Tuesday 25th April
Planes and airports
We catch the early morning flight from Medan to Singapore, leave our luggage (now thankfully not overweight any longer, as we only have our own suitcases and the big CW parachute).
We head into Singapore for the day and buy some photographic equipment for our diving adventures. A quick lunch as I am not feeling very well. We go through and have about 7 hours to wait for our flight to Heathrow, but actually the time flies by - I catch up with the emails, and read the English papers of the day before yesterday and yesterday (we hadn't seen any English news for more than 4 weeks) and have a game of Carcassonne and eat sashimi and generally chill out.
Full flight
When we flew from London to Singapore all those weeks ago, the flight was half empty and we were able to stretch out and lie down to sleep, but this flight is completely full, so we sit all the way - but actually do manage to get about 4 or 5 hours sleep during the 13 hour flight, and feel well enough when we arrive at Heathrow to drive straight home to Glastonbury.
Home and recovery
It is SO lovely to see our daughter Jess again after so long, and our sweet house, and our cat and my lovely assistant Chris. Chris and I spend 2 or 3 hours going through the mail and messages, and then I crash out for a bit, get up for a bit, and then it's time for bed again, and on Wednesday I wake up feeling almost completely recovered and able to do a full day of work. I was expecting more jet-lag, so am really pleased.
Thoughts on the tour
I WILL WRITE A PRECIS AND CONCLUSIONS SOON AND POST THEM ON THIS WEB PAGE - BUT BASICALLY, THE TOUR TO ACEH WENT TREMENDOUSLY WELL AND WE ARE VERY PLEASED.
- 2,300 children and almost 2,000 adults watched Haggis's show and really loved it,
- 1,920 badges were made and are being worn proudly,
- lots of parachute games were played
- and we created a lot of smiles and laughter.
WE ARE DETERMINED TO VISIT ACEH AGAIN WITH A LARGER TOUR, AS CHILDREN AND FAMILIES THERE REALLY BENEFITED FROM CWI'S WORK AND WE FEEL THAT AFTER THE AWFUL TIME THEY HAVE HAD, THEY DESERVE SOME MORE SMILES AND LAUGHTER.
PSYCHO SOCIAL WORK IS IMPORTANT - IT RAISES MORALE AND GIVES HOPE FOR THE FUTURE - THINGS WHICH ARE URGENTLY NEEDED IN ACEH AS SO MANY REMAIN HOMELESS.
WATCH THIS SPACE!!!!
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