Hello Hanoi

My first taste of life as a consultant!  I was invited to lead 2 session and jointly lead a keynote.  I was flown over, put up in a lovely hotel and generally enjoyed myself in this new role.  

Near the hotel was a little temple and one day I went out for a walk around it.  

 

Suffolk in the snow

I took the whole of March off to spend time in the UK.  As I've decided to move there next school year to spend more time with Mum, I had a lot to sort out.  On the day I arrived at Heathrow, the "Beast from the East" hit the UK - with deep snow.  Even when we drove up to Mum's several days later, there was still enough snow to build a large snowman outside her new place.

One evening we went out to our favourite local pub, the Rushbrooke Arms, where we sampled different varieties of the local gin.

Using my flood voucher

Back in August I had to spend the night at school with students because of the flooding in Mumbai.  Because of this I was given a voucher for a night at the Renaissance in Powai as a sort of compensation.  It took quite a time for me to get the time to use it, but finally in February I had a lovely couple of days of relaxing in a lovely hotel.

Kuala Lumpur

My bathroom view!  I came to Kuala Lumpur for the weekend to co-train Cognitive Coaching Days 1-4.

Hong Kong for 21st Century Learning

I went to the 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong with some of the tech coaches.  It was a good conference with a lot of learning and still time for us to take a ride up the peak and eat on the top, as well as to watch the light show down by the water.

Christmas in the UK

Christmas time is family time!  I flew to the UK and had some days in London with Joal and Rachel, and then went up to Nowton for Christmas and New Year.  How lovely it was to have all the family together again!

Just like last year, Christmas Dinner was cooked by Joal!

Oh! Calcutta

As this is going to be my last year in India - yes Mumbai Moments is going to come to an end soon - I decided to take the Thanksgiving weekend to see Calcutta and the Sundarbans.  Because it was just a long weekend, I wanted to spend one day walking around Calcutta and one day floating around the tiger reserve.  I was hoping to see a tiger, but I wasn't that lucky!

I went with Bec, a PE teacher from school.  When we arrived at the hotel we had booked there wasn't a room for us (a group had gone down with an illness - likely Delhi Belly I think and had not been able to checkout of their rooms) so we got upgraded to the Oberoi.  That was really lucky!  We had a nice room, a great breakfast and even returned for a wonderful Bengali lunch.

I'd already looked up a list of places to go to and we decided we'd walk between then.  First on the list was the Victoria Memorial which was stunning.  It's a beautiful marble building, built between 1906 and 1921, and it's now a museum.  It was suggested by George Curzon, the Viceroy of India, as Calcutta was at that time the capital, however even before it was finished the capital was moved to New Delhi.  Apparently the entire cost of the building was funded by voluntary donations.

Our walk continued north, up to the Hooghly River and through the flower market.  Calcutta is a much poorer city than Mumbai and we notice a huge amount of poverty.

Kolkata was not my favourite city in India, but it was very colourful and I'm certainly glad we went.

The following day it was a very early start - 5.30 am - to set off in a minibus to the Sundarbans on the Ganges delta.  It's a national park and tiger reserve - with over 400 tigers it's home to one of the largest tiger populations in India.  It's an area of mangrove forest so we had to get around by boat through the innumerable waterways.

The boat ride was extremely relaxing, however we didn't get to see much wildlife, not even very many birds.  However we did get to see the red tailed green tree viper which is very venomous (death in 20 minutes we were told) - I quickly handed my camera to one of the guides to get in close for this photo!

The cruise back to the jetty and our minibus was very slow and relaxing as the sun was going down.