Uplands

After a relaxing weekend we were on course again, huraahh! Uplands International School of Penang, a group of 13-15 yr old school kids who all speak english and don't have the best attitude! Very western, all the latest gear (one kid wearing genuine Ferrari gear) and enough junk food to last a year. So prepared for an OB course. Oh how me and Ali took pleasure in doing the wake-up calls. 5.45am = bang on room door as loud as possible, shout good morning, make sure the lights are on and repeat in next room! You make our lives hell during the day, we'll get you in the morning! First activity: raft building. Admitidly the kids did pretty well with this, most rafts floated! The teachers however, asked if they could make their own raft, so after us being told we would join with them since we hadn't done rafting before we sourced all the rope and humped all the barrells and pipes around we were kindly requested to leave the teachers to it. They wanted to show the kids they could do it too. Good luck, there was 3 of them and they only had half an hour. Should of taken our help, the guy ended up with awful ropeburn! The rest of the course all the support staff(us) would be belaying for the high ropes course up in the mosquito ridden jungle. This was reasonably enjoyable for the first two hours or so but after ten it gets pretty tiring and patience will be lost with anyone who says its not safe, or insists in coming down half way round but won't let go off the platform! One of the bonuses of this course was that they got snacks twice a day, resulting in 3 free packets of Malaysian style oreo's! Thank goodness next morning brought their departure, plenty of leftover cake and welcome rest! Now as for Libby, she was ill for the start of the course so spent the rest of it recovering, however this meant the jammy person got put on "support" for the OB Singapore staff trip! Pretty much she got to go kayaking in their amazing kayaks to paradise islands for 4 days while me and Ali spent our time being extremely bored and unable to even go to town since everyone went home and we have no bikes yet! We totally weren't jealous or anything! Its incrdible how different the two operations are, Singapore just seem so professional and have heaps more funding. We've been invited to go down to OB Singapore sometime, hopefully Christmas or New Year! This week we have been "working" in Logistics, shame no-one told them! This has just been frustrating! Literally my work for the week has been sweep 6 rooms, fill 2 barrels of food, go shopping, drink Milo, discuss escape routes if all the locals happen to be zombies, count some plates and cups and drink more Milo! Apparently work will get more difficult soon...we'll wait and see. I think they're just a little lost with what to do with us since the 25day course we were supposed to do got cancelled. We have tried some cool food lately though ranging from really sweet ice cream thing with added sweetcorn to super spicy curry served on real banana leaves! In other food news I've started practicing for Come Dine With Me with the help of the kitchen staff, it should be aired in early next year!! Ps. I apologise for not being very cheery in this, we're getting just a little aggitated that we're not doing much, especially when we're hearing OB South Africa lot haven't stopped doing tonnes of physical training...if only!! Jumpa Lagi

An "insteresting" night...

So I was planning on posting this weeks goings ons but I reckon last night is worthy of a post all on its own! This weekend was the first course we were working on, local school children sponsored by Vale to do a 3 day course. It started with formalities like admin, showing kids to dorms, ice breakers etc. Me and Ali were to support primary children and Libby the secondary ones. 7-12 year olds seem to have a continuous supply of E-numbers! You would think if they were still running around at 11pm they would be shattered at their wake-up call attacks 5.45am, oh no already up and ready before we had even got up to "wake them up"! From here there was the usual morning exercise followed by us spending all morning belaying on the climbing wall. Already tired we were glad that the primary children got to go over to the camp site on Pangkor Island on the motherboats! All went well the boats were loaded and unloaded and camp was set up in an amazing bay. It wasn't quite the camping experience I was expecting, lots of tents from other groups, lots of shacks/huts and an awful lot of rubbish on the beach and surrounding trees. Oh yeah and there were toilets! Not nice ones, we're talking hole in the ground, with a bucket to wash, under a tin roof and a towel as a door! It gets dark really early like 7:30 so we set up our hammocks for the first time ever before dinner. Now the placement of our hammocks wasn't exactlly ideal, we went for between 2 trees right on the beach, this wasn't a good choice apparently! Once we had dinner which was tinned chicken curry, malaysian style of course so it had bones in and was far too hot, we went on a night walk with the kids. It was only about 100m in the jungle but leading a line of kids when you don't know where you're going and have given your head torch to a kid whos scared of the dark and stopping the circulation to your hand is pretty difficult! A nice wee night cap of Milo and sugar crackers(yeah I know they're weird) and off to bed we went! The real drama begins...

Things started off well, the view was incredible and everything was calm. But then 4 hours, 3 hammock adjustments, no sleep, goodness-knows how many bangers and and a high tide later and we were forced to shift our hammocks!! As we were packing up a few flashes of light lit the sky, after a good bit of discussion we came to the conclusion that it was in fact lightening and we couldn't hear the thunder for the noise of the sea lapping at our feet! We decided to join Daus and Boy in the raised floor, tin roof hut with no walls! Almost immediately the thunder and lightening got a lot more exciting, flashes that lit the whole sky for seconds at a time and rumbles of thunder almost right after! We spent a good half hour just watching in amazement, we could see the actual bolts hitting the sea in front of us! As we tried to get to sleep the rain began. When it rains in Malaysia it really does just bucket it down. This mixed with a wind that was picking up and a lot of holes in the tin roof resulted in multiple very wet and tired instructors!! So what did we do in this situation, ah yes cracked open a packet of sugar crackers and a pot of peanut butter and chocolate spread, I mean what else would you do at 4am during a storm?! Finally we got a few winks of sleep literally less than an hour for me and Ali, of course Libby got a good few hours she has some magic ability to sleep anywhere (on my leg in this case), anytime! Again the kids were up ling before we were! Supposed to be loading the boats at 7am but we were only just waking up! Loading the boats was interesting with massive waves rolling in and the boats rocking and swaying. Lucky Ali got to ride in the safety boat back to the centre, I'm a little jealous it would have been fun!! I went back on the motherboat with some of the kids. Once back ashore and everything sorted out the leftover rations was left for the staff to salvage, we managed to get 2 big bags of Milo, half a bottle of diluting juice, 3 packets of sugar crackers and some soy sauce for Libby! Added bonus, expeditions will be more rewarding from now on!! I have to say I slept like a baby last night, 13 hours sleep!! Hope you're all enjoying freshers!! Selemat paggi :)

Week 1

Time flies when you're having fun, cant believe thats its already been over a week since I left home! The flights seemed to take days, oh yeah they did! The only mishap was Jennys bag not arriving in KL but she has it now so all is good. Mr Mann picked us up from the airport and gee that guy has power, he allowed me to go back through security in the airport just by speaking to the guards. Apparently he used to be in the special forces and can't leave the country incase he gets kidnapped or becomes a spy or something! Anyway we spent the next few days as a country group in Seremban basically eating and swimming! There was an epic Scotland vs England rugby water polo game with a Dutch ref, the scots well and truly kicked ass!! We got bused off to Lumut on Monday I think or maybe Tuesday my memory is just as bad as always! At the lunch break on the bus we witnessed our first Malaysian rain storm, bloody hell when it rains it really does pour! After thinking we were in Lumut 160km before we actually were we finally got to Lumut bus station and were picked up by Syafri and Matthew. Our rooms aren't too bad, ours is certainly better than Ali's! We have a shared balcony looking over the school. The amout of wildlife is incredible! Loads of monkeys and baby monkeys and stray cats with one eye and no tail and ants everywhere and gecho's sitting on all the roofs watching you showed, watching you eat! And then there are the mosquitos, I have some killer bites, like 10cm across! Theres not really much for us to do at the moment other than chill and get used to the heat, its still a shock to go outside and it be warmer than inside! Everyone we've met has been lovely, we've had invitations to go fishing, been taken into town for dinner, possibly going to a wedding next week in KL and people will give us lifts to town whenever! I've gotten to know the "practicals" who are here until december, apparently Shuek is not the same as Shrek as I thought, my bad! The first course has come in today, a bunch of local bankers so we are just to observe if we want but we have the weekend off so have been invited to a food party as part of Hari Raya on Marina Island with the big boss man tomorrow! Last thing, we've all been given nicknames by the staff: Ali is now Ali Puteh (white Ali), Libby is Extra and I'm Katy Perry since thats the only other Katie they've heard of, shame I can't sing quite so good! Thats it for now, Pirates of the Caribbean is about to start!  Jumpa Lagi Xxxx

How To Contact Me

If you fancy sending any letters (which you all should!) my address for the year will be:

Outward Bound Malaysia

Teluk Batik

32200 Lumut

Perak Darul Ridzuan

Malaysia

Also decided to get Skype: katie.dougan3 so you can all see my wee face in Malaysia!!

7 days...

A week to go. A week until I fly 11,315.37 km round the world. A week until I move away for a year, 12months, 52weeks, 365days, 8760hours, 525,600minutes, 31,536,000seconds!!! It doesn't feel real yet, still feels like a dream!! However I'm sure that will all change when I say my goodbyes to my parents and Hanna at Edinburgh Airport. I've already said my first goodbye to Emma but even then it didn't sink in that I wouldn't see her for a whole year. I'm sure this weekend will be full of more goodbyes and hopefully me realising that its actually happening, I'm going half way round the world to an amazing country, with amazing people and hopefully help change the lives of even a few people!

Now that I have all my sponsorship, PT must love me a week to go and they're only just getting the money, I must thank all the people that have helped me get this far! Every little bit of help and support is much appreciated and without it I wouldn't be able to set of on this incredible opportunity! I need to thank my parents for putting so much time into my fundraising from helping write letters, to holding car boot sales and spending full days packing bags in Morrisons!! I also need to thank my parents for both running the Barra half marathon for sponsorship! Esther and Jordan must also be thanked for doing the bungee jump which apparently they totally didn't want to do...they loved it really but yeah thanks for doing it and doing a lot of the sponsorship collection! Also thanks to everyone else: family, friends, strangers, businesses and trusts, I couldn't have raised all the money without you guys!!!

Terima kasih :)

Outward Bound Malaysia

So as I already said I have been chosen to do Outward Bound in Malaysia!!! This basically I will spend the next year working as a volunteer for Project Trust as an assistant instructor at the Outward Bound Malaysia School in Lumut which is...

It's situated on the west coast where the water front is used for kayaking, rafting and sailing as well as our morning swims! There is an island about 3km out from the centre and apparently the girls' room has views over it! The centre isn't actually in the town but 10km out from Lumut. Most of my work is going to be as an assistant instructor however I may become qualified by the end of the year! The sea is the backbone of the school so kayaking, sailing and rafting are the name of the game however there is also a lot of jungle trekking, climbing and team building as well! Once we get to the project we are doing a 25 day course as participants so we know what to expect before getting trained so we can do our job properly!

We get a fair few random holidays so I want to travel a good bit in Malaysia before venturing further afield to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam or Indonesia! Primarily I would love to get to Malaysia Borneo where there are more OB vols and teachers too, although I've heard there's a staff trip here anyway!!

For now selemat malam :)

The Beginning!

So yeah this is my blog for the year! I'll try and update it about every 2 weeks although I get the feeling it will more likely be when I get bored ie. not very often! For now I'll go back to how I got involved:

Selection 
I heard about Project Trust in a school assembly. One of the teachers in the school had been on a gap year with PT and it had changed their whole career plan!! I waited a few weeks before applying just to check I could apply for deferred entry to uni. I got onto a 5 day selection course at the start of December, which just our luck was during "Hurricane Bawbag" therefore we had no hot water or electricity for 3 days, a taste of what could be to come overseas!!
On selection we stayed with host families as many volunteers do when they are overseas, and then went to the Hebridean Centre during the day for sessions on life overseas, how to teach, actually teaching lessons, possible scenarios overseas, climbing Ben Hough (not as bad as it sounds, only 104m!), digging lazy beds and helping in the local community. All of these activities are watched  by PT staff so they can judge whether you are suitable to go overseas, then there is a session on all the countries PT goes to and the project types: teaching, social care and outward bound! Finally you discuss your preferences about countries and project type with a senior staff member, go home and wait for the decision letter a week later!
I got my letter on the last of school before Christmas!! Mum opened it when I was on the phone to her "I think you got in, it says stuff about Malaysia, Uganda and Guyana"  "seriously?!?!"  "says something about Outward Bound too!" OMG you have no idea how excited I got, pretty sure I had tears in my eyes telling my friends when I got off the phone!!!

Now that I was selected I would have to raise £5100 :O lots I know but that's for a whole year!! 7 months to raise more money than I've ever had. In hindsight it wasn't too bad, just a lot of writing letters and getting sponsorship and hours spent packing bags in supermarkets! Also gave Esther, Jordan and me an excuse to do a bungee jump!!

Up until the start of May I didn't know for sure where I was going or whether I would be doing my first choice Outward Bound or teaching. Then on muck-up day which was an amazing day already I found out I had been chosen to do Outward Bound in Malaysia!!! I feel so lucky, of the 300 places overseas this year there are only 11 places on OB, in Malaysia, South Africa and Hong Kong and I got one of them!!!

This meant I would be going back to Coll for a training course with all the vols from Malaysia, South Africa and Hong Kong. I get the feeling that our training was a bit more exciting than those doing teaching or social care; we camped each night, one night on a beach, morning runs and a swim in the ocean, orienteering, climbing and abseiling as well as spending time playing frisbee when the others were in sessions!!! I came away from training a lot more confident about my year away now that I know a lot more about the country and my project as well as meeting my partners; Alistair and Libby!

I think that's all I've got to say in this post, it's pretty long already! I'll put up a separate post about my project in a bit. To those thinking about doing a gap year: DO IT!!! I hope this has helped if you're considering going on selection, I couldn't find much info out before I went!

Jumpa lagi!!