Merry Christmas from Caye Caulker!

Its already been six days, and in some ways I feel like its been two, cause I've had soo much fun. And on the other hand it feels like weeks, cause so much has happened.

Currently in Caye Caulker, a small island of the coast of Mainland Belize. For those who dont know about it, then the island is really small, has lots of cheap rum, white sandy beaches, palm trees and everyone here looks like they are taking out of a Bob Marley music video. Total Rasta Style. Its great.

prior to that, I had spent an entire night in Seattle airport talking to this american girl, Kristine, who was volunteering straight after highschool, through something called AmeriCorps, where you go to somewhere else in the states and volunteer. she was working in an elementary school in a poor area. really interesting midnight chat. Her monthly food budget was 60 USD and she didn't have any health insurance at all. She was just betting by on good luck. Quite weird for me to think about. |So yeah,m I finally caught my flight in the morning and made it off to cancun.

I spent 2 days in Cancun, which were quite dull so I need not elaborate here.

I then went south down the yucatan peninsula to a place called Tulum, where I spent two night. Had an awesome time there, went scuba diving in 2 cenotes. Cenotes are basically million year old sink-wholes or caves, with the most clean and clear water. Visibility is about 100m, which is extreme for scuba diving. a really cool experience diving around in this underground old caves with flashlights and checking out cool rock formations and Halocline and other interesting phenomena.

Monday i tried to make my way to belize. The border crossing is the slowest in the world. But a bit funny. at customs the rasta(yes, they had a full on rasta working with custusm) guy checked the bags of the guy before me, and then when i came he asked where I was going and whether I had any alcohol or tobacco on me, and I had to admit that I had half a bottle of rum -and asked if that was ok ..and he was like "yeah, fine go on". So no checking of my bag.

Anyways, we got delayed a lot, so we had to spend the night in belize city. by this time were were a group of 10 people who all met on the same bus and we were all going to caye caulker. So we joined together and found a nice guest house in an otherwise sketchy town. (belize city is quite a dodgy place, especially at night). We had a great time though and caught the boat here yesterday. spent the day on the beach, had lobster for dinner. Rum for desert, and more rum for midnight snack. its all in the rum . .

today we're going fishing and snorkeling with this local fisherman and tomorrow Im going to go on a big scuba trip to the blue whole. itll be great.

I cant be bothered(or afford) to send out individual emails to everyone, so if you read this, consider this a christmas greeting. internet here is SO slow and quite expensive.

Cheers!! and go slow. enjoy life!

ps. I hope some of this made sense, but its so warm in here and the sun is shining. so cant be asked to correct all my errors. ciao.

Arriving in Sierra Leone...finally.

I’ve now been in Salone for a week and with my arrival the GMin team is complete. But it was not without complications I made my way here.

I flew from Copenhagen some two weeks ago together with Jamie. A few weeks earlier I had applied for Danish citizenship (formerly Swedish) and in the process some confusion took place. The short story is that I flew to London on an invalid Swedish passport, which got confiscated in Heathrow Airport. Angry, confused, devastated, tired and surprised, I managed to get my luggage (so it didn't fly off to Sierra Leone without me). After several hours of trying , I managed to speak to a person at the Danish Embassy in London (assuming that I now had to be a Danish citizen)and they told me they could issue an Emergency Passport the very next day. I called the Sierra Leonean High Commission, who told me that if I was lucky they could speed up the process for issuing visas from 3 to 2 days. (I had to purchase a new Visa since my old one went with my old passport). Finally I managed with some luck and charm to convince the BMI lady at the airport to change my flight (which I at that point had already missed) from Tuesday to Friday without a fee. I spent the next few days in London getting an emergency passport and a new visa for Sierra Leone. At the Sierra Leonean High Commission they asked for a letter of recommendation, but since I didn't have anyone at hand and since I couldn't get hold of the GMin Members in Sierra Leone, I had to produce one myself … It however went smooth and the person at the commission seemed to accept my made-up letter without reservations. Lucky me.

On Friday evening I finally landed in Freetown and made it through the customs and immigration without problems.

On Sunday I finally made it to Sahn where I met up with the rest of the GMin team. We are now all gathered here and is working hard to make the project be as good (and hopefully even better) than the project in 2007.

In general Sierra Leone looks like itself: All the bread we buy are still for some mysterious reason wrapped in Danish newspapers and our main meal still consists of white rice imported from the far east. The distribution has gone very well the last couple of days, and today is the last day of distribution. The numbers of chickens we’ve received as tokens of appreciation cannot anymore be counted on two hands. Likewise the number of Pineapples we’ve eaten is probably in the hundreds by now.

The kids still remember my name from last time, and I can’t walk two meters outside the doors without someone yelling “Jacob, Jacob”.

Tonight we a planned a big party for everyone to celebrate the end of the distribution. Can’t wait to party in Sierra Leonean manner.