The start of something... short-lived?

Well here it is, my long promised blog. Started more as a product of guilty conscience rather than any real good intentions on my part but don’t let that put you off. Just so long as you know that this is written with a general feeling of bitter contempt that I still have to keep in touch with you losers back home, rather than getting on with my new exciting life over here, that’s all. I’m now thousands of miles across the world and I still feel you’re all holding me back. Now, I know on computers it’s hard to know if I’m being sarcastic or not, so I’ll just let you make up your own minds.

Anyway, I’ve been saying I would write one of these for at least a fortnight now, everyone else in the house has been writing one for ages ( except for Lucas, who is two, and in my opinion just plain lazy.) Well I’ve started now, and, as this is essentially just an on-line diary, I give it two weeks tops before any sort of limited novelty value it has wares off. If you think about it, me having a blog works out much better for you guys though. No longer will you have to receive my large impersonal group e-mails. In fact, I don’t think I will be writing to you at all. If you do feel the need to find out how I am doing however, and I’m aware this will be a fairly select group and getting smaller by the minute, you can simply log on to my blog where I intend to go to great pains to illustrate how much nicer my life is than yours. I’ll even try to include some pictures.

It just occurs to me that I forgot to mention to many of you that I arrived safe and well in Belize. I’ve now been here a couple of weeks and as this was a fairly fundamental reason for me writing this it should perhaps have come before I launched in to insulting you all, but I guess that’s not the way it worked out. Things here are great anyway. It’s funny to be somewhere that is so familiar (I lived here for a while about a year and a half ago) yet that has changed so much. I am back staying in Andy and Simone’s house and it is really good to be back. They are such great people and have done so much to the place that it looks almost unrecognizable, everything has been finished off really beautifully. They now even have a bar inside the house but despite this I am managing to abstain from drinking. Two weeks now, perhaps a new personal best.

On top of my healthy eating and drinking I have been leading, almost by accident I must say, a very healthy lifestyle, running and swimming most days as well as a fair bit of football. I’ve already played a couple of matches for the local team although I could only manage 45 minutes in each. In fact in the first I only played for 10 and spent the remaining 35 as a spectator with a great view of the pitch. Still, I am gradually acclimatizing. With all this fresh air and exercise you’d think I’d be feeling in peak physical condition and perhaps I would’ve been if I hadn’t been savaged by the mosquitoes and sun. That coupled with the fact that my wrist is all bandaged up as I have put it out again lifting weights… from one side of the deck to the other. What a man. Anyway, with all my bites, bandages and peeling skin I’m looking like a cross between a badly written brail book and a scabby mummy, not a great look.

We have quite a busy house here these days. The bottom floor, where I stayed last time, has been converted in to guest rooms as Andy and Simone are now running a small resort here, hence the bar and stuff. You can check it out at their website at http://www.greendragonbelize.com/. It’s all very cool. Also there are now five of us living upstairs as Karen, who is a yoga teacher from Canada, is also staying here, probably for a year or so. She is also really nice and it is good to have more people to hang out with, especially as Mooch isn’t here this time. It’s also very different now that Lucas is Two. He has the energy of ten of us and is now great fun. He is pretty mischievous though and I find the discipline side of things very hard, how do you tell someone off for something when your doubled over crying with laughter? I find it all just too funny. This has the unfortunate side effect of not really putting him off however, in fact in many cases quite the opposite and I don’t think Simone is too keen on this. It’s not always too good for me either, like the other day when he was sitting on my knee ‘playing dominoes’ and made himself sick by swallowing too much of his own hand. Very messy.

I am also very happy that I seem to have timed my trip here very well again with regards to work. After a week of holidaying we are starting again on several construction projects including a riverside yoga deck, a huge rainwater collection tank and some sort off eco-house / guest accommodation. It’s all still early days but very exciting stuff. We still have to sort out my work permit and things but I am hopeful it shouldn’t be a problem.

Anyway, now you are all caught up on what I am doing I can finish this, safe in the knowledge it will take me a fair while to write again. Hope you are all well back home.