No Stopping This Train Ride

Okay so...Training! Yes, yes the glorious week of early mornings, insane country prep sessions and lesson planning, coupled with the world class banter at the hands of the Thai, Indian and Senegalese volunteers. Banteers! Am I right?!...No...okay, moving on.
Training takes place on the Isle of Coll, way out in the Hebrides and is a massively important part of your year out with Project Trust, why? Because this is the week where it all gets way real. Like, holy ham, we're actually going...we're actually going to be teachers...we're actually going to have to eat that...Yeah, it hits pretty hard.
So, after a 4:30am start (the pain of that speaks for itself) to get the 5am ferry from Oban to Coll, which takes about four hours, I think...I'm not sure, I fell asleep for a good deal of it. Which is not an advisable way to take on sea journeys if you get seasick, just a pointer for you there. We got to to our beloved Coll around 9/10am and were immediately thrown into the bombardment of information and scary talks that is Training.

(From top to bottom) Me, organising my lesson activity, bossing it and Mei being super organised and neat, while the rest of us looked on in dis-Mei...see what I did?
And so the week continued in much this way; get up, breakfast, couple hour session/presenting lessons, more sessions, much needed coffee break, more sessions/lessons, lunch, more sessions/scary talks on what infections we can get/what are the ways in which we're likely to get attacked, dinner (oh how we love dinner...) then our time of lesson planning and nursing sore heads. As we got further into the week, however, we began to venture out into the wild. By which I mean we went to the beach and had a jolly good time. Here are some delightful shots of us thinking it's a great idea to run into the cold, strong-pulling sea:

It may sound as if I found Training to be exhausting and difficult and the reason for that is because it bloody was! But I've never been around such supportive, enjoyable and banter-iffic people since Selection, and the hard work paid off, I can now go overseas feeling slightly less "OH MY LORD I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THIS PLACE" and that's a good feeling. There were some tears, like I said, this week was when it really hit home for us all that we're leaving, and we're leaving soon. But we nursed each other through, became each others' support systems, made each other laugh. It was in these moments when we felt most weak, that we found that we were strongest of all, and that is why we do this; to find our comfort zone and climbing right up out of it, higher and higher until we reach the stars.

What to listen to today: Baby Darling Doll Face Honey - Band Of Skulls