Arrived safely!

We had a 8 hour delay with our flight but I got here safely.

First impressions: crazy traffic, camels, colours, delicious food, bright green parrots, jasmine flower necklaces to welcome us, cows, cars driving down the wrong side of motorways, temples, beautiful saris, curry curry curry....

We got to fieldbase in Mysore at 6pm yesterday, so just had time for a quick tour of fieldbase (facilities are amazing) and a quick unpack, before going out for dinner at a nearby hotel. Lovely food, lovely sleep, and we've been busy training all morning. Got to go now, as only 25 minutes left to get my lunch! Obviously this is very important....

Love to all from India xxxxx

Starting as we mean to go on at Heathrow Terminal 5 - L-R: Zoe, Jo, Dr Emma and me. Champagne became more and more appreciated as our flight got later and later...

India!

I leave for India this afternoon. My last morning in the UK until 2009 and it's a lovely crisp autumnal one... I keep lurching between feeling extremely excited, then sad, then happy, then scared, then back to excited again.

The past few weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, not to mention crazy busy.

On the packing front, we finally managed to get my rucksack closed on Wednesday evening, only to discover a stray pair of work gloves and roll of duck tape lurking on the kitchen table, meaning my final task this morning is to reopen the rucksack (gulp) to squeeze in these additional (rather key) items. Leaving the country for 3 months with 4 pairs of socks, 7 pairs of knickers, no makeup whatsoever and no hairdryer just seems plain wrong! By the way, I'm being more generous with the sock and knicker allowance than the kit list recommends, but I do have to maintain some standards!

I did a four day British Red Cross First Aid course this week, a course I cannot recommend highly enough. It does make you look at the world differently however, and I now feel a sense of impending danger lurking around every corner requiring assistance of some kind or another.

I'm also quite scared that I'm going to have to use pretty much all the skills and techniques that I learned over the past 4 days out in India. While I had thought before going on the course that 4 days training would practically qualify me as a paramedic, I now realise the limited extent of my skills and how much more there is to learn!

My willing casualty in the photo would no doubt agree.

Finally, I'm happy that I've been able to say a personal goodbye to many though not all of the people I love most in the world. I'm already looking forward to catching up in 2009!

Please stay in touch, either by email or post. Keep checking this blog for my news, but for the most regular updates look at the official Raleigh India blog, where you can see photos from our trip, read about the different projects and leave (polite) messages for me. See you in '09!

Photos - and video - of me in Windsor...

...can be found here.

Windsor results

It wasn't a personal best time, but it was hotter, hillier and much harder than expected, despite my personal trainer's best efforts to increase my thigh circumference.

My official chip time was 2 hours, 2 minutes and 37 seconds (not too shabby!) and I finished 2238th out of around 4500 entrants. Check out the results website if you don't believe me!

This makes Bernard Dignan the winner of the £25 "guess my time" gamble, as he had the closest guess with 2 hours 2 minutes and 34 seconds. The cheque's in the post Bernard...

The support from friends and family was wonderful; I was so glad that you were able to come along to support and say goodbye before I leave for India this Friday, as this really did make all the difference to me.

I particularly enjoyed the cheese banquet that followed ;)

Here are a few more pics from the finish line - it hurt.

1. Too hot for the official tee-shirt...


2. Red in the face with exertion and/or sunburn, and that castle is still miles away!


3. An exercise in (dis)trust

Windsor half marathon, Sunday 21 September

I'm well over my fundraising target now - thanks to everyone for being so generous with your support.

Only the tiny matter of the Windsor half marathon this coming Sunday to go now (and packing, and last minute purchases, goodbyes, final Hep B jab, packing etc.). I got a few good runs in whilst on holiday in Spain, which generally involved running up lots of hills in the dry late summer heat. I only cheated once, in Barcelona, where there was a choice between an escalator or 5 flights of steps going up to the park... well which would you choose?

The running raffle has been a storming success, with 106 tickets being sold. That's £106 raised for Raleigh International Trust - hooray! Guesses have ranged from 1 hour 34 minutes to "will not finish" (thanks for the vote of confidence there!), with a large cluster around the 1 hour 50-55 minute range. The person with the nearest guess will win £25, kindly donated by... me, and supporters on the day are very welcome. The race will start at 1pm and if you're more into post-race type celebrations, I should be finishing about 3pm.

In the meantime, I will eat a lot of pasta.

More cake, Minister?

The infamous civil service trolley service gets a makeover, Raleigh style, at the final charity cake sale of the month!



"Trolleeeeee!" screeches Ros, shaking the fundraising tin in a somewhat demanding and demonic fashion.



...while the lovely Phydellis does her best to ply colleagues with Ros' cakes using her natural charm and good humour (which, quite frankly, seems to work much better).



All in all, this was a successful mission raising a further £89 from Tavis House staff, bringing the cake sale total to an impressive £300+.

It turns out that civil servants really do rather like cake.