63 days until Ghana, 127 days until Uni/HBO

"It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves."
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Right so I thought I'd start writing a blog for my thoughts leading up to Ghana, for while I'm in Ghana and my move to Holland. I'm in Holland at the moment as our house is being rebuilt and my parents wanted to see if everything was going to plan and to do things like gardening around the house, taking off wallpaper etc. We've been doing this for the last week. I say we.. really I should say they as I've just done a bit of raking the garden and taking off some wallpaper. I wasn't much help as I preferred to do some studying and catch up with some people in our town Geldermalsen. Woops.
I've had a lovely week though and seen many people from year 6, went out with one of them, Sander, and his friends for his birthday, ate lots of dutch food, studied (a bit) and seen my family. On Monday Jitske (a dutch friend i've known since I was about 6 years old) and I decided to go with 2 guys to the  beach and meanwhile I was mentally preparing myself to go back to England that night. I then got a text asking if I wanted to stay longer as my family didn't want to go yet and felt like they could do more around the house. (While I was on the beach, they were picking up rocks all day out of our land so it could be ploughed, I was definitely there with them in spirit). I said that I wouldn't mind as I would only be missing a couple of lessons at school if we returned on friday instead. So, they checked if Sam, my love of my life, (my dog), could stay with his minder for a while longer. That checked, we decided to stay.
Jitske is studying in Maastricht (2 hours away from home) and so I decided to go to Maastricht with her for the rest of the week. She has work 6 hours a day, which gives me time to study.. or in other words start doubting about what I've chosen to do after the summer. I've applied and been accepted to do Technical Nursing which is a course of 4 years which you end up with qualifications for nursing and operation assistant. To reach to that decision I've gone back and forth between about 3 similar courses and then decided to just go for it. Well I say 3 similar studies, but then I've also looked at law, at psychology, social work, human resources anything you can think of really as it seemed to interest me all.. I believe I've done at least 20 career tests and they all come out with things like social work and nursing but although I love the idea of social work, I also like the idea of being able to live comfortably later on, and the pay for that sort of work is so little! I know realistically I should think, well that's just money, I shouldn't care, but seen as I'm not even certain that's what I want to do, it played a part.
If I'm honest with myself I've always loved the feeling of being important, of leading and having a say which is why I've always gone for class representative, prefect, school council etc. When I shadowed a nurse for a day and also when I had been operated on 2 weeks ago, I realised what a nurse did. It's a very important job, and a hospital wouldn't function without it, but I'm just not sure it's what I see myself do.. Measuring blood pressure, giving out medicines, washing people etc. I think I'd want to feel more useful and important than that.
Because I knew this of myself I also looked at business management and similar things which you'd know you'd end up playing a big part in a business, but it just didn't seem all that exciting for me. As most of you know, I'm Christian, so I've prayed a lot about it and just wanted God to shout out "THAT'S WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO" which I know he's done to some of my friends. However, I've never really heard God speak to me in words or pictures like to most of my Christian friends (he probably has, but i'm too stubborn to hear) and so that hasn't helped me decide. Then this morning I was praying if God could just help me, as I was just confusing myself with all this doubt about nursing. So I started looking again at all these different things I could study and came across Tourism Management. Now that's suddenly really appealed to me and I love the idea of it! I don't think I've felt this excited about any other course I came across, but then again knowing me (who gets excited so easily about new things) I probably have. The website for it is: link to HBO Study if you want to check it out. But anyways, so at the moment I'm seriously looking into that. I let my parents know I came across a different course and you can probably predict their reactions... *Sigh* I mean they just want me to be happy with my choice of study, but I keep changing my mind and am never certain when I do decide to just go for one. So I'll definitely keep you updated on if I do decided to just try and apply for that study or if I stay on the nursing path.


Okay so that would all start in 127 days from now.. But first I have a VERY exciting trip that I need to prepare for. I'm going to Ghana on the 29th of june (in 63 days) for 6 weeks to teach kids English, Maths and Computer skills. I'll be placed in a host family in Tamale who will provide me with 2 meals a day. I don't think I'll have any or much help with teaching so that's a very scary, exciting, challenging and nerve wrecking thought. I also won't have much equipment I can teach them with and therefore I'm asking for some sponsors, so if anyone wants to sponsor me to buy some teaching equipment for the kids (I'd buy it in Ghana, a lot cheaper) then please let me know as you'd help me a lot!
When I get back to Holland I'm going to need to contact my nurse to schedule in my injections, I think there's about 7, not too sure, which makes it all very real and soon. I'll put some more information on what I'd exactly be doing (although most of it is a surprise to me) in my next post.