When we first launched the Projects Abroad blog we had a series of posts detailing some of the unique foods you can find in our destination countries. One of the big winners was a post by Sarah about the many things she had adventurously eaten when she worked in China. Click here for the original post

But I recently came across this commercial featuring the basketball players Dwayne Wade, Charles Barkley and Yao Ming which gives you a pretty funny visual of the drunk prawn dish. Have any volunteers had this when in China?

Bon appetit!

After a successful information evening in Edinburgh last month it is time for another and this time we are heading to the City of Leeds. This is your chance to come along and speak to ex-volunteers and our Projects Abroad staff members about volunteering opportunities abroad.

Our ex-volunteers love having the opportunity to talk about their experiences overseas and hopefully it will give you plenty of information on how we operate, the projects and destinations available and how to get involved.

The event is being held on Monday 1st December, between 6-8pm at the Centenary Gallery in Leeds.
We will be continuing to run many more Information Evenings around the country in the New Year, so keep your eyes peeled!

The full details are as follows:

Centenary Gallery, Parkinson Building, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS29JT
6 - 8pm

You can also RSVP HERE. We look forward to seeing you there!

Projects Abroad has always welcomed lots of geographers onto programmes whether it is over the summer or on their gap year. Our Director Dr Peter Slowe worked in the Geography department of Chichester University before he started Projects Abroad.

If you are a UK national intending to study geography at degree level you might be eligible for a grant of up to £4,000 to join one of our programmes. The Royal Geographical Society is offering 18 gap experience scholarships. It is simple to apply for one of these scholarships requiring you to fill in an electronic application form as well as getting a teacher to provide a reference.

For this years scholarships you need to apply quickly as the deadline is Friday 28th November. To find out more go to http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/LandL/LandL.htm and mention Projects Abroad

Click here for more videos and the Projects Abroad Youtube Channel

Besides my monthly subscription to National Geograhic Magazine, one of my new favorite publications is actually our Jamaican destination’s official newsletter, “Jamrock: Wha Gwaan Inna Jamaica”. You can find most of them here on our website. Not only is the newsletter really well put together but has a lot of great stories, updates, recipes and colorful photos. Plus it runs a “Jamaican Quote of the Month” section every month featuring a well known Jamaican Patois phrase which I will try to feature here on the blog. Here is the first installment!

“If yuh want good yuh nose haffi run”

- If you want to succeed you have to work hard

Peter Slowe and Tom Pastorius in front of the Meiji Shrine

By Dr. Peter Slowe, Director and Founder of Projects Abroad

The reason for going to Japan was to learn about the possible interest of the Japanese in volunteering with Projects Abroad. I was also a first-timer in Japan. My visit to the fabulous Meiji Shrine was the best ever because it turned out to be the Emperor Meiji’s birthday – he would have been 156; this resulted in a long Shinto ceremony with many robed priests, traditional dances, and solemn intoning members of the Japanese Imperial family, ending up with a hearty rendering of Kimigayo. The next-most amazing thing was staring out of the hotel window during our conference and seeing Mount Fuji. If you go to Japan, don’t bother with the raw fish but have Shabu-Shabu beef prepared at your table by a lady who keeps smiling and saying “Shabu-Shabu” (no matter what the question). I think that many Japanese will join our projects and bring their cultural richness into many of the countries where we work. Kana Banzai!

Ceremony at the Meiji Shrine

I love Mongolia because it’s empty, cold and wonderful. The first snow had fallen and I forgot my outdoor coat but Oko had several to spare – I think he wears all of them at the same time in February. The Karaoke was good – personally I can only ever remember Yellow Submarine and Hey Jude but Oko gets carried away with Korean love-songs because it was by singing these that he attracted his beautiful Korean wife, Sang Em, many years ago. His voice is good – especially in quantity. Usuhuu, Otgoo and Ariunaa are probably the star singers but all of us did our best and sometimes scored well. I really enjoyed spending time with my Mongolian colleagues. Everyone knows the destination is great but I was also really pleased that we made what seemed a few years ago to be a brave decision to put Projects Abroad’s financial HQ in Mongolia – it couldn’t have turned out better. Oko banzai!

Shanghai certainly has its international side. For example, I discovered that the Chinese for “soft poached eggs” is “soft poached eggs” and, gratifyingly, I wasn’t expected to eat mine with chopsticks. Teddy is our great new desk-officer; he can speak English and German in his quiet refined way and answers all emails almost immediately – this is because Teddy, like all my Chinese colleagues, really cares about the volunteers as individuals who give up time, money and energy to do their wonderful work of helping others or improving themselves. Kay sets a fine example; she really understands, in an extraordinary cross-cultural way, what motivates our volunteers and exactly how to help them get on in China. Kay Banzai!

While I was in Shanghai, the Obama result came in and the world changed. And the Glenrothes result came in and Britain changed. Barack Banzai! Gordon Banzai!

Laurens rafting on the Martha Brae River

By Laurens Vos, Country Director for the Netherlands

I recently had the honour to visit one of our newer destinations: Jamaica. When I told my friends, who know what kind of work I do, that I would be visiting Jamaica as one of our destinations, they all asked me what kind of voluntary work could there possibly be done since most people only really know the island as a holiday destination.

So I tried to tell them about the needs here in Jamaica and about the projects we have. But now that I have seen the needs in Jamaica, I can go back and tell them there is definitely more to this island than beaches, reggae and partying. I will tell them about the overcrowded schools, the many orphanages and the lack of proper water installations, all of which we at Projects Abroad try to make a difference to and we could not do this without our enthusiastic volunteers.

Volunteers like Kendall who worked in a children’s home, taking care of orphans like they were her own kids. Or Kelsey who taught boys under 14 how to play proper soccer. It was a joy to see some of you at work and please keep it up.

But indeed, I also have to tell my friends that you can properly enjoy yourself on this island as well. I was lucky enough to be in Jamaica when the monthly social event was on. We all went rafting on the Martha Brae River. Apparently the river was named after the couple that owned the lands back in the days, and funnily Martha was the male of the two. It was a relaxing ride down the river on the bamboo rafts. After this we went on another adventure: climbing the waterfall at Dunn’s River. It was truly breathtaking and an adventure I would not soon forget. Thanks for having me on board.

Did you know that Laurens is also a part-time model? Here he is working on his “blue steel” look at Dunn’s River

But, although that was great, it wasn’t the best part of my stay here. It was the kids at the different schools and orphanages with all their enthusiasm that took my mind back to my own voluntary days with Projects Abroad in South Africa. The kids are simply wonderful and eagerly awaiting to learn how to read proper English. Anyone who wants to come and help teach and work with these kids, please come and do so. You’ll be in excellent hands with Bridgette & Andrew. Thanks for having me.

Projects Abroad’s first ‘vulture volunteer’ Lindsay Bevan recently discovered a last surviving population of whiteback vultures, in an isolated rural area of northern Tamil Nadu where all species of vultures were previousy thought to be extinct.

Lindsay spent 6 weeks researching the prevalence of the veterinary drug diclofenac among pharmacies, veterinary centres and farming communities in southern Tamil Nadu as part of her dissertation research into the decline in the vulture popluation. Diclofenac, an anti-inflamatory drug administered to cattle, causes kidney failure and death to vultures when they eat the carcasses of dead cattle. One polluted carcass kills an entire flock of vultures, the lack of which has lead to an explosion in the number of feral dogs and rats which in turn spread diseases such as rabies. 99.5% of all vultures are now extinct accross India.

Projects Abroad is working closely with the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and India’s Birdlife India charities to educate vets and farmers in the use of alternative anti-inflamatory drugs as well as monitoring the continued use of diclofenac (it’s now illegal to manufacture diclofenac but not yet illegal to use existing stocks of the drug) and now observing the recently discovered last remaining flocks of vultures in northern Tamil Nadu.

Volunteers are desperately needed to push this importand project forward.

Kana, Peter, Tom and Will in Japan

By Tom Pastorius, Executive Vice President - North America

I have been working on opening the Japan office of Projects Abroad for about
eight months now. So getting to spend a week in Japan was the culmination
of lots of hard work that I did during strange hours in the New York office
over the spring and fall. It was also a dream-come-true to visit the New
York Bar in the Park Hyatt Tokyo - made famous by one of my favorite movies,
Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.

For me, the most interesting part of Japan was seeing a country that is
unambiguously developed yet still culturally very different from the west.
Japan has a clear Eastern culture, as different from my home country as
Mongolia, India and Nepal. Yet, unlike those places, Japan is the second
biggest economy in the world. It’s so developed that my cell phone couldn’t
even connect to their network because it wasn’t 3G. In the same vein,
everyone has fiber optic broadband internet at home. These are technologies
that are just now hitting the US market; meanwhile they are so standard in
Japan that they don’t even bother with supporting previous versions anymore.

Having studied “Lost in Translation” quite closely before leaving, I
expected to feel very culture-shocked in Japan. I expected to find very few
English speakers and wildly different social mores. I was surprised to
find neither. While the Japanese tend to believe - as Americans do - that
shouting in their native language somehow makes the meaning of their words
clearer, when pushed a substantial number of educated people can eek out a
few words in English. In the same way, bowing is an important part of
formal business introductions but the people that I met were so
understanding of my Western ignorance that that barely expected me to bow at
all.

On reflection, it’s put a bad taste in my mouth that “Lost in Translation”
overdramatized the strangeness of Japanese culture. While there are
certainly ways in which they act differently from Westerners, there was
never a time when I felt that their behavior was inexplicable or illogical.
More importantly, I am disappointed that the movie did not do more to
emphasize the admirable aspects of Japanese culture, from which the US could
benefit by copying.

The Japanese are hands-down the most polite people I’ve ever seen. They put
the British - the previous champions of politeness in my mind - to absolute
shame. One example is when Peter underpaid the bill in restaurant. Our
poor waiter returned to the table a few second later not to berate Peter for
trying to pull a fast one, but to apologize for causing a fuss and to thank
Peter “for his kindness” when he coughed up the correct amount.

As a New Yorker, my mind was blown one morning when I boarded a rush hour
“cram train” for central Tokyo with all my bulky luggage in hand. In New
York, anyone who tries to do this will get the evil-eye from the entire car.
In Tokyo, several people made room for me and even helped me find the right
train. It was wonderful.

Many thanks to Kana, our Director for Japan, for knocking herself out to
show us “gaijin” a good time. You may have done too good of a job as I’m
already looking forward to my next trip!