Rebecca in China

Once you've been given your country and project, you then get the date for your training week.

My training week was tuesday 28th June to sunday 3rd Jully. I travelled across on the monday and stayed at the Oban Backpackers overnight. It was good staying at the Backpackers I met alot of the people I'm going to be in China with, along with one of the two girls I'll be with at my project. I then had to catch the ferry over to Coll at 5.45 on Tuesday morning, was up at 4 o'clock to get to the ferry terminal at 5.15, way to early!

Once the ferry arived at Coll we got taken to the Project Trust centre, ware I met my second partner for the year. Whilst on the Island I learnt alot more about the country, province and the project I will be at. Seeing pictures of the flat and and city has made me even more excited about going. I was also given my flight tickets! Yey!

Me and my partners, Katie and Ellie

Selection was a 5 day course with Project Trust at the Hebridean Centre on the Isle of Coll. During the course I met many people of the same age with similar interests and ambitions. During selection, in small groups, we stayed with families on the island, learning about what it is like to live on such a small island.

During the 5 days we were given more information on each of the countries and projects, helping us find the right country and project for our gap year. Throughout the course we were split into small groups and given tasks to complete both as a group and individually. My group leader was a returned volunteer from China, so throughout selection she was telling many stories about China. From the information from Project Trust and all those stories I quickly decided that China was definetly ware I wanted to go. It has such a wide variety of cultures and religions, China offers so many chances to travel and see many different kinds of places from desert to snow capped mountains to oasis villages.

The first thing I had to do to be able to take my gap year with Project Trust was to make an application through their web site. I then recieved a letter offering me a place on selection along with an information pack. The information pack included a booklet all about the different projects in all the different countries.

After going to Africa in 2009, I knew I wanted to experience a culture someware else in the world. I really liked the look of both the Asian and South American projects, but it took ages to decided where exactly I wanted to go. The South American Projects seemed to need Spanish as a language, which led me towards the Asian projects.

Reading about each of the counties and their projects I quickly had a list of countries which I would happily go to, but it wasn't until I attended the selection course that I decided on my top country being China.