Filling the days

Much as I had hoped to give as detailed a background as possile to the following six months, time has ticked much faster than I ever imagined it could.

It hasn't even been (as in the past it may have) that I have been to tired or too thinky to get something written. Although tired and thinky I am, certainly. It is that the days have been tumbling past so steadily that it has been nigh on impossible to sit down and account for the things that have happened.

There have been traumas, technicalities, house moves, resignations, and long awaited farewells that have been all the more sonorous for it. There have been tears to my mum, wellings up in the middle of work, in the middle of happy days (not the programme, though probably that as well), and panicked sniffles over the phone to diplomatic officials. It has been an ordeal, and a panic, and a massive release.

The facts that I would have liked to have given in more detail are:

- I am flying from Manchester to Ecuador on 10 March for six months, returning (probably) on 6 September.

- I will be volunteering with the Fundacion Jatun Sacha, which runs several biolgical research stations accross Ecuador. I will be doing conservation work on four of these. I hope to put a map and itinerary up here before I go, but generally it will invlve working on reforestation projects, sustainable agriculture and fairtrade projects, and possibly some teaching in the indigenous community, depending on each station.

- I have my visa apointment in London this Friday. I am very worried about what I will do if I am not granted the visa. One of the necessary documents still has not arrived.

- I have tried to learn a little Spanish with the Oxford Latin American Spanish linguaphone course. It is a great course, and I was picking things up rather quickly, but I have been incredibly busy with work and preparations, and with lots of lovely people wanting to see me before I go, and this has been one thing that has been easiest to put to one side. I can order a cheese sandwich and give directions to the Mexican history museum though - that must count for something in Quito, right?

- I leave my job on 29 Feb. I still have lots to do, and a lot that just wont be done in time. It will be bittersweet to leave.

- On the occasion of my leaving Manchester, I have been visited by the ghosts of friends and relationships past. I think I have managed it well. I have also had, after well over a year of complete (honest and intentional) celibacy, one beautiful night with somebody new. I would have liked, in a Henry Miller/ Anais Nin sort of way, for this to have become a tender, if brief, liaison, with no anguish or regret, just niceness to send me off on my way. But this is not the way things go. Real life happens unlike most books, and there just isn't enough time or energy to dwell on somthing transient, I suppose. I am glad it happened. I didn't want any more, really. I just wanted it again. It is such delicious torture to want what one knows one can not, and will never, have.

This is clearly going to be much of a note-book style blog. Nothing is in any order any longer (seems apt), and there is no natural end. We'll see how it goes. It isn't easy typing on my lap on the floor of a sitting room that was once my own domain, and is now occupied variously by parents who have moved in two nights a week and by visiting friends. I haven't slept in my own bed since last Thursday, and will not see it again until the end of the weekend. I think I might need a holiday soon...