There's no denying it, these bloggers are bound to make you jealous. Whether it's their guts, their energy or their tan you admire, overseas volunteers have got plenty to share with you about their remarkable work in fascinating countries. Read on to find out what you could be missing.

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Thursday Nov 02, 2006

training weekend

well Ive just come back from a training weekend up in london for tanzania. It was really good, i finally got to meet the people I'll be travelling with, and it succeded in making me very aware that I am actually going. For the majority of saturday I panicked about packing when they told me that I should only take one huge backpack...for 8 months! but I've come to terms with it now, and think I'm going to cope...just! Im very succeptable to the culture I'm in and at the moment my room is overflowing with jeans, t-shirts, jumpers, necklaces and shoes, but when i get out there Im sure ill be fine, if not I'll shop! The weekend also instilled in me the importance of learning swahili, so I'm trying to do that a lot more now, and I learnt one very important word at the weekend...'jamba' which apparently means fart! Aswell i learnt some cultural rules like what i can and cant wear, and they confirmed that my smoking must stop, but i dnt think thats going to cause a problem as i smoke out of habit, and if i'm busy, or out of daily routine i can not smoke for weeks.

I'm so excited, I just want to buy all my kit stuff and go..NOW! this has been made even stronger with the beginning of christmas songs at work yesterday (1st november) when rudolf the red nose reindeer is on every half an hour it makes me just want to scream, but i have what...6 or 7 weeks of it left! after a weekend of excitement, and talking to people who are passionate about the same things as me, to return to helping overweight women but jeans is hard, but not long now! whoooooooo

 

Posted by Emily ( 5:47 PM )
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grasping at straws

Belated Boo to Y'all! Halloween here at the library yesterday was a blast. Most of the staff dressed up and we had fun with all the kids who came in for the free goodies.

When I bought my costume (McDonald's milkshake),

I thought I'd have to grasp at straws (pun intended) to try and tie it to volunteering so that I could chat about it here, but thanks to the 'kindness' of some co-workers, I'm actually going to get a proper international vol blog post out of it.

A girl started singing some obnoxious (& rather rude) song called 'Milkshake' by Kelis at me over and over and seemed stunned that I had never ever heard it. She kept at me until I smiled, shrugged and said, 'Musta been drinking in a Scottish pub when it was out here.'

The whole incident brought to mind one of the off-hand, little-thought-about ways overseas work can change a person. While you're out of the country living the vol life, tv shows come and go, celeb dish splashes across the tabloids, and Blair or the Twit from Texas (I've got other names for mr. bush but they're not fit for polite blogging) says/does something newsworthy. Months later, you're sitting with hometown friends, the conversation shifts and suddenly you're left defending yourself when you say, 'Huh? Who got killed? He said what?' And, for a moment, you can't help but think back wistfully on what you were probably doing when whatever happened.

Sometimes it's hard to explain to people that, no, really, you don't know what they're talking about. An English friend of mine wanted to volunteer internationally, but said he couldn't face losing a year of music and Everton football. I don't think there's anything here in America that I couldn't walk away from for a period of time. You?

For me, the experience of living somewhere new, meeting new people far outweighs anything mundane. Certainly, there are things I miss (like my thrice-daily Mountain Dew fix), but... come on. Really. Who cares if you miss two or three or twenty stupid pop songs?

When I wiggled into my costume at lunch, I certainly didn't think I'd end up with a proper post!

 

 

 

Posted by Dana ( 2:30 PM )
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