UK: Just Starting Out

Last Saturday all the Lattitude volunteers leaving in the next few months met up for a briefing day in Reading Town Hall. Luckily for me it's a stone's throw away, but others had taken planes and driven from 4am in the morning to get there on time! It was great to meet all the other volunteers going to Fiji and getting to know each other a bit (though I'm sure the 20 hour journey will be a much better opportunity) as well as talking to the returned volunteers about potential tropical diseases and how much they're missing their placements now!

 James (India), Lizzie (Ecuador), Merry (Ecuador), Me! (Fiji) and Pete (Vanuatu) touring!

 After the briefing day, the next week was spent in London at a teacher training course learning.... how to teach! As we were in a TEFL school, most of the teaching was centred around teaching english with lessons on how to teach grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation but we were also taught a lot about general teaching techniques such as lesson planning and making lessons interesting. Something that should've been obvious, but that I didn't realise, was that we'd be doing some teaching practice on the course ourselves and lucky(?) for me, I was going on the first day! Approaching a circle of expectant students on the first day of the course was a bit like diving into the deep end but after a lot of support from the teachers and newly made friends (also fellow teachers), I think I did an alright job! The course was incredible fun and I learnt so much, definitely glad I could go.

Mornings were spent in the classroom learning and taking notes, afternoons were spent either lesson planning on the balcony or teaching foreign students and  the evenings were spent sitting in the park, chatting and watching the boats bob along the lake in Regents Park. There were eleven of us on the course which was a great number. We all got to know each other pretty well and we all had a lot of fun learning together! Definitely feels like the start of my gap year hanging out with lots of people in the same situation and I had a fantastic time with everyone :) If that's just a week, I'm looking forward to the next 3 months!!

UK: Around the World in 4 Hours!

Over the last few months myself and fellow gap year buddy Rachel Harrop have been planning, planning and MORE planning not just our year out but a fundraising evening! Rachel is going to Venezuela to do therapeutic horse riding for disabled children (which she already does in the UK) with Fundación Aldeas de Paz whilst what I'm doing can be seen here! Since we are both going abroad to volunteer we both wanted to fund raise money for our charities and finally settled on a Quiz Night. After 3 months of planning our simple Quiz Night turned into an Around the World themed evening with a buffet, band and raffle!

We'd like to thank LUSH, Whittards, Sainsbury's, Tescos, Forresters4Hair, Vantage Chemists, Bellview Winery, Old Orleans, VUE Cinema, Virgin Media as well as family and friends for being absolutely incredible and donating prizes towards our raffle.

I want to emphasise how much everyone's generosity and kindness is appreciated since without the charitable contributions from people and places and these, our work and the work of many other volunteers would not be possible. The help and donations from everyone will be remembered with much gratitude.

The night was an incredible success and weeks and weeks of planning really paid off! Despite a slight mishap with microphones being locked away for the weekend in a cupboard.... the rest of the evening prevailed without a hitch (although, a few of the teams who didn't win might not agree with that statement!).

The 6th Form Band were incredible and really set the mood for the evening, especially getting everyone up and dancing!

Our school was amazing in helping us organise the hall despite a weekend long Midsummer Night's Dream rehearsal happening the following day and the kitchens provided a very well appreciated array of food from every continent.

As the teams got to work each round was based around a continent with a bonus round for naming all 50 US States, a music round inspired by Asia and a picture round of Vegas casino fronts! Rachel and I wrote the question rounds and MC'd the evening, attempting to dress up in exotic head wear whenever possible :)

The whole evening was a fundraising success and we made a profit of £1280 which Rachel and I have split evenly between us to go towards our volunteer work. Thank you to everyone for such a fantastic night!

From the looks of it, our friends enjoyed it too!