and now for something completely different...

if you didn't know already, which would be understandable as i haven't published the news publicly on this blog - i have left belize and am back in england. i am going to dharamsala next tuesday in north west india, to teach english to tibetan refugees  for 2 months.  i'm fairly excited about this, as this is where the dalai lama lives in exile. i will obviously be writing a blog all about this: the address is www.tibetanpickle.blogspot.com (i wanted the address indianpickle, but it was already taken -it's a cookery blog about indian dishes).

they told me the place is fairly remote, in the foothills of the himalayas i guess - my room will have a view of the mountains apparently, and if i get sick of the monotonous food they cook in the school it is possible to get a hamburger from the nearby town, and also a capuccino. i thought this was a nice touch. you can read a lot more about the project on this link if you so desire - if you don't then that's fine, you can read about it on my blog instead, as it happens:

http://www.workingabroad.com/page/218/tibetan-teaching-programme.htm

this announcement about having left might sound rather sudden, but in fact i have been wanting to leave for a while, and for various reasons. but i didn't want the blog to become negative so i didn't mention it there. robert will stay and carry on with the resort on the island, and hopefully one day i'll go and see it as a finished and successful resort, complete with ultralights on floats whizzing around and the futuristic hovercraft transferring lots of happy guests, and no hurricanes.

the other day, whilst still in belize, we flew in the little ultralight to a mile high (5280 feet to be imperialist, or is that metric who knows? why can't they just have one way of measuring things). anyway that was pretty cool. it was in fact pretty cold, but we had our extremely cool (as in trendy), warm flightsuits on, as you'll see in a picture if i get round to posting it. robert flew to 10,000 feet the other day, which is around 2 miles. he has flown to 20,000 feet before, with oxygen, in his hang glider. we flew low over some cows on the way down, as that is one of my favourite things to do whilst flying.

so far on returning to england, i have had quite bad jet, and culture lag, making me very overwhelmed at a week in london (i'm now in yorkshire but still adapting back to the modernization - it is, despite what you southerners might think, quite modern up here too you know). there are 300,000 people in the whole of belize and when i came back last time from belize it had been via mexico and new york, so i had acclimatised to crowds of people again. this time it was like how an alien from a very quiet and hot planet would feel if he/she landed in london in winter, ie quite weird. i managed to avoid rush hour on the depths of the tube, just got buses, or the shallow tube lines, which i can cope much easier with. i noted how dull and choppy and grey and uninviting the thames looked, compared to the turquoise tropical water off the belizean coast. i ate some smoked salmon and had a few lattes and marvelled at how easy it is to get any item you could possibly want here, and how most of the world doesn't have access to this luxurious consumerist lifestyle, and really is it that good for people anyway - no i don't think so, and many a more intelligent essay has been written on that subject than my wafflings here.

i went to a bonfire for bonfire night up here in yorkshire, in hebden bridge, i was accustomed to crowds by then otherwise that would have been a bit of a trial. the fireworks were a bit weedy we thought, and you couldn't get any warmth from the huge fire, as there was a health and safety fence keeping you at least 10 metres away. this would never happen in central america, you can walk right up a live volcano and stick your face in the flowing lava if you so desire over there, and no one cares two hoots.

thank you for reading my blog for the last 6 months and hope you enjoy the next one which should start some time next week. over and out, look out for some pictures on the next and last post. xx