Hi All,

I hope everyone is good and has faired ok with the cold English weather. Everyone I meet around the world is talking about it!

Wow, I can’t believe it has been over 2 months since my last blog entry,.... last year.... Well, the orphanage and home building projects in Vietnam were awesome and I was volunteering with a great bunch of people. We managed to get the house built for the family but I had to leave 2 days before they completed it as I had to move onto my next volunteer project doing Nature Conservation in Australia. I really wanted to be there help finish off the house in Vietnam but my schedule could not be changed and the others did a great job of finishing things off, so well done team! I really enjoyed Vietnam and the people and the country is amazing. We were fortunate to go on a tour of the Me Kong Delta one weekend and had a chance to see some of the places along this region which was pretty cool. It was not as under developed as I initially thought it would be and the scenery is breath taking once you get out from the main cities. And in the evenings on some nights we were asked to help out teaching students English at evening classes and I even got a chance to do some magic tricks!! I gotta say, I really struggled with the food though, as you all probably know, I am the world’s most fussiest vegetarian and it doesn’t really help with the fact that I do not like that many vegetables. Most of the food in Vietnam is meat based with a huge emphasis on fish, and it was quite difficult explaining that I was a vegetarian that does not eat fish, eggs or gelatine, but I was really lucky in the sense that there was a bakery near our accommodation so I pretty much lived off baguettes, cheese spread and salad for every meal. Yum Yum......., now that’s what you call a varied diet.........hmmmmm........

But the amazing thing was that this was all I needed to keep going, even doing the manual labour of building a house. And I have to say that the other volunteers were great! They kept an eye out for vegetarian food for me at every opportunity and the fruit in Vietnam is fantastic!!

So after the project in Vietnam, I went to Australia to do nature conservation. And Australia is Amazing!! It is huge!! I really did not appreciate how big the country was until I started travelling around it. And this was the first country where I did not struggle for food!! Whoop!! Whoop!! It is amazing how much of a difference this makes. I really did take food for granted back at home in England. And everyone here is just so friendly and relaxed. The volunteer projects were based in a region called Victoria which is towards the south east of Australia. The bases where I was staying in the volunteer houses were in towns called Geelong and Bendigo. In the first project in Geelong we were working at preserving wetland, coastal and sand dune regions and inhabitants by removing any introduced plants from other countries that were causing serious damage to the natural habitat. I did not realise just how fragile the Australian natural habitat was and certain introduced species of plants and animals are really threatening the fine balance that nature has on this entire continent! We were also performing water salinity tests in certain areas for analysis purposes along with collecting seeds from key native plants to be redistributed as well as identifying and neutralising potential forest fire areas. With these projects we were based at different locations each day so we worked at a wide range of areas performing multiple tasks to help preserve these regions. At the weekends we had a bit of a break as the conservation project leaders go home for the weekends so we were able to see a bit of Australia and go on some tours. The first weekend a few of us went on the Great Ocean Road tour, which was amazing! It was an all day tour and it took us to some of the most famous surf beaches (Bell’s Beach) and rock formations (12 Apostles) that are in Australia. I even saw several wild Koalas, one which was active and eating (pretty cool as they sleep for around 18 -20 hours each day) and also several King Parrots that flew to me and ate out of my hand! It was a great tour we had so much fun! And then, before any of us realised, it was Christmas!! Having Christmas away from my family and in a warm climate was a bit weird but as all of the volunteers were in the same boat we tried to make the most out of it. It was great that most of the volunteers got up early and went to Church Christmas morning and the service was really good focusing on the meaning behind Christmas and how we can practice the spiritual teachings in everyday life, which was great to hear. And then we all had Christmas lunch which was great!!! One of the volunteers was a chef so he cooked the traditional turkey for everyone but as I was a vegetarian, he made sure there was a cheese pizza for me! How awesome is that!! So after we had the Christmas lunch at the volunteer house, we all went into Melbourne city (about an hour by train) and I have to say that I was surprised to see so many people out and about in the city on Christmas! So many of the restaurants were open and the plaza was full!! I was a bit sad being away from my family over Christmas but it was great celebrating with the other volunteers, and we even did a “Secret Santa”, so everyone got presents! I got a really cool boomerang! And then on Boxing Day, we all went to the beach and I found out that there was an open water swimming race called the RIP View swim classic the very next day. It was a 1.4km swimming race in the sea and over 2000 people had entered. The lifeguards told me to just turn up to the race in the morning and I should be able to register for it. So on the day after Boxing Day (27th Dec 2009) I got up early and went to race start point and it was a good thing that I got there early as there was a huge queue of swimmers wanting to sign up for the race. There were well over 2000 people there and most of them had wet suits on as the water was a bit cold. Yep, and you guessed it, I did not have a wet suit, so no wet suit for me (I was freezing as I have not had to deal with any sort of cold weather for so long that I have lost my tolerance to the cold!!). I just swam the race in my speedos and I have to say, those Australians are quick!! I tried to stick with the main group for as long as possible but then my lack of training showed and I managed to come 54th. But it was a good race and I had a great time!! It was great competing in a swimming competition again! I can’t believe how much I miss it! It was an awesome day!!

We then carried on with the conservation work all the way through to New Year’s Eve where we were allowed to finish early so that we could go into Melbourne, again, to watch the fireworks. We only just made it into the city centre just as the clock struck 12 midnight and it was pouring with rain!! But there were so many people out in the city it was fantastic!! I even had my umbrella to try and keep me dry!! We even managed to meet up with some of the other volunteers working at the other different locations in Australia, who were also in Melbourne to see the fireworks. It was a really good fun but we were all drenched as it pretty much rained nonstop.

The very next morning, New Years Day, we were all up early to carry on with the conservation work but we were also treated with a New Year’s barbeque! I got some vegetable pastries which were a nice treat!

I had a great time on the projects near Geelong and I learnt so much about the nature conservation on the Australian coast and wetland areas. Then in the next week it was time for a few of us to move locations so my next location was in a town called Bendigo a few hours away from Geelong. For this project we had to actually stay near the nature conservation region as it was too far away from the volunteer house so we stayed in a place called Ballarat. Here we were working to preserve freshly planted native trees and shrubs with regular watering as there had not been any rain for months. We also continued to identify and neutralising potential forest fire areas especially in this area due to the long dry spells as forest fires are a major risk. Part of this region was on a place called Sovereign Hill which was a gold mining town in the 1800’s. This town had been restored to its original state so it looked like you were stepping into the wild west each time you entered. They even had staff that wore costumes and put on shows that resembled what it was like in the 1800’s. Because the area was so large and there had been a lot of new native trees and shrubs planted in this region we were working to help maintain their growth as it had been particularly dry in this region and the thousands of trees and shrubs needed maintaining.

The volunteer teams were once again very international and I was with volunteers from Korea, Austria, England, Germany and Australia volunteers so there was a good mix of people, but I have to say that on the projects that I was on, most of the volunteers came from Korea and so we all have learnt loads about Korean pop music, and have picked up a few phrases in Korean which is great! I have to say though, that all of the volunteers that I was fortunate to be on the projects with had a great work ethic and they were all fantastic to volunteer with! Go Team!!

Australia is a beautiful and diverse country and the people that we have met, there, are all pretty amazing.

I could not believe how fast the volunteer projects went and before I knew it, my time on the Nature Conservation projects in Australia were almost done!

See you all later!

Cheers,

Prashant