Claire takes on the world….

…and so little time. I’m leaving on my wild adventure in 37 days. I still have to book accommodation in Brazil, open two new bank accounts, get money for those accounts, get a couple of injections, finish my TEFL course (and my degree course), get an Australian Working Holiday Visa, get travel insurance, make sure the Brazilians are cool with me arriving on a one way ticket, make sure the Peruvians are ok with that too, get a Chilean visa, learn Spanish and then do a lot of shopping for general travel items (I really want a waterproof waist pouch).
I still don’t know quite where I’m going after Peru. I blame my mother for not telling me when she’s visiting, as I have to be in Peru when she arrives. At the moment it’s looking like Peru until September, then Ecuador in October, Bolivia in November, Argentina in December and Chile in January. I know I’m going to kick myself later for only spending two days in Brazil, but I think being a lone female traveller is enough craziness without going somewhere I don’t speak the language.
Nerves are starting to kick in. Especially after my French adventure in March. Someone took my luggage and left me hers in the airport, which would have been fine if she’d been over 5 foot. And then on the way home I found I was booked in for a month later than I thought and had to spend €250 on a new ticket. I then proceeded to go mildly insane thinking I was going to miss my flight after paying that stupid amount.
So…..guess I should get onto things so. I am at the moment a little preoccupied with an essay on Cultural Imperialism, after that I’ll get straight on it…….I swear!

I finally made the trek into Dublin to book some tickets. The whole way home I had a minor panic attack. How will I find my way around Sao Paulo on my own!
The plan is to fly Ireland – England – Brazil on the 12th of June. Flying into Sao Paulo the morning of the 13th and leaving again the evening of the 14th. Even though it’s a short stay I’m trying to learn a few words of Portuguese.
Typical, spend 8 months learning Spanish and then the only flight available flies into Brazil!
I’m working in Peru from June until August in Casa del Nino (www.casadelnino.com.pe) in Lima. The next next 8 months aren’t quite planned yet.
Then I’m flying Santiago to Syndey on the 1st of February to find Suzanne, a buddy from home.

Now all I have to do is get two more injections and one of those funky waterproof moneybelts.

Because of the limit here I’ve started putting my photos on another page. They’re at http://clairecanning.smugmug.com . I’ve only started putting them up now. Should be more soon…

Thanks to my never ended insomnia I have had time to put a bit more thought into my trip. At first I was planning to visit almost every continent in 8/9 months. I’ve decided I don’t want to see the world this way. As it is I’ve spent almost 5 months in the last year and a half in India and I feel like I still haven’t properly explored it.

So now, this is the plan. I’m going to start in June in Peru, work there for two months as planned. I’m then travelling around South America until September. I’m not too bothered where I go but I have to see Bolivia. It looks amazing and is the place on Earth I want to see most at the moment (well that and Antartica).

In September I’ll head back to Ireland but only for two weeks or so. Then it’s off to India again to see the east coast. I’m going to get to Shillong by train. Should take a week or so. I’ll work in the same school I worked in last year for a bit and then on to Australia to get myself a job!

I’ve much more to do after that but I’m not going to even try and plan that far ahead.

These plans will probably be totally different by the weekend…

This was written towards the end of my time in Shillong…

August 14th, 2006

It’s Independence Day tomorrow! 15th of August, the day India celebrates its independence from…. I’m guessing England. They’re the usual suspects. And how does this amazing city celebrate Independence Day? By having a bandh. A bandh is when no one’s allowed leave their homes for 24 hours. So as of 10 minutes time, we won’t be allowed leave the premises. We’ve stocked up on Bountys and Apple juice so we should be ok. We hope to spend the day practising our cooking so we can make chow for the students before we leave.
Today I had the delightful task of teaching my class their national anthem. My Hindi’s a bit rusty so it was a tad challenging. But we got through it and soon they were singing like drunken fools. It’s a jailable offence to not stand straight when singing it so we had the stick out to make sure all the backs were straight.
Sharon and Edel left last Wednesday, so now we’re down to two. It’s lonely on the veranda now, just me and Ciara and a lot less alcohol. I have Isa’s daily 2 hour phone calls to keep me busy anyway.
I experienced my first earthquake on Saturday night! I slept through the one last year so that doens’t really count. It was almost over before I figured out what it was. I thought it was a truck passing or something. It was like sitting on a washing machine. It was a fairly big one, 5 on the Richter Scale. But we weren’t near the epicentre so we were fine. The main school had some structural damage, but my school, Providence, was fine so its all good.
We had another school tour on Saturday. We brought about 20 of them to the zoo and the playground. And then finished off the afternoon with some paddle boating and chow. They seemed to have fun. No one went overboard when we were boating. That’s always a good thing.
Wednesday’s the Hindu new year so we’ve another day off school then. Planning on going on a trip around Shillong and visiting the student’s homes. Hamhe is going to be our tourguide for the day.
We’re leaving here a week from Saturday. Where has the summer gone? Still trying to figure out where we’re going to go next. The plan at the moment is to fly to Jaipur and go camel trekking in the desert. We’ve been advised to just turn up at the airport in Calcutta, see where the next plan is going and hop on. We might just do that. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.
I’ve learnt a few Indian dances so watch out for my new moves in September.
Later
C

This is a blog I wrote while working in Shillong, North East India.

July 26th, 2006

In 2 days I will have been in India 6 weeks. Like, what the hell? This place makes my summer go way too fast! Things are going great here. “Can I defer third year’ has crossed my mind once or twice. I hear the gang in Calcutta are having fun too which is cool.
Today was another crazy day. Started my morning ripping the meat off a chicken, then mixing it with this chicken substitute thing and rolling them together into balls. It was decided fairly lively that I should go back stirring cause my chicken balls kept falling apart. I think I’m going to be stirring for quite a while until I can prove myself. I tried cutting some veg thing the other day. Ended up cutting my finger and yelping “Oh, shit”. The ONE frikken time they listen to me is when I curse. So now I get a chorus of “Oh, shit” when I pop into the kitchen.

While we were cooking we were told one of the students, Johnstar, hadn’t been seen in over 24 hours. He left for school yesterday morning, never turned up at school and didn’t return home last night. His father is dying of TB and he’s suddenly the man of the house. Seems working, studying and housework is too much for a 13 year old so he headed off. We just heard tonight that he was found alive and well. His poor mother had been searching the river for 3 hours looking for his body. I offered to look in the river because I doubt they have a sub-aqua unit round here, but thankfully he headed home after ‘36 hours of playing with his friends!’
Lets see….what else have we been doing?? Myself and Sharon headed shopping one Saturday. But being Irish, and not the shopping type we were in the pub by about 2ish. Got talking to two Indian men, well boys really. They offered us a lift home. Now normally I’d never accept a ride home from a strange man but we’d just been so good lately we had to let loose. Turned out they both drove scooters and they brought us on a guided tour of Shillong. Only found out later that the guy we’re staying with had rang a load of people looking for us. There was no phone coverage in the pub so he thought something had happened. And our dear ol’ students of course spotted us flying around on the scooters. Guess we should have worn helmets. They’ve been making vroom vroom noises at me for a few days. But they seem to have forgotten that now thank God!
I went to Guwahati to collect Ciara from the airport. Tis a three hour drive. Took along 2 students so we’d have a lil welcoming committee. It was like something out of a Mr.Bean episode. Me trying to look after two really quiet kids with a…um…limited English vocabulary. I couldn’t get it out of them at breakfast what they wanted to eat. They kept just saying ‘Anything’. So I ordered a hell of a lot of things. Seems the waiter had worse English than the kids because what I got wasn’t what I ordered. But the guys ate everything. We arrived at the airport 2 hours early and Ciara’s plane was an hour late so we did a lot of hanging around. And it was like heat wave day in Guwahati. Under 3’s get into the airport free and one of the students, who says he’s 12 (most of them don’t know their ages) got in free! I was told the reason for the payment in Calcutta anyway was so beggars won’t go in. So ya 3 hours in the airport. I tried my best to entertain them. All I could think of do was eat food. So we had just about every kind of sweet, crisps and cake in the shop. Sure that went down well with two kids who are used to their boiled rice diet! Shock shock they were absent form school for a few days after that. We finally got Ciara and packed her into our taxi. Poor taxi guy was waiting about 3 and half hours for us. He must have been in a rush after that because he knocked a fella down at one stage. I was sure from the sound of the thud that the guy had to be dead. I was terrified to turn around. But when I did I saw the guy hobble away. Thought our driver wasn’t even going to stop, but he did…..to check his car! Our car got surrounded by people pretty quickly. Was one of our scarier moments. We had to head to the police station while they filled out forms and stuff. Don’t want to think about what the students told their parents about their day out with Miss. Claire and Miss. Ciara!
We brought eight of the kids to Cherapungee on Saturday. One of the guys, Brij, started throwing up 20 minutes into the journey, and I can’t remember him really stopping at all. He had to keep a bag with him to throw up in because the bus just kept going! We saw lots of waterfalls and brought them into a cave which was really cool. A lot of them were terrified of it but I think they still enjoyed it. We did what we do best and filled them with crap all day. think the chocolate started sometime around 9am. Got more photos taken with random Indian people. I always wonder, after they get their photo taken with us, what do they tell their families back home? Who do they say we are?!? Weird to think how many people have photos of us now.
Oh, dunno if I told you guys about Evangelene. She’s a student who was given a very small chance of surviving about 2/3 weeks ago. We were sent to the hospital, basically to say goodbye. They thought she had TB, then liver and kidney failure, then a heart problem, then something else, can’t quite remember. Well, they never found out what was wrong with her, but they somehow made her better! It was crazy, like a lil miracle. She got better so fast. Her mother came to the school to thank them for saving her life. Think the school paid for her medical bills and stuff.
Right…..what else…. Oh! We won a soccer game on Friday! It was brilliant. We were playing St.Edmunds, the mega rich school. They seem to have a different jersey everytime I see them train. They only played us as practise for a big tournament they have in Calcutta soon. Some of our lads played barefoot but we still kicked ass. 2-0 was the final score. Great goals from Kenny and Starly. The other team had a goal disallowed. I filmed it and I’m just editing it at the moment. They can’t wait to see their historic victory on the big screen.
K I could carry on all day but I’d say the only two people who’ll read even this far are my dad and Ciara, who was next to me when I started it.
Keep in touch lads.
Have fun
Claire

Hey, just so I know how to do this blogging thing I’m going to write up a few things I wrote during the summer on another site. These are from my summer in India.

June 17th,2006

Well loads of you were wondering what I actually do in Calcutta. Well had my first day of work today. Made some paper balloons, played with some duplo and sang incy wincy spider. Im working in a school in the Shishu Bhavan Children’s Home. It’s cool seeing the little lads who were couped up in a cot last year trot into school in their shirt and ties with their empty school bags. Met one kid, Ryhashan, who was apparently serious ill last year. Seems someone mixed up the English for terminally ill and absolutely fine. He was flying around like a mad thing. We spent the afternoon sleeping and eating. We went out to go for an ATM trip this evening. Saw the night club buzzing at 7pm. Of course we popped in for one. Strange to be coming home from a club at 8pm…