep that's been my week... or highlights of anyway... this coming week it's back to assisting/instructing after a day off tomorrow. Then sometime towards the end of the week we start our keelboating endorsement training (three days practising/two days assessment) which is all cool... all cool.... So I'll see when I can next gather myself to blog... until then... :D
Monday, 16 May 2011
Since the last time...
I realise that it has been a few days since my last post, but they have been full of stuff...
Friday
We had a day off on Friday, which was great. I got up so that I wouldn't miss breakfast and once up I decided not to waste he day but to do something. That something ended up being cycling down to Newport and helping set up for Catalyst, which - if you remember - is the Praise Night equivalent on IOW. It was great fun and included climbing up ladders to hang up massive banners, setting up all the tech stuff, playing loads of music, chatting with friends, going to the local Christian bookstore and getting lots of books and CDs to sell in the evening, and generally having a good time.
Then I cycled back, on both cycle rides I passed police who were entrenched on a bridge overlooking some marshes. I later looked on the local news to find out why there were news reporters and police there and it turns out they were searching for a body of a teenager who disappeared in 1996 (I was FOUR!!). I'm very glad I later found out that he'd actually disappeared on the waterfront not on the cycle path, it did worry me just a LITTLE that I'd been cycling on the cyclepath in the dark on my own that someone had (I thought) been "disappeared" on. I don't know if they found anything or not.
In the afternoon I went down to town, bought some new shoes, a plain lunch of pita read and water (which was genuinely sooo good), and some stationary I'd been needing for a while. Taking it slowly it took an hour or so, then I came back and chilled out in the computer room until dinner, and then it was time to go catch my lift back to Newport and Catalyst
At Catalyst there was a group from BMS there who'd come back from a project (I believe in India) and they were pretty much leading it. So that was good fun.
Saturday
Saturday was back to work experience. I was with a group from Surrey (near Guildford, ie near home) and we did a session out just beyond Cowes Harbour with the Doublehanders (Visions if you remember my mention of them from when I was dinghy sailing) the Cats (ie multihulls/Catamarans) and Picos (again think back to when I was dinghy sailing). Once more I was in a safety boat in the morning, this time driving, and I was with the Vision session (we took out three). I just followed them around and made sure if they needed any help they had it. I also had to facilitate swapping kids so that they all had a go on them. It was great fun and just that morning of powerboating increased (I felt) my confidence and ability in it. We went to the beach for lunch and the kids played around. The tide went out EXTREMELY fast, however, and we ended up making a rather hurried rush back to the boats to save them from becoming beached. Even then we had to leave one boat on the mud and come back for it later on when the tide came in. In the afternoon I was on one of the visions with three kids, three boys who were forever asking if we could capsize and then forever worrying about what to do should we capsize. (I didn't capsize, even if it was the first time I'd sailed in almost two months) It was a great day overall and I had loads of fun. (a recurring statement, surprisingly enough.)
Sunday
I was with the same group of kids on Sunday as I was on Saturday. the were leaving at 2.30 though and so we only had a morning session. This time the visions stayed on land and we took more picos out. One of the "Cats" was also left behind. I was on a safety boat with the large pico session. this ended up involving helping them rig (by yelling instructions at them; you have to yell to be heard, it's really not because I got angry), doing a little bit of coaching to improve their sailing, watching out for that stray pico that would end up ridiculously far away from the main group, keeping an eye on any picos that might stray too close to the wall, towing picos away form the wall when they did get too close, helping picos get upwind (much more difficult than it sounds when your kids have done none of the theory and know relatively nothing about sailing) - having said that I spoke to one of the more experienced instructors today and they gave a solution which was so simple and easy I wondered how stupid I must have been not to think of it... drive in front of them and get them to follow you, then you don't need to explain in child's language about the no go zone or a close hauled sailing position, and having more fun.
In the afternoon, once they'd gone, we finished tidying up all the picos, then were tidying the site for an hour/hour and a half. Then we were let off early WOOO!! at the cost of owing our Chief Instructor a favour... ominous indeed. lol
In the evening some of the youth from various churches I know had a worship evening/gig on in Shanklin so I grabbed dinner extremely quickly and then caught a bus... no one had warned me how bad the buses are here... I expected to be half an hour late... which is reasonable... the bus journey ended up taking one and a half hours. I set of at 6-ish. The event started at 6.30. I got there at 8. (don't do the maths i know it doesn't add up and that's because this is a summarised version with rounded numbers.) I caught the last song... I was not happy with the buses AT ALL. At least there was free cake to be had aplenty :D :D And I met some new friends, who were friends of Simon and Hannah. And ended up going home with Simon (local youthworker) and them and chatting for a while then going with Simon to take them to the ferry back to the mainland. It was great meeting them and definitely made up for catching only the last song of the event. And on the upside they have another event this Saturday in Ryde, so I'll go along to that :D
Monday
Today was half and half. New groups were arriving so for the morning we were doing pretty much nothing. We checked their rooms to make sure they were clean and ready for them, we got their lunches ready, we sorted out what we'd do with them in the afternoon. Then things began to pick up when we went to get them. They are from Surrey again, and near Redhill again, which is really cool. We did some wet games with them (getting them to chuck cups of water at each other whilst blindfolded, fill up a pole covered in holes by plugging the holes with their fingers, play games whilst standing under the showers, which could be turned on if they weren't going fast enough or did something wrong), which was amazingly fun, just having a splash around and a laugh and then did a pontoon jump, which was also great fun. At one point there was even a small waterfight with the hoses, which was immense also.
Then in the evening I volunteered to help with their evening session as well. We walked up to a nearby park and did some relay races in groups. Then all the girls wanted to play rounders and all the guys wanted to play.. no prizes for guessing... football. So the other two instructors took football and I was left to run the rounders... thank goodness I listened in school and didn't skive P.E. :D :D :D After a while rounders degenerated into a prolonged toilet break (girls... eh? :P) and then into a rather fun game of Frisbee. It was great fun and we were all laughing loads. Then a nice walk back and I came into the computer room (where I am now) to write this.
It's been long, yep, but I've had a lot to cover. So, hope you like the up date. It's been great fun so far as I thought it would be. I have one more day work experience and then five days of theoretical navigation study. So yea.. going to be an interesting week. This group is amazing though and I hope I'm with them again tomorrow.
Friday
We had a day off on Friday, which was great. I got up so that I wouldn't miss breakfast and once up I decided not to waste he day but to do something. That something ended up being cycling down to Newport and helping set up for Catalyst, which - if you remember - is the Praise Night equivalent on IOW. It was great fun and included climbing up ladders to hang up massive banners, setting up all the tech stuff, playing loads of music, chatting with friends, going to the local Christian bookstore and getting lots of books and CDs to sell in the evening, and generally having a good time.
Then I cycled back, on both cycle rides I passed police who were entrenched on a bridge overlooking some marshes. I later looked on the local news to find out why there were news reporters and police there and it turns out they were searching for a body of a teenager who disappeared in 1996 (I was FOUR!!). I'm very glad I later found out that he'd actually disappeared on the waterfront not on the cycle path, it did worry me just a LITTLE that I'd been cycling on the cyclepath in the dark on my own that someone had (I thought) been "disappeared" on. I don't know if they found anything or not.
In the afternoon I went down to town, bought some new shoes, a plain lunch of pita read and water (which was genuinely sooo good), and some stationary I'd been needing for a while. Taking it slowly it took an hour or so, then I came back and chilled out in the computer room until dinner, and then it was time to go catch my lift back to Newport and Catalyst
At Catalyst there was a group from BMS there who'd come back from a project (I believe in India) and they were pretty much leading it. So that was good fun.
Saturday
Saturday was back to work experience. I was with a group from Surrey (near Guildford, ie near home) and we did a session out just beyond Cowes Harbour with the Doublehanders (Visions if you remember my mention of them from when I was dinghy sailing) the Cats (ie multihulls/Catamarans) and Picos (again think back to when I was dinghy sailing). Once more I was in a safety boat in the morning, this time driving, and I was with the Vision session (we took out three). I just followed them around and made sure if they needed any help they had it. I also had to facilitate swapping kids so that they all had a go on them. It was great fun and just that morning of powerboating increased (I felt) my confidence and ability in it. We went to the beach for lunch and the kids played around. The tide went out EXTREMELY fast, however, and we ended up making a rather hurried rush back to the boats to save them from becoming beached. Even then we had to leave one boat on the mud and come back for it later on when the tide came in. In the afternoon I was on one of the visions with three kids, three boys who were forever asking if we could capsize and then forever worrying about what to do should we capsize. (I didn't capsize, even if it was the first time I'd sailed in almost two months) It was a great day overall and I had loads of fun. (a recurring statement, surprisingly enough.)
Sunday
I was with the same group of kids on Sunday as I was on Saturday. the were leaving at 2.30 though and so we only had a morning session. This time the visions stayed on land and we took more picos out. One of the "Cats" was also left behind. I was on a safety boat with the large pico session. this ended up involving helping them rig (by yelling instructions at them; you have to yell to be heard, it's really not because I got angry), doing a little bit of coaching to improve their sailing, watching out for that stray pico that would end up ridiculously far away from the main group, keeping an eye on any picos that might stray too close to the wall, towing picos away form the wall when they did get too close, helping picos get upwind (much more difficult than it sounds when your kids have done none of the theory and know relatively nothing about sailing) - having said that I spoke to one of the more experienced instructors today and they gave a solution which was so simple and easy I wondered how stupid I must have been not to think of it... drive in front of them and get them to follow you, then you don't need to explain in child's language about the no go zone or a close hauled sailing position, and having more fun.
In the afternoon, once they'd gone, we finished tidying up all the picos, then were tidying the site for an hour/hour and a half. Then we were let off early WOOO!! at the cost of owing our Chief Instructor a favour... ominous indeed. lol
In the evening some of the youth from various churches I know had a worship evening/gig on in Shanklin so I grabbed dinner extremely quickly and then caught a bus... no one had warned me how bad the buses are here... I expected to be half an hour late... which is reasonable... the bus journey ended up taking one and a half hours. I set of at 6-ish. The event started at 6.30. I got there at 8. (don't do the maths i know it doesn't add up and that's because this is a summarised version with rounded numbers.) I caught the last song... I was not happy with the buses AT ALL. At least there was free cake to be had aplenty :D :D And I met some new friends, who were friends of Simon and Hannah. And ended up going home with Simon (local youthworker) and them and chatting for a while then going with Simon to take them to the ferry back to the mainland. It was great meeting them and definitely made up for catching only the last song of the event. And on the upside they have another event this Saturday in Ryde, so I'll go along to that :D
Monday
Today was half and half. New groups were arriving so for the morning we were doing pretty much nothing. We checked their rooms to make sure they were clean and ready for them, we got their lunches ready, we sorted out what we'd do with them in the afternoon. Then things began to pick up when we went to get them. They are from Surrey again, and near Redhill again, which is really cool. We did some wet games with them (getting them to chuck cups of water at each other whilst blindfolded, fill up a pole covered in holes by plugging the holes with their fingers, play games whilst standing under the showers, which could be turned on if they weren't going fast enough or did something wrong), which was amazingly fun, just having a splash around and a laugh and then did a pontoon jump, which was also great fun. At one point there was even a small waterfight with the hoses, which was immense also.
Then in the evening I volunteered to help with their evening session as well. We walked up to a nearby park and did some relay races in groups. Then all the girls wanted to play rounders and all the guys wanted to play.. no prizes for guessing... football. So the other two instructors took football and I was left to run the rounders... thank goodness I listened in school and didn't skive P.E. :D :D :D After a while rounders degenerated into a prolonged toilet break (girls... eh? :P) and then into a rather fun game of Frisbee. It was great fun and we were all laughing loads. Then a nice walk back and I came into the computer room (where I am now) to write this.
It's been long, yep, but I've had a lot to cover. So, hope you like the up date. It's been great fun so far as I thought it would be. I have one more day work experience and then five days of theoretical navigation study. So yea.. going to be an interesting week. This group is amazing though and I hope I'm with them again tomorrow.
Thursday, 12 May 2011
In which I cover the first four days of this week
Day One - Monday 9th
So this was the first day of the final part/section of our course and we began well: with a familiar face. Steve Jackson, head dinghy Instructor at UKSA and also one of the two instructors we've had nearly all the way through from beginning to end, was our instructor. We were down for just doing a welcome to UKSA etc etc. HOWEVER, as we both have already been at UKSA for months already this was unnecessary and we therefore ended going for a powerboat trip down to Lymington. We spent an hour or so planning out our course, route etc and taking into considerations tides and weather. Then we took out the new coach boat, so far some of the only people to have driven it (to my knowledge). Tom drove us up there, I drove back and in the middle we had lunch. Compared to our normal safety RIBs it is fast... we both managed to get up to 40 knots....... yep, it was well fun and it was good practise too. To finish the day we helped with the site tidy-up which is exactly as it says... make everything look pristine. (some might say shipshape)
Day Two - Tuesday 10th
This was an interesting day. In the morning we had "industry guidance" and we got some help with our CVs and stuff. As we both, however, had pretty decent CVs already there wasn't much to do and we were finished by lunch. In the afternoon after inquiring as to the vacancy of any jobs that needed doing (there was nothing) I spent it reading and finished my third and final book just within the 36 hour mark after buying. That's about a book a day, however, i had finished the first two books in roughly the first 24 hours (26 hours) and I did pretty much no reading on the Monday.... or Sunday morning. reading time was probably... hmmmm.... altogether somewhere around the 24 hour mark. Not bad going... and I'm looking forward to rereading all of them. I'm also now interested in what the film versions of "I am number four" and "The Eagle of the Ninth" are like.
Day Three - Wednesday 11th
Day three heralded our first day of assisting in sessions and the two sessions we helped out in were both in areas we weren't qualified to instruct in. The first was keelboating, and, in the afternoon, multihull-ing. Both were fun. In the keelboats I went with Martin, another familiar face, and I just helped out. They're like large dinghies to be perfectly fair and apart from a few minor differences it went well and smoothly. No one was doing ay instructing, it was more of an experience-thing for the kids instead of a lesson. In the afternoon me and Tom were together in a powerboat, all I did that afternoon was sit in the powerboat. Which was surprisingly good fun, just to be watching and smiling. So that was all good. In the evening I went down to Newport for cell and saw everyone again, which was great. We also went down to the youth cafe for a bit and I said hello again to some other friends. Then we went back and had "cell proper" with question of the week and everything. We finished late as we'd started later and I found myself once again cycling back in pitch blackness (other than my light) at about 11.20 at night. I got in at about quarter to twelve and was very eager at that point to then jump into my bed, which I promptly did.
Day Four - Thursday 12th
We were with the same group again today, and there is something that I didn't mention about this group: they're disabled. It's been challenging but so much fun to be working with them. there are a number of wheelchair users and we've been lifting them in and out of their wheelchairs to get them onto boats and rafts over the last couple of days. The hardest part about it is the lack of response. You can only hold conversations with a couple of them and even then it's patchy sometimes. But don't get me wrong it's been an amazing group, and they were, individually, great kids/young people. Today was a bit of a splurge of activities. In the morning we instructors built a raft before the session began and then we had various kids being paddled around on it. We got some open-hull kayaks out and an instructor and a leader would take a kid out between them. Then there was a bit of dinghy sailing where we attached a tow line to the bow painter of a pico and then, with a five second demo/tuition on how to use a rudder we sent them off, some individually, some with one of the group leaders, for a short sail in the "pond" that is to say the water directly in front of UKSA. Then they'd be pulled back in with the tow rope. It was great fun and we all were switching different activities. Paddling a fully loaded raft around was the hardest thing to do, especially with only two paddlers. The most interesting part was supporting one of the wheelchair users in a kayak, I call "them" that but not because that's how I think of them, just so that I'm not saying their name. We had another instructor paddling at the front and all I had to do was sit with this person on my lap and talk to them, though there was little response and no verbal response from them at all.
It's been a great experience, and I'm really loving it. They leave tomorrow sadly, but as a first-time group it's been pretty amazing.
And then, finally, tomorrow, I believe that I have a day off :D :D Now how to spend it now I have no books.... hmmm.... I'll have to let you know tomorrow...
So this was the first day of the final part/section of our course and we began well: with a familiar face. Steve Jackson, head dinghy Instructor at UKSA and also one of the two instructors we've had nearly all the way through from beginning to end, was our instructor. We were down for just doing a welcome to UKSA etc etc. HOWEVER, as we both have already been at UKSA for months already this was unnecessary and we therefore ended going for a powerboat trip down to Lymington. We spent an hour or so planning out our course, route etc and taking into considerations tides and weather. Then we took out the new coach boat, so far some of the only people to have driven it (to my knowledge). Tom drove us up there, I drove back and in the middle we had lunch. Compared to our normal safety RIBs it is fast... we both managed to get up to 40 knots....... yep, it was well fun and it was good practise too. To finish the day we helped with the site tidy-up which is exactly as it says... make everything look pristine. (some might say shipshape)
Day Two - Tuesday 10th
This was an interesting day. In the morning we had "industry guidance" and we got some help with our CVs and stuff. As we both, however, had pretty decent CVs already there wasn't much to do and we were finished by lunch. In the afternoon after inquiring as to the vacancy of any jobs that needed doing (there was nothing) I spent it reading and finished my third and final book just within the 36 hour mark after buying. That's about a book a day, however, i had finished the first two books in roughly the first 24 hours (26 hours) and I did pretty much no reading on the Monday.... or Sunday morning. reading time was probably... hmmmm.... altogether somewhere around the 24 hour mark. Not bad going... and I'm looking forward to rereading all of them. I'm also now interested in what the film versions of "I am number four" and "The Eagle of the Ninth" are like.
Day Three - Wednesday 11th
Day three heralded our first day of assisting in sessions and the two sessions we helped out in were both in areas we weren't qualified to instruct in. The first was keelboating, and, in the afternoon, multihull-ing. Both were fun. In the keelboats I went with Martin, another familiar face, and I just helped out. They're like large dinghies to be perfectly fair and apart from a few minor differences it went well and smoothly. No one was doing ay instructing, it was more of an experience-thing for the kids instead of a lesson. In the afternoon me and Tom were together in a powerboat, all I did that afternoon was sit in the powerboat. Which was surprisingly good fun, just to be watching and smiling. So that was all good. In the evening I went down to Newport for cell and saw everyone again, which was great. We also went down to the youth cafe for a bit and I said hello again to some other friends. Then we went back and had "cell proper" with question of the week and everything. We finished late as we'd started later and I found myself once again cycling back in pitch blackness (other than my light) at about 11.20 at night. I got in at about quarter to twelve and was very eager at that point to then jump into my bed, which I promptly did.
Day Four - Thursday 12th
We were with the same group again today, and there is something that I didn't mention about this group: they're disabled. It's been challenging but so much fun to be working with them. there are a number of wheelchair users and we've been lifting them in and out of their wheelchairs to get them onto boats and rafts over the last couple of days. The hardest part about it is the lack of response. You can only hold conversations with a couple of them and even then it's patchy sometimes. But don't get me wrong it's been an amazing group, and they were, individually, great kids/young people. Today was a bit of a splurge of activities. In the morning we instructors built a raft before the session began and then we had various kids being paddled around on it. We got some open-hull kayaks out and an instructor and a leader would take a kid out between them. Then there was a bit of dinghy sailing where we attached a tow line to the bow painter of a pico and then, with a five second demo/tuition on how to use a rudder we sent them off, some individually, some with one of the group leaders, for a short sail in the "pond" that is to say the water directly in front of UKSA. Then they'd be pulled back in with the tow rope. It was great fun and we all were switching different activities. Paddling a fully loaded raft around was the hardest thing to do, especially with only two paddlers. The most interesting part was supporting one of the wheelchair users in a kayak, I call "them" that but not because that's how I think of them, just so that I'm not saying their name. We had another instructor paddling at the front and all I had to do was sit with this person on my lap and talk to them, though there was little response and no verbal response from them at all.
It's been a great experience, and I'm really loving it. They leave tomorrow sadly, but as a first-time group it's been pretty amazing.
And then, finally, tomorrow, I believe that I have a day off :D :D Now how to spend it now I have no books.... hmmm.... I'll have to let you know tomorrow...
Sunday, 8 May 2011
More Reading...
Had a day off today, good to get to church (first time in four/five weeks) and see everyone again. Even better that everyone remembered me :D then spent the afternoon of the day off reading... and I have finished book 2 of three (not a series). So the first book I read was Scorpia Rising; I'd only read it if I'd read the others in the Alex Rider series, aimed for older kids/younger teenagers. This book, however, "I Am Number Four" could have gone one of two ways. It could have been brilliant or it could have been shocking. It was actually brilliant. The style of writing is an uncommon one (first person) but through the whole book it worked well. Typicalised by short, simple/compound sentences it's not in the literary style of a writer like Tolkien, for instance (how many books are) but the plot was original and gripping. It was not absurd and it stuck to the author's created rules for the heroes (who are aliens) i.e. it did not halfway through suddenly introduce a new "rule" like "they're immortal and don't need sleep or water if they run round in a circle three times clucking like a chicken" or anything ridiculous, they could be hurt and they weren't invincible, very important characteristics for heroes and the only bad side to the book is the strange paragraph at the beginning where it claims (before the story has started) to be telling completely true facts. Call me cynical, but i think that if the events in the books are true... well I'll go no further; needless to say that for me it is nothing more than fiction - albeit a jolly good fiction. Loved the originality of the planets, worlds, situation and plot, though some might argue it's a typical and cliched plot.
The next book to read is on called The Eagle, which has recently had the prestige of being made into a film... so hopefully that too will be well worth the buy...
For now, I'm the one who's saying "bye" though, as I end this and go to sleep. Next and final part of the course starts tomorrow and it's gonna be good :D
The next book to read is on called The Eagle, which has recently had the prestige of being made into a film... so hopefully that too will be well worth the buy...
For now, I'm the one who's saying "bye" though, as I end this and go to sleep. Next and final part of the course starts tomorrow and it's gonna be good :D
Saturday, 7 May 2011
A Windsurf Instructor Reads?
So today has been the last of many days and the first of many more. So is everyday, come to think about it, but maybe some days more so than others. I finished the final part of the core section of my course today and am now qualified as a windsurfing instructor. The strange difference of the reactions in my thoughts between "I've passed" and "I'm a windsurf instructor" is strangely considerable, he second one eliciting much more excitement and the first producing almost no response at all.
We finished about twelve o'clock and most of the people on the course went home immediately, some will be back in a few weeks to work here so it wasn't goodbye forever, but it was still goodbye. The course was over. The next course (the next PART of the course for me) starts on Monday. This gives me Sunday free, YAY!! and I intend to make full use of being allowed the luxury of going to church in the morning tomorrow.
This afternoon, however, me and a friend went out to Newport. We had a quick lunch there. McDonalds, which is a novelty to us, as there is no McDonalds in Cowes. However I possibly made my first mistake when I went into waterstones. I happened to see a new book... a book I've been waiting for for quite a while... yes, though it is slightly embarrassing this is the last book for definite in the series (so the cover assures me) i will tell you that the last book in the Alex Rider series is now out and I am the new owner of a copy of it. As it was in a 3 for 2 offer though I then got two more books... sigh... I had my first proper reading sesh in a long time this afternoon and am now between a quarter and a third of the way through the book. :D :D :D :D i don't think I mentioned (although I might have) that I stayed up till 1-ish the other night reading... ahhhh to be reading again :D :D :D good times. i reckon if i had three straight days off I'd have those three books finished. easy. however I don't :( :( ah well.. probably for the best...
On the other hand, a windsurf instructor reading? I think I must be quite an unconventional windsurf instructor...
We finished about twelve o'clock and most of the people on the course went home immediately, some will be back in a few weeks to work here so it wasn't goodbye forever, but it was still goodbye. The course was over. The next course (the next PART of the course for me) starts on Monday. This gives me Sunday free, YAY!! and I intend to make full use of being allowed the luxury of going to church in the morning tomorrow.
This afternoon, however, me and a friend went out to Newport. We had a quick lunch there. McDonalds, which is a novelty to us, as there is no McDonalds in Cowes. However I possibly made my first mistake when I went into waterstones. I happened to see a new book... a book I've been waiting for for quite a while... yes, though it is slightly embarrassing this is the last book for definite in the series (so the cover assures me) i will tell you that the last book in the Alex Rider series is now out and I am the new owner of a copy of it. As it was in a 3 for 2 offer though I then got two more books... sigh... I had my first proper reading sesh in a long time this afternoon and am now between a quarter and a third of the way through the book. :D :D :D :D i don't think I mentioned (although I might have) that I stayed up till 1-ish the other night reading... ahhhh to be reading again :D :D :D good times. i reckon if i had three straight days off I'd have those three books finished. easy. however I don't :( :( ah well.. probably for the best...
On the other hand, a windsurf instructor reading? I think I must be quite an unconventional windsurf instructor...
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Er... I don't know what to entitle this one...
I'm out of practice. I forgot to blog yesterday, sorry.
Having said that yesterday was a long, long day, and fairly full, including a sprint-cycle over to Newport to a nonexistent cell group and a slightly more sedate cycle back home shortly afterwards. Getting time to read here is hard, I was up till the early morning on Tuesday reading a new book and I would have done that last night too had I not fallen asleep whilst mentally debating whether to have a small snack.
We've not being doing much personal windsurfing this week, it's all been for the purpose of demonstrating to beginners certain moves and techniques, which is all well and good but it means big boards and small rigs. It's still good fun, but not AS fun as a nice small-ish board and a large rig would be.
There have been late nights too. We ended at 8.30 yesterday, man that was long. Today wasn't so bad, but I ended up staying and watching "The Windsurf Movie" which was being shown. Pretty amazing stuff going on there... one day... in many many many years time maybe I shall be a quarter as good as that...
Learning lots and the assessors are really nice. They are really encouraging and relaxed, but at the same time they get through everything we need to get through.
What's going on the rest of the week?? Well, tomorrow I think we can expect going through everything we've done in the last two days, then child-protection stuff. Then on Saturday we have the actual moderation, which will be good I think. Then I shall or shall not be a windsurf instructor.
Oh, I have finished the book I've been reading, the penultimate book in a series that has had an axe taken to it by the death of its author. They're some of my favourite books from my childhood and I still will read them. I say penultimate because, after a little bit of research, I found out that his last book was actually published this year, I guess it must have been done post-humously (is that the right term, i can't remember ever having to spell it before) obviously it's not post-humouRously. So I will get my hands on that at some point or another.... The one I've just read was actually very good.
hat's all for now I think, I need to work back into getting this blog going properly again. :D Hope you're all well.
Having said that yesterday was a long, long day, and fairly full, including a sprint-cycle over to Newport to a nonexistent cell group and a slightly more sedate cycle back home shortly afterwards. Getting time to read here is hard, I was up till the early morning on Tuesday reading a new book and I would have done that last night too had I not fallen asleep whilst mentally debating whether to have a small snack.
We've not being doing much personal windsurfing this week, it's all been for the purpose of demonstrating to beginners certain moves and techniques, which is all well and good but it means big boards and small rigs. It's still good fun, but not AS fun as a nice small-ish board and a large rig would be.
There have been late nights too. We ended at 8.30 yesterday, man that was long. Today wasn't so bad, but I ended up staying and watching "The Windsurf Movie" which was being shown. Pretty amazing stuff going on there... one day... in many many many years time maybe I shall be a quarter as good as that...
Learning lots and the assessors are really nice. They are really encouraging and relaxed, but at the same time they get through everything we need to get through.
What's going on the rest of the week?? Well, tomorrow I think we can expect going through everything we've done in the last two days, then child-protection stuff. Then on Saturday we have the actual moderation, which will be good I think. Then I shall or shall not be a windsurf instructor.
Oh, I have finished the book I've been reading, the penultimate book in a series that has had an axe taken to it by the death of its author. They're some of my favourite books from my childhood and I still will read them. I say penultimate because, after a little bit of research, I found out that his last book was actually published this year, I guess it must have been done post-humously (is that the right term, i can't remember ever having to spell it before) obviously it's not post-humouRously. So I will get my hands on that at some point or another.... The one I've just read was actually very good.
hat's all for now I think, I need to work back into getting this blog going properly again. :D Hope you're all well.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Return of the Dan
I now sit once more in a sophisticated, cool room somewhere in the most northern part of the wonderful Isle of Wight. I tap away from the comfort of my own country and am most glad for it. I am back. It feels good to be here, to be around what is familiar and to see what changes have occurred over the last month. It is a funny feeling and I'm not sure I fully understand it so I can't expect anyone else to but even though spending a day back home was great and there is still a space for me back there it didn't feel like where I should be... what I mean by that is that it feels more fulfilling to be back at the Isle of Wight than in Redhill. Being in Redhill still feels like it is only a visit... I guess because it is.
On the last day of Egypt we all went out for one last session, and it was an important one because it was part of a charity event called "Windsurf for Cancer Research" and at roughly 10.30 Egyptian time everyone out on the water all did a helitack, or if they couldn't do one then they tried to. I'd spent pretty much every spare moment I had on the water that week practising it and I'd got it. The only hitch was that the practising had been done in light winds, on the Sunday morning the wind was stronger than it had been during the week. Luckily I was up early and spent over an hour practising all over again to try and get the hang of doing a helitack in slightly stronger winds. Needless to say that this involved a lot of swimming. When it came to it though that extra hour paid off and I landed the helitack, though I did fumble it slightly (I guess I should admit to that) So I was well happy when we left.
ON the Friday night/Saturday morning some of our group (i.e. me and one other guy) joined a organised trip to go up Mount Sinai and watch the sun rise from its peak. We left the hotel at 11.30 in the evening and went into town. The owner of the business was the brother of one of the Egyptian Nielson's staff that we knew and he came to pick us up personally, which was cool. Then at 12 midnight we, along with seven others, left in a taxi that would take us to the base of Sinai over the course of two hours. Getting out of the taxi (in which we'd all been slowly nodding off to sleep) woke us up pretty quickly as it was freezing and the wind wasn't being too kind either. We pulled out the extra clothes we'd packed in our bags in preparation for this and soon we were at least comfortable.
The taxi driver showed us our guide (guide is slightly misleading as all he did was walk in front of us and make sure we didn't go in the wrong direction - which wasn't that hard) and we set off up the wide path made for camels to take people to the top. We walked, however, and it was rather amazing. The stars were literally alive, not only were there loads of them (comparative to England) but they were bright and fiery. It almost felt like they were Lords or great warriors; maybe I read too much, but it was stunning.
When you get to the top you then have 700 steps (not that any of them were particularly worthy of the title "step") to reach the peak. They reminded me of the steps leading up from Cirith Ungol to Shelob's Lair. Not to such extremities but definitely reminiscent of such rough, uneven stairs. In fact I did wonder several times what I would do if I reached the top of them to find a big black hole leading into the mountain or a giant spider; I never reached a conclusion that I can remember. Overall it took about two and a half hours to reach the peak. As you got higher through the darkness you could see the vague shadowy shapes of ridges and rocks and the surrounding landscape and you got the sense that it was going to be magnificent when the sunlight spilt onto it and revealed it all.
We were waiting at the very peak, which is a flattish, smallish plateau with a large drop on every side. We waited about ten minutes. It got lighter and lighter and you could see the whole land but to my slight disappointment I never saw a Lion-King-esque flood of golden light over the land due to a layer of low-lying cloud across the horizon. Instead we were treated to seeing a glowing yellow circle floating upwards. Yes we saw the sun, and it is testament to it's blinding brilliance that even through the clouds we could see it's shape and colour, if not its brightness.
After about half and hour we started down. On the way down we got past the 700 steps and then our ascent-mirroring descent was diverted from to go down the 3000 steps that form a quicker, rockier, more challenging way to reach the peak. The steps wound their way down a ravine and there were small touches to the otherwise desolate, rocky landscape that made it feel like it was the remnants of an older time when maybe the way was more used. Touches such as a couple of rough-stone arches built between narrow passages, and an area where there were lots of piles of small rocks stacked on each other. At the bottom of the ravine was the monastery, but from the bottom looking up it was impossible to see that there was any route down the rocks. No one who had not been up the mountain before and was going up without a guide would ever imagine that there could ever be steps up that place, the path was completely hidden, even from us who had less than five minutes previously been walking on it.
We had an hour's wait before the monastery opened for tourists and we had a brief look inside because it was supposed to hold the burning bush. I saw three or four different species of bush. One of them had a fire extinguisher next to it so I guess that MUST have been the one they thought was the burning bush...
Then we left promptly, it being about ten o'clock in the morning by this time and we met the taxi where we'd left it (though it had gone and come back obviously). A two hour taxi ride back and the trip was over, a great experience and loads of fun. A challenge and an adventure (well, for those with any imagination it was an adventure anyway, but so many adventures nowadays are like that). Needless to say I was very tired, but did pretty well during the day, doing lots of written theory work which needed to be done and also going out for a windsurf in the afternoon. A great day.
That was all I really wanted to add about Egypt. Now what's been going on today. Well it seems like it's going to be a great week. Despite horrid whispers that the assessors would be militarily-strict task masters it appears that they are not. One even lives in Redhill and was until 18 months ago the manager of Aquasports at Mercer's lake. Crazy.
It seems fairly relaxed and again it strikes me that it's ongoing assessment, yes, but it also is a course where they teach you how to teach; they don't expect you to be perfect. And that is no small relief.
Seeing the other half of our previous group (from before I went to Egypt) was good. It was nice to see them again and to share experiences. They've been doing the instructor development which I'll be doing after next week and it sounds like it's going to be amazing. Lots to look forward to it seems, from improving my personal level to getting to assist with sessions to learning new skills and, if the wind and sea state are right, almost killing ourselves as we zoom around on the Darts (I exaggerate of course).
So yea, let's get this week over and done with, which will be fun enough, but then bring on the third, and final, part of this course. I will be the only one to have done all three parts together.
I've written enough I think, more than enough more than likely. So I'll stop there for tonight. Being back in the UK I expect to be writing more frequently now so all is pretty much back to normal :D Hope everyone reading is well.
On the last day of Egypt we all went out for one last session, and it was an important one because it was part of a charity event called "Windsurf for Cancer Research" and at roughly 10.30 Egyptian time everyone out on the water all did a helitack, or if they couldn't do one then they tried to. I'd spent pretty much every spare moment I had on the water that week practising it and I'd got it. The only hitch was that the practising had been done in light winds, on the Sunday morning the wind was stronger than it had been during the week. Luckily I was up early and spent over an hour practising all over again to try and get the hang of doing a helitack in slightly stronger winds. Needless to say that this involved a lot of swimming. When it came to it though that extra hour paid off and I landed the helitack, though I did fumble it slightly (I guess I should admit to that) So I was well happy when we left.
ON the Friday night/Saturday morning some of our group (i.e. me and one other guy) joined a organised trip to go up Mount Sinai and watch the sun rise from its peak. We left the hotel at 11.30 in the evening and went into town. The owner of the business was the brother of one of the Egyptian Nielson's staff that we knew and he came to pick us up personally, which was cool. Then at 12 midnight we, along with seven others, left in a taxi that would take us to the base of Sinai over the course of two hours. Getting out of the taxi (in which we'd all been slowly nodding off to sleep) woke us up pretty quickly as it was freezing and the wind wasn't being too kind either. We pulled out the extra clothes we'd packed in our bags in preparation for this and soon we were at least comfortable.
The taxi driver showed us our guide (guide is slightly misleading as all he did was walk in front of us and make sure we didn't go in the wrong direction - which wasn't that hard) and we set off up the wide path made for camels to take people to the top. We walked, however, and it was rather amazing. The stars were literally alive, not only were there loads of them (comparative to England) but they were bright and fiery. It almost felt like they were Lords or great warriors; maybe I read too much, but it was stunning.
When you get to the top you then have 700 steps (not that any of them were particularly worthy of the title "step") to reach the peak. They reminded me of the steps leading up from Cirith Ungol to Shelob's Lair. Not to such extremities but definitely reminiscent of such rough, uneven stairs. In fact I did wonder several times what I would do if I reached the top of them to find a big black hole leading into the mountain or a giant spider; I never reached a conclusion that I can remember. Overall it took about two and a half hours to reach the peak. As you got higher through the darkness you could see the vague shadowy shapes of ridges and rocks and the surrounding landscape and you got the sense that it was going to be magnificent when the sunlight spilt onto it and revealed it all.
We were waiting at the very peak, which is a flattish, smallish plateau with a large drop on every side. We waited about ten minutes. It got lighter and lighter and you could see the whole land but to my slight disappointment I never saw a Lion-King-esque flood of golden light over the land due to a layer of low-lying cloud across the horizon. Instead we were treated to seeing a glowing yellow circle floating upwards. Yes we saw the sun, and it is testament to it's blinding brilliance that even through the clouds we could see it's shape and colour, if not its brightness.
After about half and hour we started down. On the way down we got past the 700 steps and then our ascent-mirroring descent was diverted from to go down the 3000 steps that form a quicker, rockier, more challenging way to reach the peak. The steps wound their way down a ravine and there were small touches to the otherwise desolate, rocky landscape that made it feel like it was the remnants of an older time when maybe the way was more used. Touches such as a couple of rough-stone arches built between narrow passages, and an area where there were lots of piles of small rocks stacked on each other. At the bottom of the ravine was the monastery, but from the bottom looking up it was impossible to see that there was any route down the rocks. No one who had not been up the mountain before and was going up without a guide would ever imagine that there could ever be steps up that place, the path was completely hidden, even from us who had less than five minutes previously been walking on it.
We had an hour's wait before the monastery opened for tourists and we had a brief look inside because it was supposed to hold the burning bush. I saw three or four different species of bush. One of them had a fire extinguisher next to it so I guess that MUST have been the one they thought was the burning bush...
Then we left promptly, it being about ten o'clock in the morning by this time and we met the taxi where we'd left it (though it had gone and come back obviously). A two hour taxi ride back and the trip was over, a great experience and loads of fun. A challenge and an adventure (well, for those with any imagination it was an adventure anyway, but so many adventures nowadays are like that). Needless to say I was very tired, but did pretty well during the day, doing lots of written theory work which needed to be done and also going out for a windsurf in the afternoon. A great day.
That was all I really wanted to add about Egypt. Now what's been going on today. Well it seems like it's going to be a great week. Despite horrid whispers that the assessors would be militarily-strict task masters it appears that they are not. One even lives in Redhill and was until 18 months ago the manager of Aquasports at Mercer's lake. Crazy.
It seems fairly relaxed and again it strikes me that it's ongoing assessment, yes, but it also is a course where they teach you how to teach; they don't expect you to be perfect. And that is no small relief.
Seeing the other half of our previous group (from before I went to Egypt) was good. It was nice to see them again and to share experiences. They've been doing the instructor development which I'll be doing after next week and it sounds like it's going to be amazing. Lots to look forward to it seems, from improving my personal level to getting to assist with sessions to learning new skills and, if the wind and sea state are right, almost killing ourselves as we zoom around on the Darts (I exaggerate of course).
So yea, let's get this week over and done with, which will be fun enough, but then bring on the third, and final, part of this course. I will be the only one to have done all three parts together.
I've written enough I think, more than enough more than likely. So I'll stop there for tonight. Being back in the UK I expect to be writing more frequently now so all is pretty much back to normal :D Hope everyone reading is well.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Moving into the last week of Egypt
Right so here we go again. I'm back at a computer and the time is ticking and price is rising. but don't worry prices out here are generally quite a bit lower than in England. I got two cans of lighter fluid yesterday for five pound. Why? Well because I was using my fire poi for the first time and, as first times go, it was pretty good. I didn't kill maim or injure myself or anyone else, I had loads of fun and it worked pretty well. So yea, I can now say that I've done fire poi *tick* (I don't know exactly what I'm ticking but oh well)
This week I was diving for most of it. I now have my PADI open water diver qualification, which is cool. I almost got eaten alive by a lionfish... well, maybe I exaggerate but it did have it's mouth open and it was looking at me... for those of you familiar to the Edge Chronicles the mouth of the lionfish is as similar to a Hoverworm as I ever thought possible. They are very amazing though, if extremely poisonous and they are now my favourite fish, I even have a poster to prove it. I also indulged in a harmless bit of touristy souvenir buying and also have a nice picture of the bay and area that we've been staying in, much easier than describing everything from a blank canvas when I get home, I think.
Egypt IS good... but it's not England. It's annoying having to pay for water and the internet out here isn't too good; for instance when I went to try and catch up on last night's Dr Who... BBC iplayer wouldn't let me play it from Egypt. I'm not too happy about that.
A rather lonely Easter, being the only person I KNOW who is celebrating it round here for Christian reasons. which is a little disappointing but I'm still hoping to have many Easter's in the future so that's all good. I spent some time with a certain album called "Unbreakable" this morning which was cool. Love some of the lyrics on those songs.
Windsurfing is going well, I'm much better than three weeks ago but I'm going to have to put lots more practise in to get my personal level up to where I want it to be. But don't let that worry anyone, I'm comfortably in the level that is needed for the Instructor Assessment, I just want to better myself. Freestyle in particular I want to focus on, but I just need a few days where I'm on my own windsurfing, not in a group. Knowing that there is a group of people who are all better than you (mainly because the majority of them have had four extra days windsurfing because they're not doing the diving) is not the best situation to try new stuff in. Instead I'm focusing on improving the basics rather than on the freestyle side of things. I'm really happy with what I've achieved and I really am looking forward to (as I said last week I think) continuing this as a personal sport not just as an instructor. It's great fun and looks well good when you get good.
I'm beginning to feel how draining it is to constantly be away from people who are pretty much the exact opposite of your views. It isn't too bad at the moment but I can feel their views and ways of viewing the world beginning to seep into me. Just in the way I think and little things that pop into my mind. It's annoying and I'm looking forwad to being around Christians again. I've heard lots of whispers that "this egyptian is a christian" or "that egyptian is christian" but as yet I haven't met one myself or talked to them. I haven't seen a church since I've been here either.
What else has been going on... lots but then again not much, like last week the things that seemed important at the time don't seem important now or I've forgotten them.
Er....
Diving is well cool. Though it is annoying to have to keep equalizing, it's amazing to see all the fish and stuff. We saw some octopi (correct plural for octopus??) which was amazing, even if I did miss them on the first dive... :S :S :S got a lot of ribbing for that... So yea
I guess that's an extremely brief description of my week.. sorry if it's lacking... I don't really know what else to say.... I have missed blogging more regularly.
The staff here are great and the manager is well cool, always asking how we're getting on with the windsurfing and happy to have a laugh and chat.
Sinai is happening this week, last week we didn't go quad biking in the end but ah well.. It was really good wind today but I decided to keep with the Sunday=day off partly because it was easter and partly because it's good to have a day off each week. It was 33 in the shade today, just so you people in England dare to think that England might be hotter than Egypt... I dare say it could well be sometime but it had better not be whilst i'm in Egypt. I am quite worried that I'm missing the British summer and that when I get home it will be rain for the rest of the year. I would be unbelievably annoyed.
That's about all I think.... :D
Oh it's our last week here this week then we're back in England :D
This week I was diving for most of it. I now have my PADI open water diver qualification, which is cool. I almost got eaten alive by a lionfish... well, maybe I exaggerate but it did have it's mouth open and it was looking at me... for those of you familiar to the Edge Chronicles the mouth of the lionfish is as similar to a Hoverworm as I ever thought possible. They are very amazing though, if extremely poisonous and they are now my favourite fish, I even have a poster to prove it. I also indulged in a harmless bit of touristy souvenir buying and also have a nice picture of the bay and area that we've been staying in, much easier than describing everything from a blank canvas when I get home, I think.
Egypt IS good... but it's not England. It's annoying having to pay for water and the internet out here isn't too good; for instance when I went to try and catch up on last night's Dr Who... BBC iplayer wouldn't let me play it from Egypt. I'm not too happy about that.
A rather lonely Easter, being the only person I KNOW who is celebrating it round here for Christian reasons. which is a little disappointing but I'm still hoping to have many Easter's in the future so that's all good. I spent some time with a certain album called "Unbreakable" this morning which was cool. Love some of the lyrics on those songs.
Windsurfing is going well, I'm much better than three weeks ago but I'm going to have to put lots more practise in to get my personal level up to where I want it to be. But don't let that worry anyone, I'm comfortably in the level that is needed for the Instructor Assessment, I just want to better myself. Freestyle in particular I want to focus on, but I just need a few days where I'm on my own windsurfing, not in a group. Knowing that there is a group of people who are all better than you (mainly because the majority of them have had four extra days windsurfing because they're not doing the diving) is not the best situation to try new stuff in. Instead I'm focusing on improving the basics rather than on the freestyle side of things. I'm really happy with what I've achieved and I really am looking forward to (as I said last week I think) continuing this as a personal sport not just as an instructor. It's great fun and looks well good when you get good.
I'm beginning to feel how draining it is to constantly be away from people who are pretty much the exact opposite of your views. It isn't too bad at the moment but I can feel their views and ways of viewing the world beginning to seep into me. Just in the way I think and little things that pop into my mind. It's annoying and I'm looking forwad to being around Christians again. I've heard lots of whispers that "this egyptian is a christian" or "that egyptian is christian" but as yet I haven't met one myself or talked to them. I haven't seen a church since I've been here either.
What else has been going on... lots but then again not much, like last week the things that seemed important at the time don't seem important now or I've forgotten them.
Er....
Diving is well cool. Though it is annoying to have to keep equalizing, it's amazing to see all the fish and stuff. We saw some octopi (correct plural for octopus??) which was amazing, even if I did miss them on the first dive... :S :S :S got a lot of ribbing for that... So yea
I guess that's an extremely brief description of my week.. sorry if it's lacking... I don't really know what else to say.... I have missed blogging more regularly.
The staff here are great and the manager is well cool, always asking how we're getting on with the windsurfing and happy to have a laugh and chat.
Sinai is happening this week, last week we didn't go quad biking in the end but ah well.. It was really good wind today but I decided to keep with the Sunday=day off partly because it was easter and partly because it's good to have a day off each week. It was 33 in the shade today, just so you people in England dare to think that England might be hotter than Egypt... I dare say it could well be sometime but it had better not be whilst i'm in Egypt. I am quite worried that I'm missing the British summer and that when I get home it will be rain for the rest of the year. I would be unbelievably annoyed.
That's about all I think.... :D
Oh it's our last week here this week then we're back in England :D
Sunday, 17 April 2011
A Week's Windsurfing
So I did manage to get hold of a computer in the end to do this post, which is great. This week has been much better than the last week, now I can actually windsurf it is much more enjoyable to go out on the water and practise technique, stance, manoeuvres and freestyle. I knew there would be a good reason why I wanted to be good at windsurfing immediately and there definitely is, it's a great sport and I'm looking forward not only to doing more out here but carrying it on and getting better. Now that I have the basics I begin to see the similarities between windsurfing and juggling, all of the freestyle is similar to learning a trick when juggling: repetition and breaking down into small chunks.
The week has been a good week, hard at the beginning and getting much better. The last few days have been enjoyable, I've really loved getting out on the water and working on my windsurfing. The wind is looking pretty grim for this week unfortunately, but fortunately I'll be diving from Monday-Thursday this week so I will be not bothering too much about the wind. Hopefully the wind will be good again by Friday. I'm really looking forward to diving, it sounds well cool. Sometime this week we will be going quad-biking I think. This week just gone we went up into the mountains to meet some Bedouins and we had a meal up there under the stars around a fire. That was a great evening and we got some good pictures, we have some photographers in the group so they were experimenting and we got some good shots, which may possibly be appearing as my profile picture on facebook sometime soon.
What else has gone on this week? It's been hotter I think, and the evenings have been great, chilling out at the restaurant we always frequent and then coming back and going to bed. The waffles in the morning for breakfast are great, though the queue is often extremely long and the Egyptian honey is amazing, quite easily had with merely bread.
Every lunch is pretty much rice and chicken, give it another two weeks and I shall be sick of it I think. And for dinner at the restaurant in town the banana splits, though advertised as dessert and served before the starter are rather wonderful.
Having no phone is very annoying and I wish I hadn't been so stupid as to take it for a small windsurf,but too late now. I THINK that it's just the screen that has gone though so I'm still hopeful for not having to replace my SIM and for being able to get all my photos and stuff off my phone via my computer when I get back home. I can't believe that it's halfway through my time here, and I'm still looking forward to going up to see a Sinai sunrise which we're planning on doing in the last week.
Everything is good here and going well. I'm running out of time again, email me or facebook message me if you have other questions which I may answer or may try and deal with next week. Apparently it's Easter Sunday next week? I'm still Christian-less out here which is hard, and the group are almost always trying to get me drunk or allow myself to become drunk and don't understand why I won't, at least it's making me think about my own choices.
I also realised the other day that I may well miss the new Dr Who series.... which I will be most annoyed about. Grrrr. So yea...I think that's everything. I'm sure I had more I was going to say, but I can't think of anything really at the moment, it's funny what appears important at the time loses its importance even in the space of a week.
SO yea, hope everyone is doing well this week. I don't know whether you've still got good weather but according to the owners of the restaurant it's supposed to hit 39-40 Celsius this week. So ya...mega hot... I think I will be extremely grateful for the air con in my room by the end of this, though I reckon I'll end up being much colder than you might expect because I'll be under the water most of the time.
I've dragged this ending on long enough. So, for tonight, goodnight.
The week has been a good week, hard at the beginning and getting much better. The last few days have been enjoyable, I've really loved getting out on the water and working on my windsurfing. The wind is looking pretty grim for this week unfortunately, but fortunately I'll be diving from Monday-Thursday this week so I will be not bothering too much about the wind. Hopefully the wind will be good again by Friday. I'm really looking forward to diving, it sounds well cool. Sometime this week we will be going quad-biking I think. This week just gone we went up into the mountains to meet some Bedouins and we had a meal up there under the stars around a fire. That was a great evening and we got some good pictures, we have some photographers in the group so they were experimenting and we got some good shots, which may possibly be appearing as my profile picture on facebook sometime soon.
What else has gone on this week? It's been hotter I think, and the evenings have been great, chilling out at the restaurant we always frequent and then coming back and going to bed. The waffles in the morning for breakfast are great, though the queue is often extremely long and the Egyptian honey is amazing, quite easily had with merely bread.
Every lunch is pretty much rice and chicken, give it another two weeks and I shall be sick of it I think. And for dinner at the restaurant in town the banana splits, though advertised as dessert and served before the starter are rather wonderful.
Having no phone is very annoying and I wish I hadn't been so stupid as to take it for a small windsurf,but too late now. I THINK that it's just the screen that has gone though so I'm still hopeful for not having to replace my SIM and for being able to get all my photos and stuff off my phone via my computer when I get back home. I can't believe that it's halfway through my time here, and I'm still looking forward to going up to see a Sinai sunrise which we're planning on doing in the last week.
Everything is good here and going well. I'm running out of time again, email me or facebook message me if you have other questions which I may answer or may try and deal with next week. Apparently it's Easter Sunday next week? I'm still Christian-less out here which is hard, and the group are almost always trying to get me drunk or allow myself to become drunk and don't understand why I won't, at least it's making me think about my own choices.
I also realised the other day that I may well miss the new Dr Who series.... which I will be most annoyed about. Grrrr. So yea...I think that's everything. I'm sure I had more I was going to say, but I can't think of anything really at the moment, it's funny what appears important at the time loses its importance even in the space of a week.
SO yea, hope everyone is doing well this week. I don't know whether you've still got good weather but according to the owners of the restaurant it's supposed to hit 39-40 Celsius this week. So ya...mega hot... I think I will be extremely grateful for the air con in my room by the end of this, though I reckon I'll end up being much colder than you might expect because I'll be under the water most of the time.
I've dragged this ending on long enough. So, for tonight, goodnight.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Egypt. Starting to Windsurf and Random Stuff from the Week.
I don't really know where to start... this is costing me a bit more than I thought it would so I'll try and be quick. But I will, obviously still get everything in where I can.
So we've been windsurfing all week. It began well, I picked it up fairly easily and it was cool. Then midway through the week as I was lifting up the sail the wind caught it and threw it behind me... into the arm of someone in our group. Ouch. He was out the rest of the day and the next day. It could have been much worse though, at first we thought it was dislocated or broken. Thankfully it wasn't. But yea, that broke my ocnifdence a little and the last three days have been pretty dreadful. It is a long process to become good at windsurfing, and I've never before wanted to be at the end result before putting in the time and practise to get there, but it's where I find myself at now. When you're good it looks pretty awesome and it's definitely something I'll be practising to get better and better at, however slowly, but for the moment I'm stuck going only normally and tacking and gybing. There is lots of falling in the water, there always is apparently whether you're the best or a beginner windsurfing involves a lot of falling in.\
We did some freestyle stuff on friday as well (Freestyle friday, freeSail Saturday) Freestyle is like flashy, cool-looking tricks whilst windsurfing normally. SO spinning your sail 360 degrees , jumping around your board with the sail, forward/backward loops/flips... all the snazzy, extremely difficult stuff) Well it's nt all difficult, we had a go at a few of the easier ones.. and a few of the harder ones.
The two leaders with us (Steve and Seb) have been amazing this week, from guiding us through the culture to getting us windsurfing fairly decently. Every evening we go to the same restaurant (called "Funny Mummys") and because we told them that on the first day we managed to arrange a deal with them so that we can bring our own drinks in with us (i.e. alcoholic drinks) and also we get free starters. We must be giving them loads of money... for the twelve of us it's about the equivalent of 60 pounds each night. Which is rather amazing. The taxis are crazy. Most of them are pick up trucks and there are no set prices. Every time you ask to go somewhere you have to haggle for prices (there is a LOT of haggling here) and if they don't accept you're offer... walk away because they'll almost always then agree to the lower price. Crazy. So yea, twelve people in the back of a pick up truck hurtling down roads with lots of beeping (though not tooo many cars) and sudden braking when speed bumps come up. Then when you get to the other it it's a 50-50 chance as to whether they'll demand you give them more than you agreed on. Again if you just give them the money you agreed on and walk away they won't hassle you any further.
Lunch breaks here are 2 hours long instead of the 30 mni-1 hour lunch breaks of the UKSA. The food here is fairly good. Lot's of different stuff, and some amazing bits and bobs that pop up from time to time. For instance waffles at breakfast and the Egyptian honey is AMAZING!! Apart from the evening meal, which we have out, we eat at the hotel and enjoy it. There is not what you might called Food and Safety Hygiene here, not that I was really expecting it, for instance the food is buffet style most of the tmie and is mostly open and there are two very annoying, persistant, bold creatures in Egypt: the fly and the bird. The flies are the most annoying, cos you can't swat them away very easily and they have no fear. they're forever landing on you and your food. The birds also will flock around food. Their music is very nice, but when they start eating the food at the buffet/help-yourself it's a bit like "er... what do you think you're doing silly birds" Also when they're zooming past you less than thirty centimetres away from your face it's rather distracting from the important matter of eating.
I hear you've had sun in England... well suprisingly enough, there's sun here in egypt too... lots of it. HOWEVER after a very quick, speedy purchase of some factor 50 suncream you'll all be very amazed to know that I haven't, as yet, burnt... :D :D :D :D So all's good.
Just so you all know where we actually are at the moment. Go to cairo, go south, go east and you'll find a triangular shaped piece of land with two long stretches of sea along two of it's sides. It should be labelled something like "the sinai desert" we are on the south east coast of that bit of land in a place called "Dahab" Just to clear that one up, I thought we were elsewhere in Egypt. So from the restaraunt we can see Saudi Arabia, which is pretty cool.
What else have we been up to othe than windsurfing.. not much. One day when there wasn't much wind we went snorkeling. There are quite a few jellyfish around and you can see their purple-y jelly-ness floating under the water as you windsurf. They are NOT, however, poisonous... most of them. We haven't had any poisonous ones round about here though so everything is fine. The seabed here is sandy but had some sharp rocks and shells in it. It will be interesting whether I can last all four weeks without being forced to buy some wetsuit shoes (I cleverly decided to leave my wetsuit boots at home to dry) They'd better be dry now.. . so I have a few scratches on my feet, but that's all cool.
One of the most surprising and crazy things I've found out this week though was that Seb and Steve were working together in the same resort in Portugal as the one that Madeleine McCann was taken from... at the same time. Hearing how they were part of the searches and stuff brought it all a bit closer to home. Crazy stuff.
As we're training to be windsurf instructors at the end of each day we've been helping out the staff at Neilson's (the resort centre) with jobs like making everything neat and sweeping the sand off the mats and stuff.
With descriptions on what places look like I'll try put up some pictures later. But the bay is surrounded by mountains and the beach is sand/small pebbles. Pretty much nowhere is inside, roofs are rare (restaurants are mats, cushions, low tables) It's very nice. The hotel is great and the accomodation is single rooms. So my room has en suite plus a tv (which I haven't watched, it's rubbish) and then an amazingly large double bed. Instead of duvets they have rug-like things which are surprisingly warm and comfy. And the most important thing about these rooms (apart from the fact that there is a general cleanup and a change of bedding, towels each day) is the air conditioning, which is a life save when it comes to going to sleep.
Generally everything is amazing,. In the coming weeks we plan to have some trips out, so we'll be going to see some Bedouins, do some quad-biking and also go up to see the sunrise from Mount Sinai. (At least everything so far has led me to believe it will be Mount Sinai) I will be glad to get back though, for a Christian it's very isolated. There are no churches in the local area (that I've been able to find anyway) and with the five-per-day calls to prayer it feels like I'm the only christian for miles and miles... POSSIBLY because I am... anyway... I THINK that that is everything I was going to say.... I shudder at my travel writing, I hope that my English teachers never see this, this disorganised, patchy, random, jumping-around-all-over-the-place pile of words that it is. However my time is ticking and the price is rising so it must be like this for the moment, possibly when I get some proper time I'll make it all much nicer and better and STUFF.
So, without a second glance at what I've written, here I go to press the "Publish Post" button for the first post in a week... and the last (most likely) for another week. Sunday is our day off so look out for updates on Sundays.
Done.
So we've been windsurfing all week. It began well, I picked it up fairly easily and it was cool. Then midway through the week as I was lifting up the sail the wind caught it and threw it behind me... into the arm of someone in our group. Ouch. He was out the rest of the day and the next day. It could have been much worse though, at first we thought it was dislocated or broken. Thankfully it wasn't. But yea, that broke my ocnifdence a little and the last three days have been pretty dreadful. It is a long process to become good at windsurfing, and I've never before wanted to be at the end result before putting in the time and practise to get there, but it's where I find myself at now. When you're good it looks pretty awesome and it's definitely something I'll be practising to get better and better at, however slowly, but for the moment I'm stuck going only normally and tacking and gybing. There is lots of falling in the water, there always is apparently whether you're the best or a beginner windsurfing involves a lot of falling in.\
We did some freestyle stuff on friday as well (Freestyle friday, freeSail Saturday) Freestyle is like flashy, cool-looking tricks whilst windsurfing normally. SO spinning your sail 360 degrees , jumping around your board with the sail, forward/backward loops/flips... all the snazzy, extremely difficult stuff) Well it's nt all difficult, we had a go at a few of the easier ones.. and a few of the harder ones.
The two leaders with us (Steve and Seb) have been amazing this week, from guiding us through the culture to getting us windsurfing fairly decently. Every evening we go to the same restaurant (called "Funny Mummys") and because we told them that on the first day we managed to arrange a deal with them so that we can bring our own drinks in with us (i.e. alcoholic drinks) and also we get free starters. We must be giving them loads of money... for the twelve of us it's about the equivalent of 60 pounds each night. Which is rather amazing. The taxis are crazy. Most of them are pick up trucks and there are no set prices. Every time you ask to go somewhere you have to haggle for prices (there is a LOT of haggling here) and if they don't accept you're offer... walk away because they'll almost always then agree to the lower price. Crazy. So yea, twelve people in the back of a pick up truck hurtling down roads with lots of beeping (though not tooo many cars) and sudden braking when speed bumps come up. Then when you get to the other it it's a 50-50 chance as to whether they'll demand you give them more than you agreed on. Again if you just give them the money you agreed on and walk away they won't hassle you any further.
Lunch breaks here are 2 hours long instead of the 30 mni-1 hour lunch breaks of the UKSA. The food here is fairly good. Lot's of different stuff, and some amazing bits and bobs that pop up from time to time. For instance waffles at breakfast and the Egyptian honey is AMAZING!! Apart from the evening meal, which we have out, we eat at the hotel and enjoy it. There is not what you might called Food and Safety Hygiene here, not that I was really expecting it, for instance the food is buffet style most of the tmie and is mostly open and there are two very annoying, persistant, bold creatures in Egypt: the fly and the bird. The flies are the most annoying, cos you can't swat them away very easily and they have no fear. they're forever landing on you and your food. The birds also will flock around food. Their music is very nice, but when they start eating the food at the buffet/help-yourself it's a bit like "er... what do you think you're doing silly birds" Also when they're zooming past you less than thirty centimetres away from your face it's rather distracting from the important matter of eating.
I hear you've had sun in England... well suprisingly enough, there's sun here in egypt too... lots of it. HOWEVER after a very quick, speedy purchase of some factor 50 suncream you'll all be very amazed to know that I haven't, as yet, burnt... :D :D :D :D So all's good.
Just so you all know where we actually are at the moment. Go to cairo, go south, go east and you'll find a triangular shaped piece of land with two long stretches of sea along two of it's sides. It should be labelled something like "the sinai desert" we are on the south east coast of that bit of land in a place called "Dahab" Just to clear that one up, I thought we were elsewhere in Egypt. So from the restaraunt we can see Saudi Arabia, which is pretty cool.
What else have we been up to othe than windsurfing.. not much. One day when there wasn't much wind we went snorkeling. There are quite a few jellyfish around and you can see their purple-y jelly-ness floating under the water as you windsurf. They are NOT, however, poisonous... most of them. We haven't had any poisonous ones round about here though so everything is fine. The seabed here is sandy but had some sharp rocks and shells in it. It will be interesting whether I can last all four weeks without being forced to buy some wetsuit shoes (I cleverly decided to leave my wetsuit boots at home to dry) They'd better be dry now.. . so I have a few scratches on my feet, but that's all cool.
One of the most surprising and crazy things I've found out this week though was that Seb and Steve were working together in the same resort in Portugal as the one that Madeleine McCann was taken from... at the same time. Hearing how they were part of the searches and stuff brought it all a bit closer to home. Crazy stuff.
As we're training to be windsurf instructors at the end of each day we've been helping out the staff at Neilson's (the resort centre) with jobs like making everything neat and sweeping the sand off the mats and stuff.
With descriptions on what places look like I'll try put up some pictures later. But the bay is surrounded by mountains and the beach is sand/small pebbles. Pretty much nowhere is inside, roofs are rare (restaurants are mats, cushions, low tables) It's very nice. The hotel is great and the accomodation is single rooms. So my room has en suite plus a tv (which I haven't watched, it's rubbish) and then an amazingly large double bed. Instead of duvets they have rug-like things which are surprisingly warm and comfy. And the most important thing about these rooms (apart from the fact that there is a general cleanup and a change of bedding, towels each day) is the air conditioning, which is a life save when it comes to going to sleep.
Generally everything is amazing,. In the coming weeks we plan to have some trips out, so we'll be going to see some Bedouins, do some quad-biking and also go up to see the sunrise from Mount Sinai. (At least everything so far has led me to believe it will be Mount Sinai) I will be glad to get back though, for a Christian it's very isolated. There are no churches in the local area (that I've been able to find anyway) and with the five-per-day calls to prayer it feels like I'm the only christian for miles and miles... POSSIBLY because I am... anyway... I THINK that that is everything I was going to say.... I shudder at my travel writing, I hope that my English teachers never see this, this disorganised, patchy, random, jumping-around-all-over-the-place pile of words that it is. However my time is ticking and the price is rising so it must be like this for the moment, possibly when I get some proper time I'll make it all much nicer and better and STUFF.
So, without a second glance at what I've written, here I go to press the "Publish Post" button for the first post in a week... and the last (most likely) for another week. Sunday is our day off so look out for updates on Sundays.
Done.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
At last!!!!!!!!
AH!! For those of you without facebook (I can think of at least two people) you will not know that I went back to Redhill for the day yesterday to my gran's funeral. It went really well and I was extremely pleased to be able to go and still have the opportunity to pass the course.
Being back in Redhill without the sea, and the biggest body of water being the small puddles collecting in the pavement was strange, even after only eight weeks on the Isle of Wight I've become used to it. I really enjoyed being back, I felt older (though not by much) and it was good to see everyone again. However, the train journey back was annoying. The train was delayed due to a broken signal at Chichester and so two stops before my destination the "High and Mighty Train People in the Sky" decided to terminate the train early, presumably to remove any congestion on the tracks. It meant I had to wait another 20 minutes on a cold station for the next train to Southampton Central. May it also be noted that I was busting for the toilet and, whilst the ladies toilet was open, the men's was locked with a high metal gate and thick metal chain. So I had to wait... The only thing that made it bearable was finding the rest of a cake that had been given to me by the wonderful Emily back in Redhill when I met up with her briefly for a chat. It was a most amazingly wonderful cake and even the remaining, slightly squished third of it, was enough to brighten me up and make me quite happy to wait for the next train.
By that time of night the ferries only ran once an hour though so the delayed train meant I missed the ferry, having to wait twenty minutes at Southampton central for the last bus at 20.30 and then just about managing to get onto the 20.45 ferry. I was back at 9.10 and grabbed a fish and chips for dinner.
Being back in Redhill without the sea, and the biggest body of water being the small puddles collecting in the pavement was strange, even after only eight weeks on the Isle of Wight I've become used to it. I really enjoyed being back, I felt older (though not by much) and it was good to see everyone again. However, the train journey back was annoying. The train was delayed due to a broken signal at Chichester and so two stops before my destination the "High and Mighty Train People in the Sky" decided to terminate the train early, presumably to remove any congestion on the tracks. It meant I had to wait another 20 minutes on a cold station for the next train to Southampton Central. May it also be noted that I was busting for the toilet and, whilst the ladies toilet was open, the men's was locked with a high metal gate and thick metal chain. So I had to wait... The only thing that made it bearable was finding the rest of a cake that had been given to me by the wonderful Emily back in Redhill when I met up with her briefly for a chat. It was a most amazingly wonderful cake and even the remaining, slightly squished third of it, was enough to brighten me up and make me quite happy to wait for the next train.
By that time of night the ferries only ran once an hour though so the delayed train meant I missed the ferry, having to wait twenty minutes at Southampton central for the last bus at 20.30 and then just about managing to get onto the 20.45 ferry. I was back at 9.10 and grabbed a fish and chips for dinner.
However what I wanted to say in my blog tonight was this: I finally got hold of the video that I was talking about weeks and weeks ago. the one where I was hiking out of the boat. I'm not sure which blog posts I mentioned it in, but I said I'd get it, ad I did eventually. So I want to show you that too...
So yea, have fun watching. Please may it be noted that it isn't a perfect hike. It was in the first week of the instructor course and I had three more weeks to work on it. You can see my feet are pointed up; they should be flat. The sail could be pulled in tighter (see the gap between the end of the boom and the traveller - where it's attached to the stern [BACK] of the boat) I should possibly also be using the rudder less, but that's a debate for another time. Please note also that the black strap of material that my feet are under is the only thing keeping me in the boat and that my bum is completely over the edge, all my support is from where my feet are under that strap. Hope you enjoy it.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Heading Home
I have just, for the first time in my life, used a debit card to make an online payment; my train tickets are now bought. And the return tickets were only a nice, manageable £15 of course that isn't counting the £16 that the ferry tickets will cost... but it DOES mean that I don't have to pay the £14 extra that it would cost to buy a ticket that comprises the train and ferry tickets combined. I was surprised at the massive price gap... until I realised that actually the UKSA (who sell Red Jet tickets) get batches of tickets and therefore will get them cheaper and hence can sell them cheaper also. My journey is planned, I have times and will be home sometime around 12 ish.
So that's all sorted. Today was good. The kayaking assessors are ALL outside assessors and are great guys, much more relaxed than the two guys we had for the dinghy instructor course. When they found out that we'd done lots of capsize practise already they were even more willing to allow me to go (and they were fine with it to begin with) so that's all good.
I guess I should also add that I'm intending on returning home on Saturday night which, I have now realised, means that I may well be able to get to Praise Night :O :O :O :D :D :D :D :D so that is alllllll goood :D :D :D
So yea, tomorrow will be interesting. See you on the other side? Or during the day if you're around Redhill. Now let's not lose the booking reference...
So that's all sorted. Today was good. The kayaking assessors are ALL outside assessors and are great guys, much more relaxed than the two guys we had for the dinghy instructor course. When they found out that we'd done lots of capsize practise already they were even more willing to allow me to go (and they were fine with it to begin with) so that's all good.
I guess I should also add that I'm intending on returning home on Saturday night which, I have now realised, means that I may well be able to get to Praise Night :O :O :O :D :D :D :D :D so that is alllllll goood :D :D :D
So yea, tomorrow will be interesting. See you on the other side? Or during the day if you're around Redhill. Now let's not lose the booking reference...
Monday, 28 March 2011
Good Evening.
I am in an amazingly buoyant mood. It's crazy, cos earlier on I was completely knackered and out of it, I couldn't even hold a conversation properly without falling silent or losing concentration. It was annoying. But now for some strange reason I have all the energy in the world. I feel like I could go for a run or a cycle ride or SOMETHING! I don't even know what. I haven't drunk or taken anything alcoholic or drug related (as if I ever would) but something's switched. I don't think that it's sleep deprivation driving me crazy, though perhaps exhaustion is playing tricks with me. Either way GOOD EVENING everyone and I hope it finds you as well as it finds me. Yes, I have cut and blistered hands, and YES, parts of me ache lots, parts of me are scratched and tired, but I am feeling great.
I am heading home for the funeral on Wednesday and due to some amazing miracle-circumstances I can do that without failing the Kayaking Instructor part of the course. So that is also great. :D :D :D
I don't know what else to say.
This afternoon was mad, we were constantly capsizing on purpose. to start with we had to jump out of the kayaks/canoes to practise getting back into them from the water unaided, but then we had to practise capsizing every boat we had on the water simultaneously and getting them all back upright and emptied of water in the quickest amount of time possible. We thrashed it out in 2.15 which was well below the target tie of 3 minutes. Then we were in the pool capsizing a million times to practise rescuing each other... of course men being men this ended up in those of us not in the boats (the pool could only fit kayaks enough for half of us) sneaking up to people in kayaks and capsizing them then letting other people rescue them. So much fun; tiring, but loads and loads and loads of fun. Then we ended for the day. So all in all a great day of kayaking and canoeing though most of the time we spent in the water. It's great being in the water, even in the sea, the temperature doesn't really seem to affect me when I'm in a wetsuit. You get the first cold-shock as it floods your wetsuit but then it's fine as the wetsuit does it's job and keeps you warm.
We also had an amazing game of kayak-canoe polo where the canoes (two-manned, powerful, big) were on one team and the kayaks (one-manned, small, manoeuvrable) were on the other. I was on the kayaking team and we beat the canoe team (oh yea we did :D :D ) And that, also, was great fun.
So yea, all in all a great day. As I said, hope everyone else has had an equally good time and I'm looking forward lots to seeing my family at home again on Wednesday. Steve, if you're still up to read this, then I might also mention at this point that the last Eragon book (called Inheritance) is out in October :D :D :D Also Steve, keep that tie up and don't forget to thrash Josh on Fifa for me a few times as I'm not there to do it myself (yes, I definitely beat him at Fifa at least once...) Mike, you watch that tie of yours, and I'm sure you haven't stopped trying to get Steve to lower his :P I'll see you Wednesday also... my room had better be exactly as I left it and if you've put ANY of the swimming-pool or cinema ideas into action in these last two months then I'll be having words with you (I know what you're like ;) ) And Josh... well.... not much to say to YOU! :P lol You should probably be in bed it's ten to nine you know, way past our bedtime. If any of those sweets in my room HAVE disappeared I'll know where they'll have gone, but keep yourself well until Wednesday and don't get any of your frequent injuries.
So, for now everyone.
Good Evening. :D
I am heading home for the funeral on Wednesday and due to some amazing miracle-circumstances I can do that without failing the Kayaking Instructor part of the course. So that is also great. :D :D :D
I don't know what else to say.
This afternoon was mad, we were constantly capsizing on purpose. to start with we had to jump out of the kayaks/canoes to practise getting back into them from the water unaided, but then we had to practise capsizing every boat we had on the water simultaneously and getting them all back upright and emptied of water in the quickest amount of time possible. We thrashed it out in 2.15 which was well below the target tie of 3 minutes. Then we were in the pool capsizing a million times to practise rescuing each other... of course men being men this ended up in those of us not in the boats (the pool could only fit kayaks enough for half of us) sneaking up to people in kayaks and capsizing them then letting other people rescue them. So much fun; tiring, but loads and loads and loads of fun. Then we ended for the day. So all in all a great day of kayaking and canoeing though most of the time we spent in the water. It's great being in the water, even in the sea, the temperature doesn't really seem to affect me when I'm in a wetsuit. You get the first cold-shock as it floods your wetsuit but then it's fine as the wetsuit does it's job and keeps you warm.
We also had an amazing game of kayak-canoe polo where the canoes (two-manned, powerful, big) were on one team and the kayaks (one-manned, small, manoeuvrable) were on the other. I was on the kayaking team and we beat the canoe team (oh yea we did :D :D ) And that, also, was great fun.
So yea, all in all a great day. As I said, hope everyone else has had an equally good time and I'm looking forward lots to seeing my family at home again on Wednesday. Steve, if you're still up to read this, then I might also mention at this point that the last Eragon book (called Inheritance) is out in October :D :D :D Also Steve, keep that tie up and don't forget to thrash Josh on Fifa for me a few times as I'm not there to do it myself (yes, I definitely beat him at Fifa at least once...) Mike, you watch that tie of yours, and I'm sure you haven't stopped trying to get Steve to lower his :P I'll see you Wednesday also... my room had better be exactly as I left it and if you've put ANY of the swimming-pool or cinema ideas into action in these last two months then I'll be having words with you (I know what you're like ;) ) And Josh... well.... not much to say to YOU! :P lol You should probably be in bed it's ten to nine you know, way past our bedtime. If any of those sweets in my room HAVE disappeared I'll know where they'll have gone, but keep yourself well until Wednesday and don't get any of your frequent injuries.
So, for now everyone.
Good Evening. :D
Saturday, 26 March 2011
The Splendour Falls
So I've spent the last couple of evenings in the computer room because it's calm and sleepy. Although it gives the chance for a much needed rest, the evenings are becoming increasingly boring. In this modern age of the Internet though there is, if you know what to look for, no real thing as boredom, which I would almost consider a loss. If you use the Internet incorrectly, which - I'll admit - I often do, then spending time on it only means sinking into a long chain of meaningless webpages as you surf the web for random, nonsensical articles and videos, like a physical extension of the brain the screen will end up showing whatever pops into your brain, whether it is the answer to the question of "how many rivers are there in the world?" or a wikipedia page explaining everything on anything.
If, however, you use the Internet correctly then, amongst other things, it can become an extension of that wonderful activity called reading. And reading is ALMOST always beneficial; especially if it's the reading of poetry; especially if it is one of the works of a certain Lord Tennyson. And that is basically what I have done a lot of, and though I am ashamed to say it, this is possibly the first time I have read any of his works (other than "The Charge of the Light Brigade"). He really was an amazing poet though, the way he fits his words in with such an effortless quality about them is amazing, if you don't think so then try writing me some poetry that's on par with his within the next day. Not going to happen. A master craftsman and writer. So on that note I will leave you with one of the poems that I liked in particular...
If, however, you use the Internet correctly then, amongst other things, it can become an extension of that wonderful activity called reading. And reading is ALMOST always beneficial; especially if it's the reading of poetry; especially if it is one of the works of a certain Lord Tennyson. And that is basically what I have done a lot of, and though I am ashamed to say it, this is possibly the first time I have read any of his works (other than "The Charge of the Light Brigade"). He really was an amazing poet though, the way he fits his words in with such an effortless quality about them is amazing, if you don't think so then try writing me some poetry that's on par with his within the next day. Not going to happen. A master craftsman and writer. So on that note I will leave you with one of the poems that I liked in particular...
THE SPLENDOUR FALLS
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying
Blow, bugle; answers, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying,dying
Friday, 25 March 2011
Back to the Past
So I'm glad that I left it late tonight to write this. There I was, happily enjoying my evening in the computer room, mainly because it gets quiet in here later on in the evening, whereas the bar gets louder. Then I get the text from one of my course-mates telling me that we're moving rooms tonight as there is a leak in the toilets above our room. Great. I rush out of the computer room (after closing everything down) rush down to our room, half expecting this to be a prank. But it's not. The room is empty, one of the cupboards has been moved, the drawers are out and there is a large wet patch on the floor, accompanied with several brown dots on the ceiling.
Well. That's certainly a leak from somewhere. So I find my roommates (who are, by now, sitting up in the bar) and find out where we're being moved to for tonight. And I find out that it is "Endeavour 20." That is the same room I was in for the first two weeks of the course :D :D :D It was very cool going back there, walking back into my old room again.
Then there was the toilets, walking into them gave me the same almost-deja-vu feeling that I get going back to New Wine every year, when you recognise everything but it's slightly changed not necessarily in the way it looks, just it feels slightly different. It's hard to explain, but possibly anyone who has been to New Wine multiple times will be able to relate. So yea, an exciting evening.
I think it's just for tonight and we'll see what happens in the morning. :D :D
Oh and if anyone is interested in human habits then I'll add that I made sure I got the same bed that I had for the first two weeks of the course.
Well. That's certainly a leak from somewhere. So I find my roommates (who are, by now, sitting up in the bar) and find out where we're being moved to for tonight. And I find out that it is "Endeavour 20." That is the same room I was in for the first two weeks of the course :D :D :D It was very cool going back there, walking back into my old room again.
Then there was the toilets, walking into them gave me the same almost-deja-vu feeling that I get going back to New Wine every year, when you recognise everything but it's slightly changed not necessarily in the way it looks, just it feels slightly different. It's hard to explain, but possibly anyone who has been to New Wine multiple times will be able to relate. So yea, an exciting evening.
I think it's just for tonight and we'll see what happens in the morning. :D :D
Oh and if anyone is interested in human habits then I'll add that I made sure I got the same bed that I had for the first two weeks of the course.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Whilst Kayaking...
So I've said that the last two days we've been kayaking, but I haven't really said what we've been getting up to, so I thought I just describe a few of the activities that have been mixed into learning correct posture and stroke technique....
We've done Cave-Exploring - sort of; we kayaked a short way into some caves and did some kayaking through rock arches and stuff. We also were going to do some on foot cave exploring but the tide wasn't right so we couldn't. The instructor said we may go back another day and do it. We've done some kayak-surfing, catching a few waves and using the power they give to help us learn to do some steering. As well as that we've done a fair bit of capsize recovery - always good. Then we've done creek-exploring - getting across extremely shallow, non-navigable parts of the stream by pushing ourselves across. Not to mention playing bulldog in kayaks and kayak-polo. Lots of fun.
One of the guys on our course has been kayaking since he was six, he has his own kayak with him and can do loads of tricks like forward flips and cartwheels. Yes, it is impressive.
So a brief summary of what kayaking has entailed in just two days. It's a lot dryer and warmer than sailing and hurts you more, kind of. your muscles ache more in your shoulders and upper-arms/elbows rather than in your fingers. Also when you're in the kayak for long periods your legs feel like they've gone to sleep, which isn't a pleasant feeling, but you just have to kind of ignore it and get on with it. Generally it's much fun.
We've done Cave-Exploring - sort of; we kayaked a short way into some caves and did some kayaking through rock arches and stuff. We also were going to do some on foot cave exploring but the tide wasn't right so we couldn't. The instructor said we may go back another day and do it. We've done some kayak-surfing, catching a few waves and using the power they give to help us learn to do some steering. As well as that we've done a fair bit of capsize recovery - always good. Then we've done creek-exploring - getting across extremely shallow, non-navigable parts of the stream by pushing ourselves across. Not to mention playing bulldog in kayaks and kayak-polo. Lots of fun.
One of the guys on our course has been kayaking since he was six, he has his own kayak with him and can do loads of tricks like forward flips and cartwheels. Yes, it is impressive.
So a brief summary of what kayaking has entailed in just two days. It's a lot dryer and warmer than sailing and hurts you more, kind of. your muscles ache more in your shoulders and upper-arms/elbows rather than in your fingers. Also when you're in the kayak for long periods your legs feel like they've gone to sleep, which isn't a pleasant feeling, but you just have to kind of ignore it and get on with it. Generally it's much fun.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Happy Birthday
So today is Josh's birthday and, before anything else: I REMEMBERED. So yea, sucks to everyone out there who didn't. I was half expecting myself to forget, so I'm extremely pleased to say I didn't. I was kayaking all day on the sea however so I didn't get to wish him a happy birthday until after I got off the water.
So here is where I say Happy Birthday Josh, to whom I've now been "lumbered" with for 17 years.... has it really been that long...? Oh... And reply to my text.... >:(
Now to inform everyone of a hard/easy decision to make, so that I may get some opinions (in whichever form ppl wish to contact me in). Easy cos I know what I should choose, hard because of what it means to give up. Basically to get to gran's funeral I have to miss a day on the kayaking Instructor Assessment. And missing a day on the assessment means I don't pass. So it's hard to say goodbye to getting ALL three instructor qualifications and just getting the two. I'll probably be able to tag on with another group when I'm back after Egypt, but possibly not, I'm talking with someone about it tomorrow morning, but as far as things go for now, I'll be coming home on the 30th of March for ONE day.
So here is where I say Happy Birthday Josh, to whom I've now been "lumbered" with for 17 years.... has it really been that long...? Oh... And reply to my text.... >:(
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH!
(you'd better read this now, I did tell you to...)
Now to inform everyone of a hard/easy decision to make, so that I may get some opinions (in whichever form ppl wish to contact me in). Easy cos I know what I should choose, hard because of what it means to give up. Basically to get to gran's funeral I have to miss a day on the kayaking Instructor Assessment. And missing a day on the assessment means I don't pass. So it's hard to say goodbye to getting ALL three instructor qualifications and just getting the two. I'll probably be able to tag on with another group when I'm back after Egypt, but possibly not, I'm talking with someone about it tomorrow morning, but as far as things go for now, I'll be coming home on the 30th of March for ONE day.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Canoeing
How to hold a paddle
Power stroke
Goon stroke
Forward Sweep
Reverse Sweep
Bow draw
Skulling Draw
Inside Pivot Turn
Outside Pivot Turn
Crossdeck stroke
Crossdeck skull
Backwards stroke
Canoe Recovery
A list of the strokes/skills that we learnt today are featured above. We went the furthest up the river we've been to date, which was cool, and we saw a dead rabbit floating in the river there, it looked weird and not very nice. The English in that last sentence was abominable, though an admirable summary of the average standard of English that I find myself using in these blogs. I guess lack of drafting is the cause of this, but oh well, I literally don't have the time to do one draft, let alone multiple drafts of these blogs.
When we got back we had to go speak to the new Chief Instructor here, he's nice but he was having a moan about room states. First of all, may I say, that my stuff was ALL off the floor and relatively neat. He also was NOT happy about the hole in our wall... oh, I didn't mention the hole? Yes... well, i came back from writing my blog the other day to find that there was a hole in one of our walls and a lot of drunk-ish people in our room. This new guy has laid down his ultimatum: the truth by tomorrow or he'll bill one person and they can pay it all. The other guys in my room don't reckon he'll believe the truth that one of the holes was an accident.... oh; I only mentioned one? Well there are two... one hand sized one just above a long fore-arm length/sized one. So the guys in our room don't believe he'll believe the truth the the small one was an accident and that they don't actually know when the second one got there. I guess cos I wasn't really part of it it's easier for me to say what I did, but I said that it doesn't matter whether he believes it or not, you just tell the truth anyway. If you try make more plausible solutions up then you're lying and if he catches even a hint of a lie then "game over", figuratively speaking.
So yea... today was good. The sun was up and shining. I wore suncream for the first time as we weren't in wetsuits, just in waterproofs
And that was kind of today....
Power stroke
Goon stroke
Forward Sweep
Reverse Sweep
Bow draw
Skulling Draw
Inside Pivot Turn
Outside Pivot Turn
Crossdeck stroke
Crossdeck skull
Backwards stroke
Canoe Recovery
A list of the strokes/skills that we learnt today are featured above. We went the furthest up the river we've been to date, which was cool, and we saw a dead rabbit floating in the river there, it looked weird and not very nice. The English in that last sentence was abominable, though an admirable summary of the average standard of English that I find myself using in these blogs. I guess lack of drafting is the cause of this, but oh well, I literally don't have the time to do one draft, let alone multiple drafts of these blogs.
When we got back we had to go speak to the new Chief Instructor here, he's nice but he was having a moan about room states. First of all, may I say, that my stuff was ALL off the floor and relatively neat. He also was NOT happy about the hole in our wall... oh, I didn't mention the hole? Yes... well, i came back from writing my blog the other day to find that there was a hole in one of our walls and a lot of drunk-ish people in our room. This new guy has laid down his ultimatum: the truth by tomorrow or he'll bill one person and they can pay it all. The other guys in my room don't reckon he'll believe the truth that one of the holes was an accident.... oh; I only mentioned one? Well there are two... one hand sized one just above a long fore-arm length/sized one. So the guys in our room don't believe he'll believe the truth the the small one was an accident and that they don't actually know when the second one got there. I guess cos I wasn't really part of it it's easier for me to say what I did, but I said that it doesn't matter whether he believes it or not, you just tell the truth anyway. If you try make more plausible solutions up then you're lying and if he catches even a hint of a lie then "game over", figuratively speaking.
So yea... today was good. The sun was up and shining. I wore suncream for the first time as we weren't in wetsuits, just in waterproofs
And that was kind of today....
Monday, 21 March 2011
Mayday, Mayday, Mayday (aka I've done it again)
No, this is not actually a Mayday, don't worry, we were just doing our VHF course, learning how to make Mayday calls (distress) and other such things. Pan-pan (urgent) Securite (safety) etc etc etc and, I've done it again, cos I've passed that so I'm now going to get a pretty certificate saying I'm certified to work radios (it's actually quite a serious thing although, I agree, it sounds silly. I think it may well act as a form of photo id as it will have my photo, date of birth and loads of other details on too.... hmmmm....
Anyway. It was a nice day, bright and sunny. Passing my dinghy instructor and gran haven't really sunk in yet it feels like, just like it's all happening really far away. I don't know. It will definitely be weird going back home, I'm going to do my best to get back for the funeral. I don't really know what else I can do. I knew when I came away that this could happen, we all knew, but we had to go ahead with it anyway.
looking forward to kayaking tomorrow, hopefully the weather will be just as good though apparently it's supposed to be moving into a low pressure system sometime so our weather will get worse :( (low = warm, wet and windy)
Otherwise, doing well.
:D :D :D
Anyway. It was a nice day, bright and sunny. Passing my dinghy instructor and gran haven't really sunk in yet it feels like, just like it's all happening really far away. I don't know. It will definitely be weird going back home, I'm going to do my best to get back for the funeral. I don't really know what else I can do. I knew when I came away that this could happen, we all knew, but we had to go ahead with it anyway.
looking forward to kayaking tomorrow, hopefully the weather will be just as good though apparently it's supposed to be moving into a low pressure system sometime so our weather will get worse :( (low = warm, wet and windy)
Otherwise, doing well.
:D :D :D
Sunday, 20 March 2011
A Day
I PASSED!!! Yay!! Enough said.
So today I got a call from home. I'm alone here and my gran has passed away.
Neither one has really sunk in yet, I don't feel like my mind has grasped either one of those facts. he sun was out today, which was good. And I saw a red squirrel for he first time ever today (I took a short ride along the cycle path this afternoon) I'm not really sure what I'm feeling. Everyone is celebrating tonight, even those who were action-planned. They all plan on getting insanely drunk. I'm still going to church then I'll go and have a drink though I'm torn between wanting to celebrate this small step towards the ultimate goal (one out of three instructorr qualifications achieved) and being sad over my loss.
I know I'm blessed to have both an amazing nan and to have had an amazing gran, both of whom have been praying for me, I know, for a long, long time. I doubt I'll ever fully appreciate how much they've done for me. Of the days it could have happened I think this was probably a good day, it has been balanced with the insane amounts of happiness I had from having passed when I thought I'd be action-planned. Literally I'm so happy I passed.
I still remember her saying goodbye and wishing me well on my course.
So today I got a call from home. I'm alone here and my gran has passed away.
Neither one has really sunk in yet, I don't feel like my mind has grasped either one of those facts. he sun was out today, which was good. And I saw a red squirrel for he first time ever today (I took a short ride along the cycle path this afternoon) I'm not really sure what I'm feeling. Everyone is celebrating tonight, even those who were action-planned. They all plan on getting insanely drunk. I'm still going to church then I'll go and have a drink though I'm torn between wanting to celebrate this small step towards the ultimate goal (one out of three instructorr qualifications achieved) and being sad over my loss.
I know I'm blessed to have both an amazing nan and to have had an amazing gran, both of whom have been praying for me, I know, for a long, long time. I doubt I'll ever fully appreciate how much they've done for me. Of the days it could have happened I think this was probably a good day, it has been balanced with the insane amounts of happiness I had from having passed when I thought I'd be action-planned. Literally I'm so happy I passed.
I still remember her saying goodbye and wishing me well on my course.
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Back for Crunch Time
Hey everyone, I'm back. I count it as three days having not blogged, but I'm back with all my enthusiasm restored and fully looking forward to bashing this out. The last few days have been hectic. This week has been our Instructor Assessment, which I think I mentioned on Tuesday possibly? Anyway it's involved learning how to teach to the RYA method and it's been quite fun. Much more serious than the rest of the course has been and under continual assessment, but good. On the whole I feel like I've done quite well, my presentation went fairly well, though with all of our presentations they've pretty much commented on all of ours by showing us a much better version of it. Ah well, they're Coaches, we're not even Instructors yet... YET.
Tomorrow may change all that. By the end of tomorrow we will know whether we are Dinghy Instructors or whether we have been action-planned. Doesn't sound so bad as having to walk the plank, and for good reason too - it isn't. It basically means you just have to do one thing and then you're a dinghy instructor. So you get given an action that you need to complete another time (for instance, do a presentation on such and such, or do a tacking land drill) and once you've done that action satisfactorily then they'll tick that off and you'll have passed. So in a sense you can't really fail (that's how they put it to us anyhow). Obviously I'm hoping I won't be action planned but I'm kind of expecting it.
I spent an hour after our day ended today going over the land drills and how to reef a double hander (we all found out today that we'd been shown the wrong method when I tried to do a mock session on how to reef and they shot it down - admittedly I knew it had gone badly) so that I've got it in my head. I probably should be revising now... I will do after I've done this...
We've had homework, was what I meant to say when I started talking about the Instructor Assessment Week, that's made time short to get out to Cell on Wednesday and to Catlayst on Friday, but I've managed both. It's been a great week, learning and practising how to actually teach. We've had to make our own session plans and lead sessions for each other, all with debriefs afterwards and we've learned lots of tips on teaching.
On a sadder note, I found out yesterday at about 7 o'clock that it was Comic Relief... I still can't believe that I missed it. So annoyed. I wanted to wear a red nose whilst I was sailing. Ah well, there's always next time.
What else has been going on... not that much. We've just been continuing to improve and tomorrow on the moderation (the coaches swap round to moderate each other) everything will come to a head. I could have kept this quiet and then I could swallow it quietly if I get action-planned until I've passed. I've taken the risk of telling everyone (well everyone who reads this anyway) so now I have to tell you which way their decision falls tomorrow. (If there is pretty much no wind, as there has been for the last 2 or so days then we'll be doing land based stuff, which is fairly easy :D :D :D :D :D)
So yep, that is all I can think of to say. Sorry for those of you who wanted a blog everyday. I shall try to not miss another day, but we'll see how it goes. I'm off to Egypt on the 3rd of April I think so two weeks away. As regards to the blog when I'm out there... we'll see. I'll probably be paying for an Internet cafe out there as my phone Internet won't be free and I doubt there;ll be a conveniently free Internet cafe anywhere. Just to give you the heads up on that.
Now bring on tomorrow!!
Tomorrow may change all that. By the end of tomorrow we will know whether we are Dinghy Instructors or whether we have been action-planned. Doesn't sound so bad as having to walk the plank, and for good reason too - it isn't. It basically means you just have to do one thing and then you're a dinghy instructor. So you get given an action that you need to complete another time (for instance, do a presentation on such and such, or do a tacking land drill) and once you've done that action satisfactorily then they'll tick that off and you'll have passed. So in a sense you can't really fail (that's how they put it to us anyhow). Obviously I'm hoping I won't be action planned but I'm kind of expecting it.
I spent an hour after our day ended today going over the land drills and how to reef a double hander (we all found out today that we'd been shown the wrong method when I tried to do a mock session on how to reef and they shot it down - admittedly I knew it had gone badly) so that I've got it in my head. I probably should be revising now... I will do after I've done this...
We've had homework, was what I meant to say when I started talking about the Instructor Assessment Week, that's made time short to get out to Cell on Wednesday and to Catlayst on Friday, but I've managed both. It's been a great week, learning and practising how to actually teach. We've had to make our own session plans and lead sessions for each other, all with debriefs afterwards and we've learned lots of tips on teaching.
On a sadder note, I found out yesterday at about 7 o'clock that it was Comic Relief... I still can't believe that I missed it. So annoyed. I wanted to wear a red nose whilst I was sailing. Ah well, there's always next time.
What else has been going on... not that much. We've just been continuing to improve and tomorrow on the moderation (the coaches swap round to moderate each other) everything will come to a head. I could have kept this quiet and then I could swallow it quietly if I get action-planned until I've passed. I've taken the risk of telling everyone (well everyone who reads this anyway) so now I have to tell you which way their decision falls tomorrow. (If there is pretty much no wind, as there has been for the last 2 or so days then we'll be doing land based stuff, which is fairly easy :D :D :D :D :D)
So yep, that is all I can think of to say. Sorry for those of you who wanted a blog everyday. I shall try to not miss another day, but we'll see how it goes. I'm off to Egypt on the 3rd of April I think so two weeks away. As regards to the blog when I'm out there... we'll see. I'll probably be paying for an Internet cafe out there as my phone Internet won't be free and I doubt there;ll be a conveniently free Internet cafe anywhere. Just to give you the heads up on that.
Now bring on tomorrow!!
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
The Pre-Assessment
Today went okay. I mucked up coming in and my tight circles could have been better, but I think I did OK. I kind of realised that although it's constant assessment this is still a COURSE. The are still coaching us to do better and teaching us new stuff (HOW to teach dinghy sailing) so that's all cool. We finished at three, which was annoying.
I'm undecided as to what to do. I think I may be blogging too much so I'm wondering whether to blog every couple of day sinstead of every day. Makes it easier for people to follow.... possibly... means they won't miss as much if they miss one day either.... hmmm........
Not much more to say really....
I'm undecided as to what to do. I think I may be blogging too much so I'm wondering whether to blog every couple of day sinstead of every day. Makes it easier for people to follow.... possibly... means they won't miss as much if they miss one day either.... hmmm........
Not much more to say really....
Monday, 14 March 2011
I would go...
So this is mainly going to be centred around a copy of an event that's going on up in London tomorrow. I only just saw it, or would have tried to shift arrangements so that I could make it, however as it stands I am starting the instructor assessment tomorrow and we've been told to expect a late finish. :( Definitely not enough time to get to London :( :( :( If I was back home I definitely would be going. I'm so frustrated that I can't make it, but there is nothing I can do.
But, about the Instructor Assessment. Pretty much I learnt today that it is basically a course within this course. The only difference is that it is accompanied with continual assessment. Expectations are that you'll arrive five-ten minutes before the time set to meet. It seems crazy but it keeps you on your toes. I've already got the tide information for the next week and checked out times and everything that we need to be rigged up and changed for tomorrow morning. Let's go out and smash this assessment (I say let "us" because it's a team effort) pulverise it into the ground and come out whistling merrily with our certificates hanging nonchalantly over one shoulder :D :D :D So, I'll say it again (I said it yesterday), in five days time I could be a qualified Dinghy Instructor. Here goes!!!
But, about the Instructor Assessment. Pretty much I learnt today that it is basically a course within this course. The only difference is that it is accompanied with continual assessment. Expectations are that you'll arrive five-ten minutes before the time set to meet. It seems crazy but it keeps you on your toes. I've already got the tide information for the next week and checked out times and everything that we need to be rigged up and changed for tomorrow morning. Let's go out and smash this assessment (I say let "us" because it's a team effort) pulverise it into the ground and come out whistling merrily with our certificates hanging nonchalantly over one shoulder :D :D :D So, I'll say it again (I said it yesterday), in five days time I could be a qualified Dinghy Instructor. Here goes!!!
Time 15 March · 19:00 - 20:00
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Location Parliament Square
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Created by: Pat Allerton
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More info 7:14 – Parliament Square Prayer
An hour of prayer for our Nation and Leaders.
A visible statement of faith.
A brandless, grassroots, flashmob event.
...For everyone, led by students.
Tuesday 15th March
7:14pm – 8:14pm
Parliament Square
Bring candles, glow sticks, lights of all kinds.
When Big Ben strikes 8, all drop to our knees.
Students, Young People, Church, rise up!
Let your light be seen.
“If my people, who are called by my name,
will humble themselves and pray and seek
my face and turn from their wicked ways,
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
The Vision
7:14
“Into the darkness you shine. Out of the ashes we rise.”
We’ve been singing these words in Church recently, and what amazing words they are.
But what if these words could actually become visible? What if we could literally see a gathering of God’s people, that displayed the light of Christ in the heart of this City, and saw the Church rise up in an apathetic age?
I believe God is calling his Church to come together, for a ‘one night only’ event in London. A statement of faith and unity, that will capture hearts and minds, and bring healing and change to the nation.
Some time ago, just after the first student protest, I was praying about student ministry in general and for God to move on campus. At that moment, I had a picture. In my mind’s eye I saw the Houses of Parliament, and a gathering of people in front of it, holding candles and praying. In an instant I knew they were students, coming together to pray for their Government and Leaders.
I believe God wants to see Parliament Square full of people, coming from all over, carrying candles and praying for our nation and leaders. Whilst at first I thought it would be just for students, I now feel it will be much broader. I believe this event (called ‘7:14’ after 2 Chronicles 7:14) is an opportunity for the WHOLE Church, young and old, to come together in a very public and visible way, to bless the nation and be seen by its people. A beautiful image of what the Church is called to be. A visible sign of what the Church is called to do.
But whilst it will be an event for everyone, I believe students and young people will lead it, mobilising themselves to come together, in the opposite spirit to that of the protests, choosing to pray for the government, even when they may not agree with its policies. As they take the lead, I believe the wider Church will follow, and a significant and visible statement will be made by the Church in Central London.
This is a one off event, and my aim is for it to be as anonymous, brandless and grassroots as possible. No agendas. No platforms. Just a call to pray.
As for 7:14 itself, it’s all about simplicity. We'll come together in a window of time. The rest will just happen as it does, and as God’s Spirit blows. There’ll be no public address, or gathering spot, no sense of a centre at all, just the People of God coming together as one for an hour of prayer and light for the nation. We’ll meet at 7.14pm in Parliament Square, and we’ll just take things from there. Walking, standing, praying, blessing. Seeking God together. It will rise up from the ground and then seemingly disappear, peaceable and beautiful, apparently unenduring, but something will have changed, and God in his mercy will have heard.
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
One People. One Prayer. One Purpose.
One hour, to see our Nation changed.
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