Hotel Ibis Southampton Centre

Today several Trussell Trust staff and volunteers have bruised upper arms from loading hundreds of boxes filled with a reocrd breaking 3800+ Christmas Shoeboxes onto a rather large lorry... The bruises were worth it to see the lorry pull away and begin its 2,450km trip to Bulgaria to transform thousands of Christmases.

We have to say a huge thankyou to all those who donated boxes and to all those hardy souls who braved the cold in ...

Hello,

Basically just testing to see if this works, and also cos Rhys told me to do this now. Also, I wanted Alton to appear as a little dot on our map thing. Anyways, we're off on sunday, looking forward to it, and I'm sure we'll miss you all! Bye for now!

Dave

Booked flight today - Guatemala on Feb 22nd 2010. So to mark the occasion I thought I'd start my travel diary today as well.

Two months to go - and a lot of list-making, planning, shopping, getting vaccinated, freaking out, and bouncing with excitement to do!

... After getting out of hospital on Friday November 6th, I had a lazy day on the Saturday at my host family Bollen's place, before joining them in the evening for a memorial church service for Lut's aprents who passed away a couple of years ago, followed by a family dinner. On Sunday I had a more active, but still relaxed day. I went out to lunch with a couple of friends from when I was at school in Belgium, and we talked for hours. Whilst we were talking, I got my first hint of this whole ...

Hello everybody

We are still alive and well. We are in Cambodia at the moment. Apoligies for not sending any travel blogs for a while. As we're are trying to do 2 blogs at the same time it has become too much to keep both of them going simultaneously, so this one has been neglected for a while. If any of you are interested in our travels I can add your email ...

... hikiing around the park, this is the part of the trip I am looking forward to the most to be honest, I have never been to Mongolia and have always been intersted by its beauty.

From Mongolia we then go on to Beijing for a couple of days. I have been to Beijing before when I use to work in China so I will not do what I did before such as the great wall etc I will try and do something different as there is always plenty ...

... sort out there's also been a helluva lot of kit and drugs shopping which has been a headache but fingers crossed tomorrow being my last shopping trip will be successful and i'll be ready for the end of the world! as for all the boring stuff that no-one tells you about when you're signing your life away it's been a really hard few days. as i might have already said i had my leaving do at oceana the other weekend much to the disgust of several grumps and which was ...

... it was very beautiful. I took pictures ofcourse which you can see in my photo gallery. After my sister got her business done, which took 3 hours by the way, we went to the oxo tower. I got to see the London eye which I thought was the biggest ferris wheel in the world. I took pictures in a little restuarant on the top of the Oxo tower called Oxo tower restaurant ...

I could write lots of nonsense about what has been going on in the last few days since we finished work. But in reality it has been all about lists, keeping with that spirit here's another one: Backpacks stuffed, Check Excitement, check Apprehension, check More drugs than a pharmacy, check Apprehension, check More needles than a farm of anteaters, check Tissues for the inevitable crying at the airport, check Sleep depravation ...

... kind. In the end I decided to have a quiet day to myself, to relax and reflect. I went for a nice walk by the water, opened my gifts, cooked a great dinner, and talked on the phone to many of my friends and family. It was truly a wonderful day! Everyone's concern for me being alone was touching though, and people were soon texting on Boxing Day (everyone here is obsessed with texting!) to get together. So all my plans to get ...