Almost at the end of the first week in Guyane and I still haven't really organised much. The housing panic amongst everyone else here has continued but Im just hoping something will show up. The plan at the moment is that someone is driving us to St. Laurent (my town for the year) tomorrow, which saves the 35 euro bus, and then I am staying with a teacher for a couple of nights, then swapping to an apartment-floor one of the other girls has organised for the rest of the first week while the two of us look for somewhere to live properly. At this rate its looking like it might end up being a hammock in a porch but that sounds pretty good to me!
Since the last blog we have been fairly busy. The afternoon after we last wrote, one of the teachers took me and Olivia to buy phones, we got a really sexyyyy basic thing with torch and radio, but on the plus side we got to choose our numbers, so both of ours are very similar. Then we headed back to the teachers house for a swim in her pool and a drive round some of the nicer beaches, where all of her teacher friends were kite-surfing. Everyone here seems really young, fit and attractive- hopefully this will be enough to spur me into action :S First ill need to get off the diet of chinese takeaway and rum and fruit juice :S...
The next morning was another early awakening for a full day of assistant 'training'. This time it only started around an hour late, pretty good going for Guyane. Time doesn't seem to be much of an issue here and i have noticed in the last couple of days that I have actually started walking slower. Im hoping to return tres mellow, tres tanned and tres less sweaty in the heat. As for the training it ranged from completely useless to vaguely interesting. Most of it was aimed at the people teaching older children 11-18, whereas Im doing up to age 10. There was one section which was really useful for me, I got given a huge pack with loads of activity sheets and instructions on what I need to teach. The only thing that concerns me, is that at Primary level, often in the school there isnt a single teacher that speaks the target language (i.e english) So basically, I am responsible for getting a class of 10 year olds to the correct level to start at 'big school.' Jokes? On the plus side apparently it involves lots of singing and music-y stuff which should suit me muchas. We had a delicious lunch that consisted of battered prawns, prawn rolls, pastried prawns, prawn skewers, prawns on bread, prawn sandwichs... If you love prawns it would have been heavenly . I however, tried a couple and then decided that the rum and guayaba juice that was also on offer would be a much better idea.
By the time we made it back to the pool (home) ... we still can't swim in the pool it was getting fairly late but no-one was hungry after prawnfest 2k12 (they had kindly shipped over any leftovers to the pool if we wanted a snack), so we started browsing the internet for holidays. Now, by this day, Lucy had arrived, another Brit, by her own admission a bit crazy and impulsive... (a bit crazy???? I'd go with tres... Within the hour she had booked us all flights for our first holidays in November and was like... you all owe me £190. SO... the plan is.. we finish in school on the friday, Oli and Lucy make it over to my house (hopefully I will have one by then) on the border. We then have I think between 8-10 days to travel across suriname and guyana (english) to make it to the capital of Georgetown. From here we fly to Trinidad for a cheeky week or so and we are hoping to make it to Tobago as well if possible. I guess sometimes impulsive is the way forward!!... little bit awkward in that we didn't realise we would need visas for Suriname (we're british darling... surely our passport gets us in everywhere!), which meant we had to wake up at 6 again the next morning to tackle to bus to Cayenne that we had heard rumours of...
7.30am- all ready to go, stood at what looks like a bus stop, no sign of a timetable but we are on it...
8.20am- a bunch of guys smoking their morning joint at the bus stop ask us why we are sitting in the sun and offer us room on the bench... they don't question why we are here.
8.30am- we ask the guys when the next bus is coming. They reply... ha! to cayenne! mate it doesnt go from here, go that way that way and that way and youll see the bus stop... brill
8.50am- stop off at the townhall to check we are going the right way. We have told everyone we are braving the bus and simply REFUSE to return defeated to the pool.
9.05am- check at the supermarket we are going the right way... apparently we are
9.10am- Lucy starts sticking her thumb up aiming to hitchhike us there... LUCKILY, after 10 minutes or so a very kind BUS pulls over and picks us up for the bargain price of 2 euro to Cayenne. According to the timetable, we were either 40mins late for the 8:40, or half an hour early for the 9:50....Guyane time banter?
MADE IT TO CAYENNE for our first view of the city. A really nice man on the bus offered to walk us across the city to the Suriname consulate where we were going to get visas sorted. Turns out from one sie of the city to the other is about an 8 minute walk, so.... it didn't take him very long to walk us there!
We had heard bad things about the consulate. The americans had told us that we would have to wear long trousers and cover our shoulders and that the whole thing was very serious and formal. WELL.. we wondered in short-shorts and all, and had a good chat with our (now) good friend Thomas, the man behind the counter, working out the best visa options for all of us. After a cheeky trip for some passport photos and some photocopies we went back to drop them off (im getting mine done in st laurent though as it will be easier to pick up) and by the end Thomas and us were best friends/ We took a photo with him, and he even asked the next lady in the queue to wait 5 mins while he gave us his number. He was even considering coming on the holiday with us, until he realised he probably couldnt get the time off work. What a shame :S Good luck to Olivia who had to go back on tuesday to pick up her passport!
We then had a wander round the 5 main blocks and went for some crepes to celebrate our holiday, bus and visa success -- thats what the french do isn't it ?? Randomly one of the teachers drove past outside, recognised us and offered us a lift home via the fish market. Guyane is so small, apparently everyone knows everyone and its only a matter of time before you bump into someone!
Spent the afternoon at the beach... Lucy and Oli saw some turtles hatching eggs and I didn't, as I was asleep for about 2 hours. cheeky power nap. Got back, and had about 20 mins to change into our dresses for the welcome party that evening before a teacher came and picked us up to watch a CASUAL ROCKET LAUNCH from her garden with a beer. We watched the telly do the countdown and when it got to three we all ran outside and saw it even though the launch place is about an hour and a half away. It was really cool and we watched it all the way until it disappeared and could see all the separations of the boosters and some other stuff (I dont know much about rockets) ... The sound came about 5 minutes later as well... bizarre!
The party was pretty cool, it basically involved a buffet dinner a rum fountain and some traditional local singing and dancing, what more could you ask for?? We had a bit of a boogie, but things did improve slightly when the dancers gave up and let the dj take over. The teachers upstaged ALL of us, in attractiveness as well as dance moves. Muy jealous... need to get learning how to dance :S We then headed into Cayenne on a bus having picked up a few stray children along the way and watched a bit of the film festival. Everyone was a bit tired and mega sweaty after the dancing, and as most of the film was in creole we didnt really understand much so by the time the bus picked us up at half 12 I have never been so excited for bed!
Slept an increds 12 hours and have just got back from 2 hours at the local pool.. had to wear a sexy swimming cap! Its obvs been a hard day, but apparently we are hitting up Cayenne tonight as it is one of the Brazilien guys' birthday.... this is all depending on whether we can find a taxi to take us there and back which seems to be a bit hit and miss... but... On Va Voir!
Who knows, maybe by the next blog I might even have somewhere to live...
On the bright side, the tanning is coming along muy bueno!
xx
No comments:
Post a Comment