London, Baby!

/ Maria / 4 Comments

Hi Everyone,

I have arrived safely in London! My flight got in on Wednesday morning and I left the airport in search of the City YMCA, my home for the next four months. I’ve only spent one day and one night here so far, but it seems nice enough. I have a single room with a bed, a desk, a sink, and some drawer and closet space. At first it appeared that the view from my window wasn’t that nice, but once I took a closer look I realized I could see both St. Paul’s Cathedral and the London Eye from my room!

After getting set up in my room I decided to go look for St. Paul’s as I knew it was nearby. After quite a bit of walking I had to conclude that I had gone the wrong way and must have missed St. Paul’s. I stumbled upon some old ruins though that turned out to be what’s left of the London wall. The wall used to extend around the center of the city and in the great fire of London in 1666 the wall prevented the fire from completely destroying the center of the city. I think it’s incredible that there are ruins like this throughout the city, when I was in London in August we saw ruins that remained from the Blitz as well.

I eventually gave up on my search for St. Paul’s and instead ended up on the London Bridge. Apparently London Bridge has existed in different forms for almost 2000 years. At one point it used to have buildings and houses built along it, however in 1212 the bridge caught fire on both ends and everyone in the middle died; kind of gives new meaning to the children’s song London bridges falling down. From London Bridge I had a great view of both the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

On my way back to the Y I managed to find St. Paul’s! Apparently St. Paul’s is the center of Occupy London so there was a lot of people camped out all around it, nothing too exciting going on though! It’s quite beautiful even with all the people camped around it and I’m excited to actually go on a tour later on. It is one of the few buildings that did manage to completely survive the Blitz; apparently Winston Churchill did everything he could during the Blitz to ensure the Cathedral wasn’t destroyed.

I started work today, which went pretty well. The office is nice and it’s only a 5 minute walk from the Tower of London. I walked by it on my way home just to take a look and I found out there’s skating there until Sunday, so I might check that out over the weekend! Sorry there are no pictures with this blog, like Malawi I still don’t really have great internet and they were taking forever to upload!

Love Maria

Welcome Back!

/ Maria / 1 Comment

Hello friends!

After a year of silence I’ve decided to re-vamp my blog and start writing again! I’ve renamed it Maria’s Adventures: Thoughts from a young backpacker. I’ve been informed this isn’t true since I’m not really a backpacker, however I have done my fair share of backpacking and I like it. I welcome any better name suggestions.

I’m heading off to London for my fifth engineering work term on January 3rd; I really enjoyed blogging during my work term in Malawi so it seems appropriate to fix up this blog. My mother was hoping I would stay put after I came home from Malawi, but I’ve discovered my love of travel and my work terms provide me with a great opportunity to experience new parts of the world for months at a time.

I’ll be living and working in London until May. I’ll be staying in City Center at the YMCA. There’s a youth hostel that provides accommodations for students living in London long term. I can’t wait to start exploring London and of course nearby European countries as well. I’ve decided not to focus my blog entries on my work at all, but on my adventures over the next few months. It’s a great way to keep you all up to date on what I’ve been doing without having to send dozens of emails!

I hope you’ll follow along and leave me comments. I loved getting thoughts and questions from you when I was in Malawi and I know I’ll appreciate it in London as well! Subscribe to receive email notifications if you want to know when I post new entries!

Stay tuned,

Maria

Last Thoughts

/ Maria / Leave a comment

Today is my last full day in Malawi; I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon. I can’t believe that 4 months have gone by so quickly! I’ve had a very eventful last week though. On Monday I went to live in a remote village that’s about 2 hours away from the Boma. I stayed in a small brick house with a thatched roof with a 17 year old girl. The village was a big change for me because there was no electricity, no private tap, I slept on the floor, and the latrine was a little bit sketchy (and was inhabited by giant mutant grasshoppers at night).

I enjoyed living in the village though; my Chichewa definitely improved and I had the opportunity to get out to the farm to plant maize and groundnut. I had a particularly eventful night when I woke up because rain was dripping down on me through the thatched roof. So I was resituating myself when I looked right and saw  this huge cockroach right outside my mosquito net. So I was like, “hmm…I think I’m going to kill that”, so I turned left to look for my shoe and found myself staring at a snake as it crawled up my wall. So my priorities changed a little bit and I woke up my roommate and we killed the snake by whacking it to death with a piece of wood!

Unfortunately it rained the entire time I was in the village and I learned a very valuable lesson; Never go to a remote village during rainy season when you are on a timeline (needing to get back to Lilongwe for my flight). A truck was supposed to come and pick me up on Thursday, but it was really delayed because of the rain and didn’t get to the village until 8:30 that night. I wanted to stay in the village and go back in the morning because the roads were really slippery, but the guys who came to pick me up really wanted to get back, so we decided to brave the hilly, slippery, Thyolo roads. Bad Idea.

Trying to get back to the Boma was pretty much the biggest nightmare of my life. I can kind of laugh about it now, but at the time it was awful. Lets just say my car ride back to the Boma involved lots of night time slippery driving, running out of fuel in the middle of no where, accidentally driving into a ditch, and having the starter motor give out while we were trying to get out of the ditch. So yeah, around 1:00 that night we gave up on getting home and I slept in the back of the truck in the middle seat between two guys. It was so uncomfortable. In the morning we had to hire some villagers to help push us out of the ditch and to come with us to the Boma so that they could get out of the truck every time we had to go up a hill and help push the truck up. So we basically walked the truck halfway back to the Boma. 70 kilometers and 14 hours later I made it home.

I spent the rest of the day saying goodbye  to everyone and spending time with my family. I was quite sad to say goodbye to my family. Over the last 2 months I really feel like I’ve become a part of their household and my 3 sisters have become an inspiration to me. They motivate me to continue working hard in development so that they can maybe grow up to live a better life. One where they will finish school and grow up to be whatever they desire. My family gave me a Chichewa name on my last day there and told me that I was always welcome back in their family. My Chichewa name is Chimwemwe Nzengo; Chimwemwe means Joy.

I arrived in Lilongwe on Saturday and I’ve been spending the last few days clueing up some stuff. Yesterday I went and visited the Village of Hope. When I was 14 I helped to fund the building of a house for  orphans that would be built as one of many houses in a village in Malawi. The Village of Hope was one of my first experiences with development and it was what got me really interested in working in Malawi. It was nice to end my trip by the going to  the village that inspired me in the first place. I got to see the house that was built in 2004 and meet the children that live there. I was also surprised to find out that all of the houses (12) that are currently in the village have all been funded by Newfoundlanders! The houses were all named after Newfoundland communities like Lewisporte, Grand Falls, Gander, Port aux Grave, etc, and they flew the Canadian flag in the middle of the Village! It was a special experience for me.

And so here ends my Malawian adventure. I wish I could put into words what this experience has meant to me. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to live with Malawians and to be able to learn, and start to understand, their culture. I’m happy about what I accomplished here, and my co-workers were very thankful for all I did. I feel though that the people here have taught me so much more, and have done so much more for me than I could ever do for them. I’m very sad to leave but I am excited to come home and continue to share my experiences. Thank you to everyone who has followed along with my blog over the last 4 months and to everyone who has offered me support throughout the last year. I really appreciate all the support and prayers I’ve received over the last few months and I’m looking forward to seeing you all again soon.

Love, love, love
Maria