Sunday 7th February 2016 by Ellie and Jacquelyn

After settling down at Mabuya Lodge, we all sat down to enjoy our dinner meal after a long journey. Spaghetti Bolognese was served although there was no salt and pepper in sight so Ellie resorted in fried bugs to add some flavour. But jokes aside Ellie had all the flies from the light above falling into her dinner!! At one point I think she actually said ‘im a celebrity get me out of here’. Needless to say she gulped it all up (don’t worry Tanya she’s still alive hahaha)

There was then the series of more unfortunate events in one of the girls rooms (one small room, 9 girls and a whole lot of lizards!) You could only imagine the sheer screeching coming from Megan as she leapt into Liv’s bed for the night!

The alarms were set for 5am and even Mollie managed to get up! We then set off for our 6 hour journey to Butterfly Space. During the coach journey, we had a quick comfort break where Jacquelyn met her new friend ‘Gift’! He told us about their community and we had a look at their artwork, earrings and post cards (so if you get a postcard from somebody, it’s from Gift!)

Surprisingly the journey didn’t seem as long as it was! We then reached our destination.

Wow.

No words can truly describe the breath-taking view of Butterfly Space. We were all left speechless for sure. Sammy even shed a tear on arrival at how beautiful this place is. There’s jam jars marking the pathways, fairy lights across the table and a truly stunning view of Nkhata Bay from the decking at the bar.

We all managed to get some food although Sally I’m sure you’ll be worried about Sasha not liking any food and no she hasn’t enjoyed anything! Not to panic, she’s working her way through her suitcase of Frazzles fine.

It’s 6pm and we’ve all just gone for a swim in the lake. Not quite ‘Snake Malawi’ but plenty of fish in the sea as Jacquelyn discovered! Again, don’t worry Tanya, Ellie hasn’t been eaten by a crocodile.

It’s approaching 9pm and we’ve just enjoyed dinner, it’s nearly time to settle down in our rooms, or tents in Mollie, Becca’s, Dave’s and Ryan’s case! Let’s hope it doesn’t rain tonight or I think I’ll be waking up to a soaking wet Mollie in my room! By the way Heidi, Mollie’s told me to ask you to liaise with Becca’s mum about a spa day of some sort?!

Everyone is absolutely fine! In fact I think it’s going to be a struggle convincing the team to fly back to the UK. We’re all blown away by the beauty of Malawi and (a bug has just crawled across the laptop at this precise moment) we couldn’t be any more excited to start our adventure teaching classes with over 75 children!

Night night from Els and Jacq xxxxxxxx

PS from Helen - team leader and blog poster: very sorry folks, but internet here is really intermittent as it is reliant on both the electricity and the signal to be working at the same time! I'll do my best, but apologies if blogs are not regularly posted. I'll also have to be very limited with photos as signal not good when it happens. On the plus side I guess all this just goes to show that we really are away from the mainstream of life, making a big difference, and loving it!