The Adventure Finally Starts

Well.  Not really. I’ve only got as far as Amsterdam and as explained below am spending the night in the relative comfort of the Yotel.   Here are a few pictures in case anybody fancies experimenting with compact living on a future journey.  Mind you for an old giffer it is ideal. Distance from bed to toilet 110cm, bliss.

A healthy breakfast at the local bistro (I know how Tom Hanks must have felt) and on again tomorrow.

Did I lock the door?

I’m walking round at the moment with a constant ‘did I turn the gas off’ feeling, as with only four days to go I vacillate between excitement and apprehension.  I suppose I’d feel the same if I was preparing for a new job or new school in the UK so nothing different there.  That’s what I try to convince myself anyway.

I must admit I’ll be glad when I get there now.  I’m looking forward to getting involved but not looking forward to 12 hours on planes and seven hours on buses. Mind you a night in a Yotel at Schiphol airport will be a new experience.  I don’t think it is quite like the Japanese filing cabinets that you see people sleeping in, but from the pictures compact is an understatement.  It should be fun.

A bit of a quandary as far as home is concerned.  Do I try to make sure that all the jobs that need doing are done and that everything will run totally smoothly or do I set booby traps so that I can feel useful as I’m ‘skyped’ so that my expertise (?) can be called upon.  I think I’m kidding myself.

Mind you I also wonder sometimes about my teaching skills or more particularly my ability to remember pupils.  I went to have my hair cut today and the man who was just ahead of me greeted me as he was ‘brushed down’ by the barber after his cut.  I looked a bit nonplussed and made a guess and said, “Pontefract Boys School?” to which he replied, “Yes”, whilst I apologised that faces change so much between school and adulthood.  I didn’t have an answer though when he pointed to the fact that he only had one arm and said, “I thought you might have remembered this though”.

 

Two weeks on Tuesday

Time is short now and only twenty more 'sleeps' until I fly.

I'm gradually checking things off from my 'to do' list.

I've been to the doctors and collected enough of my tablets to last me until Christmas (that's one suitcase filled) and with the added help with jabs from the travel clinic in Leeds am now good for Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, Diphtheria, Polio and Rabies (knowing me I'll get flu!). Interesting to see that the most expensive of my NHS drugs would cost under a £1 for a pack of 28 but the one drug I had to get on a private prescription (Malarone for Malaria) is £2.30 a tablet. Typical.

I've bought my own mosquito net just in case I get a holy one, and am making a collection of insect repellents. In fact, for the first time in my life, I'm in danger of turning into a hypochondriac.

One thing I have found though is that this blog idea is not as easy as it looks.  I am growing even more respectful of my eldest son, Cliff, who seems to write such easily readable reports.  Hopefully, when I actually arrive and start a life of new experiences, the muse will be stronger within me. For now I'll get back to my list.

Carpe Diem

There's no point looking back with regrets.  Always look forward to new challenges.

Fifty years ago was the era of the 'swinging sixties' and, as an 18 year old going off to University, I took Bob Dylan as my hero.  He was mine and I didn't particularly want other people to enjoy his music so when my Mum exclaimed " not that miserable dirgeful music again.", that just strengthened my resolve.   Here's one of my favourite Dylan songs that I've come back to many times over the years as it too recognises the futility of dwelling in bygone days.

While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words were told, our songs were sung
Where we longed for nothin’ and were quite satisfied
Talkin’ and a-jokin’ about the world outside

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split

How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that

Children

As there is still seven weeks to go until I leave the UK I thought I would experiment by adding things that interest me.  Here is one of my favourite extracts from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese poet.

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

A beginning

This is the first entry in my new blog.  For those who don't know me, my name is Stuart Lonsdale and I am a retired teacher from Pontefract in the UK.  I am travelling this September to Pangani in Tanzania to help for three months at Boza Technical Secondary School and have decided to do a blog to let my friends at home know how the journey is going. Hopefully the rest of the blog will be more interesting than this first entry but that depends on many things beyond my control.