Not There Yet ................

Ok, here's the story so far........... About 20 years ago I came up with a vague life plan of travelling the world and doing something "animally". About 7 years ago I finished a degree in zoology and moved to Thailand. Thailand was fantastic and I travelled around doing all kinds of jobs on the way; hotel work, zoo keeping and teaching English. It was here that I realized that while it's hard to find people who will pay you to do "animally" things, lots of people will pay you to teach them English. Speaking English being one of my amazing talents, I took a course in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), got the certificate and thus had a backup plan for anytime I was stuck in a foreign country with no money. After about 2 years, I came back to the UK and did a Masters in Biodiversity and Conservation (sticking to the animally theme) but left uni with a huge overdraft. So naturally I went to South Korea! There I worked as an English teacher for 2.5 years. Though I loved living in Korea (mainly the money) there is very little in the way of wildlife there (not counting my students!). So about five months ago I came back to England with no clue what to do next. Except that whatever it was, I wanted to do it in South America! About two weeks ago I decided I'd had enough of the grey skies and should be getting a move on. But which country to go to? There's so many of them and they all sound fab. Four days ago I pulled myself together and decided to start off in Costa Rica and travel my way south, living and working in each country on the way. Two days ago I booked my one-way ticket to San Jose, Costa Rica.

So the plan is to stay at a Spanish school for the first month, learn the language, get to know the area and find an English teaching job. Then when I'm set up with a job and place, I can travel around the country, look into local conservation projects, do volunteer work and basically get lots of experience in anything and everything animal related.

So on May 14th at 7.20 am, I'll be leaving English soil and I could be gone a long while......I'd better get packing!