HAPPY BIRTHDAY H! I hope you had a wonderful time in Hong Kong.x
(Friday afternoon – 23rd October)
I’m sitting in the garden of our hotel listening to one of my friends play guitar, the sun is shining there’s a cool(ish) breeze blowing (every now and then!) and birds chirping. I just went down to the internet café to try and email everyone with my new number and stuff but after half an hour of trying to load the “compose” page I gave up and decided to come back to the hotel and write this instead. I’m hoping that I can just bring my laptop down to the café, plug it in and use my computer email account – that will make life a whole lot easier! (Hence the new email address - it is much easier to do it that way - susiemaggie80@gmail.com)
On the way back from the internet café I passed men selling phone recharge vouchers, boys selling pineapples they’re carrying across their shoulders, guys hanging out doing not much, security guards (lots of security guards) working around the place, dogs, cats and pigs running up the street, lots and lots of NGO 4 wheel drives speeding down the dusty back streets narrowly avoiding pedestrians (they’re crazy!), kids hanging out, people selling fish…among other things. Dili is quite lovely in a way. It's hard to believe that this will be my life for the next 12 months.
I met some young girls today and was able to practiced a bit of my Tetum with them. My lessons are going ok – I was feeling very frustrated yesterday as I was able to follow what was happening and what others were saying but when it came to speaking I was completely lost! It’s only normal I guess but it was very frustrating. I had a minor break through today with one of my teachers today. I realised that she came from Suai which is kind of near Maliana. I was asking her about the languages she speaks and that I was heading to Maliana in a few weeks to live and work and was wondering what language they speak up there. The conversation lasted for less than a minute, but it was great! It wasn’t until after I had finished that I realised what I had done! Then I organised for our Mikrolet driver to come back later and take us somewhere at a specific time. I was riding on such a high I headed to the market to do a bit of shopping (which was mostly about practicing Tetum). It seems that I am mastering the basics (the very basic of basics!)!!
(Saturday morning 24th October)
I had a little sleep in this morning – 7am. I guess I’m still adjusting to the time difference a little, but also getting into the habit of rising early. Most mornings I’ve been up at 6 or so, so it is nice to have be able to make some of my own decisions – it feels a bit like we have been being ferried around since arriving, which is a little trying at times, although I have to say that I think our group is really great. There are 11 of us that have arrived all together, and while we are all very different personalities we seem to get along and compliment each other well. I have started to connect with a few of them especially. It is a little strange at the moment as the 8 who will be living in Dili are running around looking for housing and wanting to start getting settled, however I won’t be going to Maliana until around the 14th of November.
We have also met quite a few of the other AYADs from previous intake, most of whom have been lovely and very helpful. Today we are heading out to the beach for a swim and snorkel and tomorrow we have an “Amazing Race” around Dili.
I hope you’re all keeping well and I’m sorry about the length of this post!! I will put up some photo's soon.
(Friday afternoon – 23rd October)
I’m sitting in the garden of our hotel listening to one of my friends play guitar, the sun is shining there’s a cool(ish) breeze blowing (every now and then!) and birds chirping. I just went down to the internet café to try and email everyone with my new number and stuff but after half an hour of trying to load the “compose” page I gave up and decided to come back to the hotel and write this instead. I’m hoping that I can just bring my laptop down to the café, plug it in and use my computer email account – that will make life a whole lot easier! (Hence the new email address - it is much easier to do it that way - susiemaggie80@gmail.com)
On the way back from the internet café I passed men selling phone recharge vouchers, boys selling pineapples they’re carrying across their shoulders, guys hanging out doing not much, security guards (lots of security guards) working around the place, dogs, cats and pigs running up the street, lots and lots of NGO 4 wheel drives speeding down the dusty back streets narrowly avoiding pedestrians (they’re crazy!), kids hanging out, people selling fish…among other things. Dili is quite lovely in a way. It's hard to believe that this will be my life for the next 12 months.
I met some young girls today and was able to practiced a bit of my Tetum with them. My lessons are going ok – I was feeling very frustrated yesterday as I was able to follow what was happening and what others were saying but when it came to speaking I was completely lost! It’s only normal I guess but it was very frustrating. I had a minor break through today with one of my teachers today. I realised that she came from Suai which is kind of near Maliana. I was asking her about the languages she speaks and that I was heading to Maliana in a few weeks to live and work and was wondering what language they speak up there. The conversation lasted for less than a minute, but it was great! It wasn’t until after I had finished that I realised what I had done! Then I organised for our Mikrolet driver to come back later and take us somewhere at a specific time. I was riding on such a high I headed to the market to do a bit of shopping (which was mostly about practicing Tetum). It seems that I am mastering the basics (the very basic of basics!)!!
(Saturday morning 24th October)
I had a little sleep in this morning – 7am. I guess I’m still adjusting to the time difference a little, but also getting into the habit of rising early. Most mornings I’ve been up at 6 or so, so it is nice to have be able to make some of my own decisions – it feels a bit like we have been being ferried around since arriving, which is a little trying at times, although I have to say that I think our group is really great. There are 11 of us that have arrived all together, and while we are all very different personalities we seem to get along and compliment each other well. I have started to connect with a few of them especially. It is a little strange at the moment as the 8 who will be living in Dili are running around looking for housing and wanting to start getting settled, however I won’t be going to Maliana until around the 14th of November.
We have also met quite a few of the other AYADs from previous intake, most of whom have been lovely and very helpful. Today we are heading out to the beach for a swim and snorkel and tomorrow we have an “Amazing Race” around Dili.
I hope you’re all keeping well and I’m sorry about the length of this post!! I will put up some photo's soon.
2 comments:
Susanator - glad you made it & are already running. Nice blog. I was surprised to see Sylas - I seem to vaguely recall you saying something about posting a pic...now, hurray & post some proper Timor shots! Keep kickin' goals. I look forward to more blog-action.
Suse, it all sounds very familiar (well for the brief time I experienced it)...the fish sellers to the phone card youth...how lovely! Enjoy the microlet riding and good on you for getting into the Tetum, if you need help with your Indo numbers just channel me...I'm great at them, except I often confuse enam and empat...which is 4 and 6...might be a bit of a problem when bargaining. It's getting hot here in FNQ but I'm sure nothing compared to Dili and it's humidity. Hope you adjust to the smell of burning plastic in Meliana and do stay at the pasada again. Miss you and can't believe you have jumped and are swimming away from the ship. Tara.
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