Training

 [Warning: this is quite a long post about not very much. I just wanted to talk I think :P]

I write this post from my "new" laptop. I say new, my Dad is kindly loaning it to me for a year! It's less than a week until Training, just trying to get some more things together for that, as well as learning things about this machine.

I am currently in a training period already, of sorts, on this laptop - there are a lot of things that could go wrong with it and I have to be able to bring it back to life myself if the worst should happen. I've spent a lot of years asking my Dad to sort computer things out for me - there won't be any of that this year! It's like a lot of things; suddenly I won't be able to ask my parents about a lot of things, and I don't think I realise how much I actually do that - just one of the shocks that's coming.
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Coming back to the main idea of the title, "Training". I leave on Thursday night, missing a day of work on Friday (I know - I now have a 'real' job - I'll come back to this in a minute), to travel up to Northwich to stay at my Grandparents' house before getting the train to Glasgow, and then on to Oban, from Crewe station the following day.

Logistics aside (which I feel more confident with handling this time around) I am very excited about this trip. Extremely excited. I will finally meet all the other people going to Thailand, my partner (!), I'll get to see Susie again, who I stayed with on Selection, and go back to Coll! Despite the lonely hours I spent in Oban last year (boohoo poor me) I love it there, and I'm quite sad I will only spend a couple of evenings there this year. It's a really beautiful place (with a great tiny cinema - last year they were celebrating their 1st anniversary and were hoping to open another screen - not to mention giving out free cupcakes! I went to the cinema twice on my last trip...)

The Training itself I get the impression is going to be a lot of information to take on in a very short amount of time. Today I re-read my Volunteer Handbook, and at the end of a lot of the sections in it is the phrase "We will tell you more about this on Training", or words to that effect. Something I am dreading a little bit is the teaching again. I really don't like standing up in front of people and trying to teach them something, although I can just about manage, as I found out on Selection last year...! It's funny and desperately sad at the same time that teaching is the main thing I will be doing next year. Although I think I could gain a lot of confidence with teaching because it's outside my comfort zone.

I think my problem with teaching is that when I know something, I can't quite work out why the person I'm teaching doesn't understand it like I do - my weakness is that I think I'm good at explaining things but I'm actually no good at all :P

I'm just trying to pack everything together before I go, starting with the importnat documents like train tickets etc. (which I have done) but packing light is looking like a problem.

The reason I have very little time is because, as I mentioned earlier, I have a job! A real job. In an office, full time job. Hopefully I will be able to earn the rest of the money for my trip this way (provided I can hold on to this job), and I even get time off to go on Training and have a nice holiday with my family before I go.

Coming soon: a list of things I want to do/achieve during my volunteering year (this is an idea I saw on a past volunteer's site, I think it's a really good idea, adding a bit more stuff to do :P), so if you happen to see this and think of something funny or otherwise I can do abroad, send my a message fb me, etc. See you!