Things are happening...

Hello all!

Things are moving quite fast now, it seems.

Yesterday I had my appointment at the travel clinic - both good news and bad. The good news - only 2 of my immunisations were out of date. The bad news - because I didn't have a Japanese Encephalitis booster after my return last time, I have to start at the beginning which now means 2 injections at £80 each (new vaccine - old one was 3x£50). The other one was HepB at £40, so that's a total of £200.

The nurse also told me that the malaria tablets I'd been planning to take with me just in case I went out of Pune and into a malarial zone don't work on Indian mosquitos' malaria! So need to rethink that. Although the others are cheaper, you have to take them for longer which is logistically interesting. Don't think I can afford to just take them for the whole time though. Some thinking and calculation needed there.

I've confirmed this morning that I've successfully deferred my place on my PGCE course, and sent a scanned copy of my degree certificate to secure that place, and I'm now just preparing for my work with The Challenge which begins on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it, but it doesn't allow me a lot of time to prepare for this trip and so I suspect September will be upon me and very busy before I know it.

I've also had a couple of interesting Guiding thoughts recently which I'd like to include in this blog, but I'll save that for the next time I find a moment to write as am having to prioritise my time at the moment.

Philippa

FLIGHTS BOOKED!!!!

I've just booked my flights!
Argh!
Somehow it now seems closer than ever, and it's given me a longer list of things to do because I now have to work out how I'm getting to and from airports, and also need to find a hotel in Dubai for the return changeover as it's almost a whole day! Should be good though, nice chance to go explore somewhere different.
Anyway, not much else happening at the moment, but felt flight booking definitely deserved a new post!

Philippa

Preparing to leave...

3 months yesterday I'll be flying to India!
(Not that I've booked my flights yet, but I know which ones I'm intending to)

So it seemed to be a good time to organise my leaving event. Which I did by creating a facebook group. I've invited all my closest friends and family - the people that I want to make sure I see before I leave. Hopefully it'll be fun (and sunny as the garden's a lot more spacious than the house!)

I've also almost completed an application form for the Guiding Centenary Fund - which provides bursaries to young women trying to make dreams come true. Hopefully they'll help me with saving for essentials like guiding uniform, injections etc.

On that note, the Birmingham travel clinic is really annoying me now so I think I'm going to call the Newport Pagnell one and see if they're any more helpful - even though it'll mean a few special trips there. Need to get it sorted.

Think that's all I have to update for now, things will certainly be rolling a lot more quickly in the next couple of months, although I'll also be working hard with my summer job at The Challenge, so it's actually more likely that September will become very rushed and busy!

Philippa