¡Hasta Luego Project Trust!

Don't worry I'm still here! I've have been back in Scotland for a month now and it seems like my time has been split between wishing I was back in Honduras and pretending I am by doing a PT road trip to see Amy in Surrey, Jesse in London and Lucy in Edinburgh. 

Project Trust Debriefing 2017

The last step of the Project Trust journey, after the inevitable, crippling reverse culture shock, is Debriefing. It's our last chance to get up to Coll and spend a few days surrounded by the only people that are still willing to listen to gap year story after gap year story. It's not a compulsory course like Training but out of our 20 Honduras volunteers we managed to get 16 of us there - Hannah, Eve, Alice and Norome, you were missed. We were reunited with some of the volunteers we were on Training with who went to Zambia and also had Malawi, Japan and the Domincan Republic volunteers with us. Because we have such a large group, even with our missing members, we made up more than half of the total number!

I took the train up to Oban for the first time, having had a lift and then taken the bus for my previous journeys, and it was incredibly beautiful. There was a big group of us on the train and we were reunited with everyone else in the beloved Backpackers Plus hostel. 

We had two full days back in the Hebridean Centre. The first day was based primarily on looking back on the year we spent overseas. We worked in our country groups with our Overseas Coordinator to look back on our best bits and the challenges we overcame while away. We ended the day with a trip to the gorgeous beach (only gorgeous because it was so sunny!).

Yes. This is Scotland. 

Day two focused more on looking forward to how we, as returned volunteers, can stay involved in the PT community. The sense that you get as part of one of Project Trusts many groups of volunteers is very much one of family. These people that you have been sent away to the other side of the world with you quickly become your family but on coming home it's like meeting all the extended aunts and uncles and cousins that are all there for you. Just like in Honduras, everyone is related! There are Facebook groups and reunions and local meet ups and professional opportunities all to be found among the 7,700 and something returned volunteers, dating all the way back to 1967!

The legend that is Peter Wilson PT and the Honduras gals

It has been almost a week since the 'official' end of my year overseas but definitely not the end of my involvement. Project Trust are always looking for people to go into schools and talk to pupils about their experiences, inspire the next generation of teachers and social care workers and adventurers for them to send all over the world. With Global Citizenship being such a large part of going overseas with Project Trust, returned volunteers also go out to schools and run workshops on this in primary and secondary schools. With the experience I have of this from my fundraising, I think if I hadn't signed up I would have been chased from Coll and told never to return! Finally, as part of a new scheme, you can become a mentor to a volunteer who is in the process of fundraising for their year abroad - you can share your top tips and secret strategies as well as all your best stories (probably best to keep the bad ones under wraps to begin with!).

As ever, no Project Trust course or visit to Coll would be complete without a ceilidh to finish things of in style! What with there being two Latin American countries in attendance, traditional Scottish dancing soon morphed into a reggaeton/bachata party!

Project Trust tradition states that windows MUST be drawn on

Leaving Coll the next morning was a sad affair though I hope to be back next year as summer staff. Once again, the train back down to Glasgow was filled with PT people. Amy stayed one more night at my house before flying back down to Surrey. This was our final goodbye for the summer, after having seen each other three or four times since getting home. I know it won't be that last goodbye however, as we already have plans for a trip to Prague at Christmas and Amy is coming up to Edinburgh for a rugby match in February.

Best partner ever

As for the rest of my Honduran lot, there were a few goodbyes in Oban and some more when we got off the train in Glasgow. A few people stuck around in Edinburgh for a few days and we had one last night out together before we all went our separate ways.  However, apparently there's already a reunion in the works and I'll be at uni with Hannah and Eva in Edinburgh, with a lot of people not far away in the likes of Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Coll is such special place because of all it embodies. It is an integral part of any volunteer's Project Trust journey. It is there for you on Selection when everything is filled with excitement and you can't wait to get started. It is there on Training when you are are wondering what you've gotten yourself into. It is there to welcome you home on Debriefing, showing you that it's not all bad to be back. It encompasses the heart of Project Trust and all the people you meet along the way, from the staff to the other volunteers even to the people you meet in your Project. Coll is a place I love and will always love for I will forever associate it with the best year of my life. 

Project Trust Honduras volunteers 16/17

Worth the Wait

With our goodbyes all done, the only thing left to do was to actually leave but apparently Honduras was just as reluctant to say good bye to us as we were to it. Please fasten your seatbelts folks, we are now approaching some turbulence.

Our journey home was composed of at least two flights for everyone, from San Pedro Sula to Miami and then Miami to London Heathrow. For some of us there was one more, onwards to Edinburgh, Inverness, Aberdeen and even Budapest. We arrived at the airport in SPS in plenty of time (none of us wanted a repeat of what happened at Christmas when we missed our boat to Utila - we weren't quite that desperate to stay) but were told that our flight was delayed by 45 minutes. Not so bad but as we waited our departure time kept getting later and our wait longer. We eventually left just over two hours late but because our layover in Miami was originally three hours long, the delay meant that we had very little time to get through the monster of an airport that is Miami International.

Adios!

An accurate representation of our feelings about leaving Honduras

We touched down at 8pm and our flight left at 8.40pm so as soon as we were off that plane, we were sprinting, bags flailing, flip flops flapping, cursing our lack of fitness. We managed to bag a flashy fluorescent orange pass that let us skip queues which worked until we got to security where there was a separate queue for others with the same flashy card so we couldn't skip it. Another issue was that we came through security at gate D26 and our gate was E23. It sounds worse when I say that the D gates go up to 60. And we had 15 minutes. We were told we weren't going to make it but we tried anyway. Amy and Sophie were sent ahead without their bags so they could sprint to the gate and maybe get them to wait for the sweaty, hopeful group of 16 other teenagers that were on their way.

It didn't work. Amy and Sophie got there two minutes after they had closed the gates/the plane had left so by the time the rest of us got there there was nothing we could do. We had to traverse our way back across the terminals we had crossed to the rebooking desk where we waited for an hour and half, witnessed a show of crazy that you can only see from someone who has missed multiple flights and thinks the world owes her and had to wake up various family members to tell them we wouldn't actually be home in the morning.

It turned out that the next flight to London wasn't until 5pm the next day and all the airline's hotel spaces were full so we had to just slum it in the airport for the next 19 hours. There was another option, to find, book and pay for a hotel ourselves and get reimbursed but none of us had enough money to pay for a last minute hotel near the airport in Miami. Instead we found a nice corridor behind TGI Fridays and bedded down for the night like a row of tacos.

18 hours to go...

The next day was wasted by moving between our base camp and the charging sockets nearby, trying to stretch our fairly meagre food vouchers as far as possible and re-re-booking ourselves on the next flight because we just by chance happened to discover it hadn't been done properly the night before. Everything went right in the end though and we were sat by gate E23 again (what a coincidence, huh?) with plenty of time before our flight left.

8 hour flights being what they are, the first four hours flew by and the next four were excruciatingly slow. Almost 24 hours later than planned we arrived at Heathrow. After all that Lucy and I still had another flight to catch so we couldn't hang around for long. We said our goodbyes to everyone (not too painful because we'll see most of them in a few weeks at Debriefing) and a quick hello to everyone's families before hopping across to our terminal.

Two painless hours later, we were pulling into the gate at Edinburgh airport and not long after were faced with home for the first time in 363 days. I have to admit that it wasn't that emotional to see my family again - for me at least. It had been a few months since I had seen my dad and Kirsty but only two weeks since my mum and Amy left Honduras. For them though, it was the opposite. It didn't  matter to them that not that much time had passed since they last saw me. I was home again and not leaving (at least not for a while). That idea was not one I wanted to dwell on at the time, what with not wanting to be home and everything, but for them it meant a lot.

My welcoming committee

And so resumes 'normal' life. Once again, I don't want to overload you so if I can get my feelings about being home into any kind of order anytime soon, maybe there'll be a blog about it (ok, there will be, I'm not quite ready to stop annoying everyone with this just yet) but for now, yes, it is nice to be home.

Worth the wait

No Se Vaya!

It's been a week since I arrived back in sunny Scotland and it's as if nothing has changed. If it weren't for the residual crick in my neck and emotional scars from the journey home, I would think that maybe I've just been in a coma for the past year and have a very creative imagination. Before I get into what it's like being home again after so long, let me tell you about our goodbyes and the journey back. (The journey will follow in the next post, I didn't want to overload everyone with too much to read!)

Our first official goodbye was with our Kinder classes. We were leaving Candelaria on a Friday and the last day we see them is a Wednesday. We walked in to find all of the tables in my classroom pushed to the side and all the kids bouncing around the room. We hadn't been expecting anything special and had just planned to mark our departure by spending the whole lesson playing games. Instead the teachers kicked things off by saying a few words, thanking us for our effort and our patience, and then invited a few of the kids up to speak too. A big part of our lessons in Kinder revolve around songs so both classes got up and sang Wind the Bobbin Up and my class also sang the Colours Song - I was so proud I thought my heart might burst out of my chest! To finish we had cake and fizzy juice, as is customary at any Honduran celebration, and were presented with a little gift each of a Candelaria t-shirt. 

With all our little cuties!

In the words of Amy Lynch - how sad can you be when your name is on a cake?

My Kinder kids can drive me crazy sometimes but it was hard to say goodbye to them all the same. They are so adorable and for once I didn't mind when they mounted their daily ataque (they like to swarm me at the end of class and hug me so hard that it's not uncommon for me to have to brace myself against the wall so I don't fall over on top of them!). I'll miss their little faces and smiles and the fact that they only ever sing the 'oooooooooh' part of the Hokey Cokey. It's weird to think that by the time I'm back (because I will be back) they'll be proper little people in primary school. 

Our next goodbye was a dinner that evening with Lety and Victor, our second host family. They had us over and we ate cena típica (a typical dinner including beans, eggs, avocado, cheese, mantequilla and tortillas) with them. They made a big deal out of giving us a present, making us stand in the middle of the room with our eyes closed and hands out. It turns out it was a hammock! I desperately wanted to take a hammock home but had convinced myself that they were too expensive, I wouldn't use it, where would I even put a hammock? It was perfect. This wasn't our final goodbye with Lety and Victor and the family, because we promised to come back the next day, our last day. 

Samuel looks a little too happy about the fact that we're leaving...

And then finally, the day that had been looming over us all year was here. We knew it was coming but that didn't make it any easier. We still had classes and our timetable on Thursdays is actually my favourite because we have 4th, 5th and 6th grade who are my favourite classes. It felt like most of my day was hugs, goodbyes, gift from kind hearted kids, telling myself not to cry and choruses of 'no se vaya!' (don't go!) which broke my heart.

Somehow we made it through, with almost no tears on my part, and to our goodbye lunch with the teachers. We ate soup and chicken with tortillas and listened to the headteacher say a few words. They also presented us with these beautiful wooden plaques and mirrors, handmade in Candelaria, on behalf of the teachers, students and parents. 

All of our fellow teachers

After that, all that was left was a few of our friends and both of our families. We did the rounds to see our friends throughout the afternoon and then had a special dinner of tamales with our host family. Later in the evening we went over to Lety and Victor's to say goodbye to them for the last time too. Again, I managed to make it through without any tears, even when little Samuel started screaming as we left.

Part of the reason for this is that it still didn't feel real that we were leaving. I felt like we would be back in school with the kids after the weekend or we were saying goodbye to our families for a week while we went on a visa run. Because we'd been there for so long, leaving and not coming back didn't make sense. This was my home. Why would I be leaving?

That lasted until the morning. When it was time to say goodbye to Saida and the girls, things got very real, very quickly. We promised everyone we would come back in 4 years, once we've graduated from uni but who knows, it may be longer before we can see them again. Daniela and Jamie are both desperate to come to the UK though so you never know!

Mi familia

Las quiero, mis hermanitas

We drove to San Pedro in a car that Victor organised for us, swinging by Tomala to pick up Jesse and Lucy. The whole group was back together again for our last night in Honduras, minus Norome and Eva, our 8 month volunteers, who are staying another few weeks to travel.

Leaving Honduras was not easy. Even after a year, I feel like I had just settled in properly and then it was time to go. I could easily have stayed another year which made it even more frustrating that we had to leave. I wouldn't change a single thing about this year though. The people I've met, the places I've been, the kids I've had the pleasure of teaching and the country that I've fallen in love with, I will be back. It may be in four years, it may be longer, but I will be back.