Wednesday 11 January 2012

Week 13 - Christmas news

Week 13 - approaching 4 month target


Bonjour mo amies !

Firstly Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great Christmas, for me it was a little different to the one i experience at home. I will take you back to december where we had a very important day at Shelter. Construction work has been ongoing since my arrival in September and they have finished one part of it, a covered outside area for the girls to play in when its bad weather, which is rare!! We had a visit from the prime minister of Mauritius who came and looked at all the work which had been done, he also stayed for a little show the shelter girls put on. They danced for him and sang christmas songs which i too joined in. He looked like he had a very good afternoon at Shelter. Freya and I have also been invited over for dinner at his home by his wife who studied in the UK for sometime, exciting huh! Also in December we went to a 2 day traditional indian wedding. It was the wedding of a colleague. We were told we could wear anything but we wished to dress traditional - i wore a churidai and trousers, many women wore full indian dress- Sari. The colours were amazing.It started on a Saturday evening where it was the girls ceremony at her home. Her side of the family attended and her friends. The same was happening at her partners house. We firstly ate traditional indian food, Dholl puri which is several curries served with duri ( rice) and crisp breads. We ate with our hands on a banana leaf. After we ate we made our way to the ceremony where the girl would be given away ready for the wedding tomorrow. The prayers were said in Hindi so there is not much i can recall, but i do remember that they could not put saffron on her forehead because it was a full moon that evening and in the Qurran it forbids this until early the next morning when the moon is out of site. The next day we returned to the girls home and now the marque was full of both families, never seen so many different coloured saris. The man arrived with a lot of indian music playing, he sat at the alter and waited for the bride to come down, she was wearing red and a lot of gold, she looked stunning. The ceremony was long and gifts were given from both families. There is no reception here, everyone then moves onto the boys house and celebrate and they then leave for there honeymoon. It was a very special experience and i will always remember it! on the run up to christmas we took a few days off. We decided to hire a car to make the most use of our time off so we could see a lot more of the island.

On Christmas Eve we went to the Casela Nature Park at Flic en Flac we had booked a full day there, doing zip lines and such like. When you imagine zip lines i think of the one in the local park at home, it was so amazing when it was built, every child wanted a go on it, but boy when i saw these zip lines i was a little scared. they were around 400 metres high and all you could see was jungle beneath you. In total we did 4000metres of zip lines. Once you did your first one you didn't want to stop!! They gave you a adrenaline burst and the views were breath taking. After we had done at least 2 hours of zip lines we did some hill walking into the jungle and found a spot to have lunch and there were natural pools of water with waterfalls draining into them, ideal place to swim! the pools were 15ft deep, we were diving in and using zip lines to plunge into the pool, it was amazing!! We had a bbq there and it was a good time to reflect why i took a gap year, to experience these kind of things! After lunch we walked down back into the jungle and found a canyon which we had to cross to get to the other side of the mountain to climb up. there was a canoe which we put our clothes in and took through to the other side of the canyon, we swam along with the eels to the other side, put our clothes on and started hill walking again, and our next challenge faced us, a 40 ft bridge between two mountains. We were accompanied for this as it was quite dangerous, we took it very slow as it was unstable. Again it was a scary experience! Casela was such a good day and i would defiantly consider going again before i leave.

Christmas day was spent opening the presents we were given and we also went up to shelter for lunch which was nothing like home! We ate various curries, rice, noodles, etc! very different but very nice! it will be now 2 years i  until i eat turkey!!  The day was relaxing and nothing much happened. People treated as a normal day, many shops were still open which i find really weird!! The variety of Religions is probably the reason it is barely celebrated.  Of course Christmas isn't christmas without playing monopoly( well in my family) I am also champion here 3 time winner and yet to be beaten!! Love it!  Boxing day was spent at the beach, one in the South unfortunately it was a poor day and we didn't spend very long there. In the evening we took a trip to the new mall of Mauritius called bagatelle where we went to see the new twilight, we couldn't resist, - Sorry gap year!! New year was great spent with my friends here and our neighbours- everyone really comes together! We made friends with people on our street and had a few beers with them which was nice, its nice to accepted! Fireworks were everywhere and lovely to watch. they are still continuing now and its the middle of January!!

With the new year came bad news, over the months i have developed a few boils in my sweat glands, but they were easily resolved at home, but i found a huge one, the size of a golf ball, which was so painful i took a visit to casualty at a good clinic close by. I was looked at by a surgeon who said it wasn't a boil but a abscess which had to have urgent sugary. So scary! Why did it have to happen now eh? what are the chances! that day i went in for surgery under general anaesthetic- also a new experience, guess you gotta try everything once in life. But i was glad it was being removed as it was so painful i could no longer live with it. I felt nothing of course and the operation took 1hr 40mins. the doctor planned for me to stay in the surgical ward for one night but the next morning i was not well and suffered nausea for a few days after. I was later let out 3 days after surgery, but was instructed not to return to work for 2 weeks. Also i must go to the clinic everyday for re-dressing which makes it very difficult to be at work. Its a big thing being out of work for 1 month at least but i hope the wound heals well and i can return to work for the remaining months. Being in hospital was obviously a scary thing but when your on your own you find ways to deal with things, without parents or a support system you think for yourself and in the end your alright, well i was anyway and i know now i can tackle a lot of things ,especially after a year away from home. So having these two weeks off give me time to get things done such as this blog! also i am thinking of projects we can do with the girls who do not attend school, please if you have any ideas let me know i am very grateful. I am focussing on the health side of things right now, how to keep yourself healthy, fit and clean. Freya is planning on doing some embroidery designs with them. I have also been saving all our old cardboard from home and im hoping to introduce a 'space' project to the little ones like i did at school and design their own space ships!

See you in my next update which could be near the 6 months mark!

Keep safe

and if anyone who is reading this is thinking of taking a gap year,do it!!


Until next time,


Daisy