One of those weeks.

Its been one of those weeks. One of those weeks that almost seems like it's never going to end, wher you struggle to see the end, or figure out what's going on. A week of tests, and trials and tears. In saying that, it has also been quite a productive week.

I've been in london since Friday night a week ago, coming down to do a 7 day, extremely intensive training course with Merlin a medical relief agency on public health in international contexts. Great course. Extremely full-on days, 9-6 most of the day plus the hour long commute each way. I am constantly amazed at how ineffefective travel is in london. it takes hours to travel a couple of miles. Most of the time you could probably walk faster.

The course was extremely useful for me in terms of further defining what I want to do, where I want to be. I had a bit of a set back on my last day though, where I felt that there was no way for me to get 'in', as in, get onto the field. There's heaps of jobs in nutrition out there, but they all want experience which no one will give you. So I got stuck ina bit of a negative mental cycle thinking it is pointless that i'm just wasting my time and got quite upset about it. Which in itself was a good thing. Because I hate crying, rarely do. And if i do cry it's generally becuase something has really gotten to me, something is really important to me. I now know a bit more, about how much of a passion and strong desire I Have to be working internationally in aid work, relief work preventing malnutrition and working within the nutrition field in that way.

I also learnt a few things that were very helpful. For example, that I should focus on practicing French, not Spanish as most nutrition prorams worldwide at this point are in french-speaking countries. Plus the agencies that give you jobs in that sector are also french.... so looks like i'll be brushing up my french skills for a while.

This weekend I've been doing some volunteer work with Action against Hunger, which is one ofthe agencies I would really like to work with. They have a stall (well 2 technically as one is a shop and drop for al hte shoppers things) at the BBC Masterchef wine and food event. which is basically an extremely scaled down version of the good food and wine show we have in Sydney. Pretty good food going on though. I was tipped off later in the afternoon that if you take back the wine glasses to the pick up point you can get a pound per glass. I started collecting them as everyone was leaving the show (obviously it takes too much effort to walk back 15 metres) and managed to make enough money to pay for at least my train ticket for the week while in london. so that was good!!!

I've also been blessed yet again with another job. This time it is for a week, maybe two, maybe three. I'm not sure at this point it is just one but it could be more. It is in Cheshire this time which is wait for it.... 6 miles down the road from the boys house in Manchester so looks like i'll be living there next week again!! Glad I've got some good back up friends, even if the house is a mess!

I had fun with AAH today, even if I was tired. I really need to catch up on sleep. I haven't done anything all week except study and I'm absolutely exhausted. One of the things we were doing was selling this chocolate named Ben Tre. Ironically, I was in Ben Tre earlier this year, just after i arrived in Vietnam. I mentioned this to someone and they were quite excited. Later on in teday I was a bit of a model selling chocolate at a good taste promotion thing and got to speak a bit off the cuff on AAH, what they do, how we help fight malnutrition and some of the things used on the field, plumpynut etc. More on that later though.

Au revoir.