Hi everyone!

We just wanted to give you some pictures so that you can get an idea of the things that we are talking about and where we have been for the past week.

We have been spending most of our days at the VSO office in Georgetown where we have been receiving and trying to process loads of information about many important topics such as the history and politics of Guyana, safety around Guyana, staying healthy, how to use a mosquito net and water filter successfully and many other equally important things. The VSO office is a very comfortable place with air conditioning (a luxery), a library of books (which is great because books weren't included in our "must have" weight limit), internet, and pidgeon hole mailboxes where our mail will be delivered. It will be easier to have all mail delivered there than to our homes, so if you are so inclined to send a note we would love to have it! There is nothing sadder than an empty mailbox. The address at the office would be:

Jessica Hoffman/ Blake Hutson
VSO office
106-7 Lamaha and Carmichael
Georgetown, Guyana

We have been spending our night at the Rima Guesthouse, a very comfortable and clean guesthouse very centrally located and around the corner from the VSO office. We have a very comfortable room with a king size bed, a mosquito net, a fan, and a sink. The bathrooms and cold shower is shared between 16 volunteers which proves to be a logistical nightmare in the mornings! We have breakfast, (normally eggs, toast, fresh squeezed juices, coffee, and fruit. You would not believe the fruit and fruit juices here!) and dinner (normally fish, chicken, rice, stir fried vegetables, and potato salad) at the guesthouse and lunch is ordered to the VSO office. We are eating incredibly well here!

This weekend was the home stay with currecntly serving volunteers. We toured the city, saw the important sights like the grocery stores and farmers market, and walked along the sea wall. the "beach" here is not much to see. The water is dark brown and so dirty that even the Guyanese don't tend to swim in it. There is also an incredible amount of trash around the city. It would be a great opportunity for a recycling project. Despite its flaws though the sea wall goes on for a long time following the coast, is a great place to run, and has a lovely breeze off the ocean.

On Sunday night, the currently serving volunteers hosted a pot luck dinner party for the new volunteers in the courtyard between a couple of VSO houses. It was wonderful! There was even a surprise birthday cake for Blake which he thoroughly enjoyed.

Tomorrow we leave for the Shankland "resort" for some more bonding time and a Creolese tutorial. Then it is back to the Rima for one more night before we meet our employers and they take us to our homes on Friday. We are "borrowing" internet from the bar across the street so our family room looks like an internet cafe every evening. We would love to hear from eveyone!

Here we are in Georgetown, Guyana. The flight was uneventful and we actually made it under the baggage limit. This is of course after several rounds of "what do we not absolutely have to take?" As we passed through customs, the guard asked us how long we would be in Guyana and what we were there for. "2 years" we replied. "We are volunteers with the VSO". The guard looked at us and smiled and said, "Thank you so much for being here." It was a really wonderful way to start our adventure into Guyana.

Roy, the longest worker at VSO Guyana having been there for 16 years, picked us up at the airport. We threw our bags into the back of the truck and headed out to Georgetown. Roy was a wealth of knowledge and told us all about the sights as we sped by them. The country is building a huge new cricket stadium for the World Cup cricket games that will take place here next year complete with an "olympic village" for the players and their families. Guyana also boasts the longest floating bridge in the world. As we drove into town the students were just getting out of school, so the streets were lined with little ones all dressed in their school uniforms. Roy, of course, showed caution as he passed by slowing at least 1 km/hr while telling us about the driving in Guyana and how if you were to actually obey the ridiculously slow speed limit then it would take you 2 hours to get anywhere. He also mentioned that he always drove more respecfully when he was first introducing people to the country. This statement was concurrent with speeding past walking children and a horse drawn cart that was moving too slow only to vere back into the correct lane (on the left side of the road) to avoid a head on collision. I would hate to see his regular driving!

We arrived at our destination, the Rima Guesthouse where we will stay for the next couple of weeks during our in country orinientation which involves seminars on safety, Guyana's history and political situation, etc. The town so far is quite charming with wooden buildings and tree lined streets. There are of course more dangerous sections and areas we have been told to avoid completely. Because we are right on the equator the sun comes up completely here at 6:00 AM every morning and goes down completely at 6:00 PM. It makes sleeping in very difficult!

There are 16 other VSO volunteers that have come in our group. We double the existing volunteers in Guyana. The people are really wonderful and from all over the world. There are 3 other couples here, 2 around our ages.

Blake had a wonderful birthday yesterday. Everyone did something a little extra to make it really special for him. There was a homemade card signed by everyone at breakfast and a chair especially decorated for him with a sign and plastic flowers at lunch and dinner. It was a really lovely gesture and bodes well for the coming years.

We will write again soon with further updates. We hope to move into our house on Friday. We haven't seen it and have no idea where it is, so cross your fingers! We miss you all and would love to hear what it going on with you...so, please write soon!

The long wait is finally over as we are off to Guyana today. We have been anxiously waiting to leave and it's a little hard to believe we will be there in a few hours. We've gotten lots of questions about what it will be like and what we can expect but the only answer we can for sure give is that we expect someone to pick us up at the airport. I guess there is an off chance that could fall through as well. We really are in for a big adventure this time.

Well, that's all for now. We promise to keep in touch and share the good times and bad times with you all. Please keep the comments coming as we love everyone of them.

Blake and Jessa

So here it goes. We haven't posted in quite a while so there's a lot to catch up on. We are now back in Port of Spain, Trinidad after spending three great weeks in Tobago. We have just one final week left until we leave for Guyana, very exciting.

We left off in Castara on our way to the town of Plymouth. Castara actually turned out to be probably the nicest and most relaxing place we stayed because of our proximity to the beach, the very small size of the village (less than 500 people), and just the general atmosphere.

Anyway, we actually ended up in a little town called Black Rock instead of Plymouth, they're pretty close together but Black Rock is where we layed our heads. That was really the big problem with Black Rock now that I mention it. We got a place at this very charming guest house called Auldwyn Lindsay. You can see from the picture that it looks great, kind of set into the natural scenery with cherry trees, a variety of interesting birds, and a private patio. The place had a kitchenette, two rooms, cable tv, and warm water. What it didn't have was air conditioning (or air con as some British people we met called it). Now you're probably thinking that if these two can't deal without A/C for a few nights then they are in big trouble for Guyana. You have to understand though this was a unique situation. So with no A/C you have to sleep with the windows open, not really a problem, actually sounds kind of nice, we had even done it before in our first very run down room but may a remind you this place was set in a very "natural" environment. I would guess that somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 - 100,000 insects of varying sizes shapes and colors spent the night with us that night, and being stubborn or ignorant, I'm not sure which one, we opted against using the mosquito net. So your thinking one bad night with bugs, no big deal, but it goes on from there. Now I can't say for sure if it was a specific bug, several bugs, a reaction from the wild key limes we picked off a tree on the side of the road, or a combination of both, but I woke up at 6:00am with the right half of my upper lip swollen to about twice it's normal size. This was very dissapointing and to add insult to injury Jessa thought it was kind of funny. We decided to give it a day and see what happened. Luckily it went away, we both had a laugh, used the mosquito net that night, and made our way to Bon Accorde the next day.

Black Rock turned out to be a bust almost completely. We were hoping to see turtles hatch, but it was a little bit to late in the season. We did however have a pretty good time the first night as we ended up at a bar helping a local celebrate his birthday. His friends called him "Fari" like rastafari, and they were having a BBQ and we were offered some really good local food for free. A mixture of lentil beans and dumplings. It was absolutely delicious! We were also nominated to buy the birthday boy and his cousins a beer in celebration which we graciously agreed to.

We left there for Bon Accorde which is in the "lowlands" part of the island, kind of the busier more tourist oriented area. Our previous stops had been much more off the beaten path with very few, if any, other tourists in sight. We got a place for three nights at a little guest house called Merle's House. It was nice but to far of a walk from the beaches, so we moved to Crown Point where we spent 5 nights at Mike's Holiday resort. (They use the term resort loosely in Tobago. ) Mike's was great though. It was very close to Store Bay which had crystal clear waters, a little busier, certainly not the desolate beaches we had gotten used to, but still lots of fun. We met Dexter at this beach who told us about his tour company "Island Man Tours". They do these all inclusive, semi-private all day tours for $75 USD. We thought it over and decided it would be a great thing for our last weekend in Tobago and went ahead and booked a trip.

The tour turned out to be great. We took a small boat out with 3 other tourists and a two man crew. It was nice because we got to see the island from a different angle. There are so many beaches that are only accessible by water and these are truly the nicest beaches. There's white sand, yellow sand, and even black sand beaches. Just stunning. We got to do some great snorkeling at places you can only get to by boat and we saw fish and coral of every color in the rainbow. This was my first time to snorkel on a reef and I was just amazed. After snorkeling we went to a beach where the crew knew we could find a sting ray. This was a incredible. We got out of the boat and played with the ray. I am sure everyone is thinking were crazy now but the guys new all about the "crocodile hunter" and actually gave a speech about how it is perfectly safe. The first ray, Nemo, no longer had a barb as it had been broken off by someone. They said that people sometimes break off their tails for sport. Kind of sad. It was a very friendly sting ray and kept coming back for us to touch it and play with it. We took off from there to another beach you can only get to by boat for a BBQ they had set up for us. We had some great local food, rum punch, and relaxed for a while. Another sting ray showed up there and it was even friendlier than the first. We finished the day with a trip to the nylon pool. The nylon pool is in the middle of Buccoo reef off the coast of tobago out in the ocean. It's actually decomposed coral which is like coarse sand. You can stand up in it and the water is only waist high while you are way out in the ocean away from shore. It was a very unique experience.

The next day we packed up and headed back to Scarborough to catch a ferry to Trinidad. This time we opted for the quicker ferry, just under 3 hours, and it was actually pretty nice, complete with an on board movie. Very fancy!

Now were here in Trinidad, lounging our last few days away as we prep to head to Guyana. We have some idea of what to expect but really no idea. We are very excited, anxious, nervous, but nonetheless ready to jump head first in to a new adventure.

We have loved the comments from everyone so please keep them coming. Sorry if you've checked the blog over the past two weeks and have seen no new postings, we got a tad bit lazy in Tobago. Hopefully lots of interesting stories to come.

Blake and Jessa