ARRIVED!

Hola!
Firstly - sigh of relief I just spent about 10 mins trying to access my blog - i think emma knows what im talkin about, silly passwords. But I´m here now and i´ll try my best to fill you in on what has been a crazy couple of days..

So i was due to leave Belfast on sunday afternoon to go to my send-off orientation in wokingham with my team. Well my flight to Gatwick was cancelled which I only found out once I´d joined the check-in queue at city airport and glanced at the screen in front of me. So rather than go into the quite traumatic :s details - I ended up flying into heathrow on monday evening where Stephen ( awesome bro!) picked me up and drove me to the centre.

Upon arriving i was told that Katie mightnt have been able to fly out with us the next day! She has a medical skin problem (I won´t embarrass myself by trying to spell it) and InterHealth, the people who gave us medical clearance to travel, weren´t happy for her to fly out because she had had a flair up the week before. They told her this on Monday evening! So she left an hour after I arrived to go home and ring her consultant first thing Tuesday morning - she managed to get an appointment for that afternoon. Meanwhile matt had given her until 4.30 as a deadline to meet us at the airport for our flight before he would have to consider cancelling her ticket! ( We left the centre for the airport at 3pm Tues.) So at 3.20 she rang me and said she was on her way. Pheew!

The flight to Sau Paulo which I was stressing about being 8 hours long, actually was a 12hour flight! "I was way off"(any dumb+dumber fans?!). Anyway, it was totally fine! I wasn´t even that anxious getting on. It was extremely long, dragged in at times. The seats weren´t very comfy tho I sort of dosed on and off throughout. Arriving at Sao Paulo I actually remembered a text Phil sent me regarding one of his flights to j´berg or somewhere, he said you literally start to sweat once you step off the plane. It was crazy heat. Had about a 2 hour wait then a 2 hour flight to Ascuncion, Paraguay, another hour wait there til our final flight into Cochbamba. All flights were totally fine and it´s such an answer to prayer. I want to thank everyone who prayed for me over that journey, I really felt like I was being looked after, I was very calm and relaxed!

Emma´s bag didn´t turn up, but we were able to go and collect it yesterday because that same flight comes in at the same time each day apparently, which was lucky.

Ross Mary ( Rosemary) met us at the airport. She works at Mosoj Yan and is one of our main links in the projects. She speaks good English. She took us to the seminary where we are living for the 4 months. It´s.. emm. Alright. haha no it´s fine like it´s pretty basic. There´s a little kitchen, a quite big dining room with a 6-seat table and a desk. There are 3 rooms. The 6 of us picke our names out of a hat to decide rooms. I´m with Hannah S-R in the smallest room, but it´s nice. Bunk beds, I´m on the top and there are no ladders to get up there. Or down - which is more tricky cause the floors are very hard tiles so it hurts to jump - I´ve managed to create somewhat of a safety mat of blankets etc which i launch onto - it sounds fun. It´s not. Also there are no side bits on the top bunk so if i roll in my sleep im a goner really.
The bathroom´s a bit manky to be honest and hot water isn´t even an option with there being only one tap turning one way. Though in the heat it´s somewhat refreshing.. once you pass the ´frozen, can´t breathe´stage. I think I´ve been pretty negative there, honestly it´s not that bad. Its very much liveable for 4 months.

Yesterday Ross Mary took us to Mosoj Yan. I don´t even know where to start describing it. Which is why I left it til last (or maybe I wanted my rant out of the way first haha). Literally, I dunno what to say haha. Emm it´s fantastic, it´s amazing, just awesome. All of the people are sooo friendly and welcoming. We got shown around the main Mosoj Yan centre, then the other projects. They are all just so overwhelming?is that the word? I don´t know. I don´t have time now to go into each of the projects. We were given a bit of a shock yesterday which to be honest hasn´t sunk in yet. There are 5 projects. So 2 of us will work at one, and the rest of us at one each of the others. That´s for 2 months, then we change to a diff one for the last 2 months. Thankfully I´m working with Hannah at the first project at Mosoj Yan for the first 2 months. I hope that by the time I have to go off on my own I´ll have a better grasp of the language. The language is the hardest thing about this. The situations I have found myself in already are just so hard beasue of the language. These projects would be extremely difficult in themselves like if the people we were working with were English, but the Spanish is such a difficult barrier. We are getting 2 one on one Spanish lessons a week for the first month, inc in the price of the trip. Please pray for my Spanish to improve greatly - this is the main thing.

I´m sorry this has been such a long entry, thanks if you´ve managed to reach the end. So much has happened since we arrived it´s hard to put it into words! I don´t have my camera leads to get photos on yet, and I´v only taken about 5 anyway - we are just too busy to take pictures - honestly. It´s been crazy. And it will be for the whole time. We´ll be up about 7am each day - be at our projects for 9am start. Work (yes, work - for anyone thinking this was a doss about travelling trip) there til about 4.30 / 5. Bare in mind this is work with no one else who speaks English.
Ahh must go - ran out of ti.... ha bubi!