The End of Year has arrived!!

A view from Gaya Island

   It has been a busy two weeks with the arrival of Tanya and Anthony and the the End of Year meeting but it finally seems to have calmed down and I'm spending today catching up on washing, blogging and even packing as it will only be in a few days that I leave for KL. Anyway it has been lovely having Tanya and Anthony here. Even though for such a short time they seemed to have done lots of things such as -  7 dives; visit the sights of Tuaran and KK; witness a turtle laying her eggs and help launch a hundred newly hatched turtles; visit the orang-utan and sun bear sanctuaries and then on their last day we had a very wet hike up at Poring Hot Springs to Lanayan waterfall that was plagued with leeches! They left yesterday morning to KL where they will be staying with Anthony's grandmother.

Tanya and Anthony on their first day diving

   The End of Year meeting from last Monday to Wednesday at the Palace hotel was a gathering of 60 mentors - most of them who had never met before because everyone is in such rural locations and many of them have arrived at different times during the year. It was an occasion to network and share different experiences and get to know each other and I think it was very successful. We had a variety of presentations and Tuesday afternoon was an "Apprentice" like challenge where people were put in teams and then had to pitch their Level 1 resource in front of the Directors of the project and the expert judge of a 7 year old. It was great to see how good people were at playing the salesmen role of "selling" their product! Wednesday afternoon was the time to say farewell and had a definite end of school year atmosphere. Everyone is off on their travels for 5 weeks all over the world. The mentors in my zone were going to most of the continents - Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, South America and North America and will return at the beginning of January to start the last 9 months of the project.

Coconut time

  As for my arm, well it has been great having Tanya here to give me advice on physio for the future. I went to see the orthopedic specialist last week and he has taken the cast off which seems rather soon but he is going away and won't be back until I have left so he seems to think if I keep it immobile it will heal ok. It is 30 % healed at the moment and of course I forget about trying not to use it and probably am doing too much - for example,  hikes up  mountain tracks! Anyway the plus side of not having a cast is that I can shower and put on clothes that don't need to be cut at the shoulder. Time will tell and I must try and be patient. My next blog will be about the engagement party and the gathering of the Wrights and the Mahs.

Crabs, prawns and fish at the local restaurant