Mysore monsoon messages

Mark Ashby, our Acting Country Director, wanted to send you a little message to say hi...




Yesterday we, the advance staff team, did our swim tests and checked out the pool where all the staff and venturers will do their swimming assessment. The pool is at a hotel called Sandesh The Prince in Mysore city.
L-R Kath (Finance Manager), Miriam (Medic), Jess (Communications Officer), M-J (Administrator) all treading water as part of the test.

We do a swimming assessment with everyone coming out to India so that we know how well each person can swim. If we do any exciting activities involving water, maybe on the adventure phase(!), then we can make sure we are prepared and can support the venturers and PMs so that they feel confident in the water.

After our swim Nicky, Ali and Margaret decided to try a bit of synchronized swimming…I don’t think this is actually where their talents lie! See for yourselves!

L-R: Nicky (Deputy Progamme Manager), Ali (Logistics) and Margaret (Logistics).

Today we’ve been shifting furniture around and cleaning the staff dorms ready for the arrival of the Project Managers on Saturday. At the moment we are an all female advance staff team and we even, very thoughtfully, cleaned the male staff dorm. PMs – you can thank us when you get here on Sat! A nice clean dorm!

So at the same time as India 09I there are also a couple of independent projects going on with groups of young people. If you are on 09I you won’t actually meet these groups. They will be groups of young people from maybe a youth group or a school and they will go straight to their project sites whereas if you are on 09I you will come here to field base! But…the project managers for these groups may be familiar to you if you went on a development session or if you have spoken to any one at head office. Today Vicky and Eddie arrived here at field base. They are two of the PMs for the bespoke expeditions. Eddie runs some of the training for venturers back in the UK and Vicky works in Raleigh Head Office, in London, managing bespoke expeditions that she will be project managing this time.
Eddie looking suprisingly perky from such a long flight!

Vicky’s asleep at the moment after a long day travelling and it would have been a bit mean to take a snap of her asleep but here is Eddie to remind you what he looks like! They will be going through training with all the other project managers and then they’ll go off with their groups to their project sites. You can talk to Raleigh about organising these bespoke expeditions for your youth group or school visit

www.raleighinternational.org.

And finally we are all really looking forward to the project managers arriving on Saturday. Once they are here we’ll put up a post letting you all know who they are!!