All kicking off.

It's been a few days since I blogged. Things have been very busy and I've been very tired.

Saturday morning I got to drive one of the Land Rover Defenders, and spent most of the rest doing work stuff. It turns out that creating a Gantt chart is loads more enjoyable when you do it in Costa Rica, for something you're passionate about.

Gantt charts made easy by a nice view from your workspace window.

On Sunday I was on cooking duty with Julie-Anne. We ventured to the local supermarket with our no Spanish where as well as proper food, I picked up these, for about £3, as opposed to the £7.50 they cost in Selfridge's in Brum.

I had to go for a session of off-road driving, where I got stung by a bug which caused a great deal of pain and a return to Fieldbase.

After successfully introducing the team to my legendary spud chili, I was told that my driving wasn't confident enough for long road trips, but that I'd be able to drive as far as Turrialba and get some practice in and then maybe review it again. It was disappointing but not surprising - I only drive twice a year when I'm at home, so taking on a big ass 4x4 on the wrong side of the road in a country where I don't speak the language is a bit iffy.

With the swimming having not gone very well and the driving having not gone very well, I was determined to do my blog for the Raleigh website well. After fighting with accessing the blog, then fighting with the formatting, I was made aware that the CMS just sucks. If the formatting doesn't look right, the only way to make sure it's right is to save it, check it, amend it, save it, check it etc etc until it's right. Ballache. With a bottle of beer and KISS playing from my tablet, it was finally done! So much yay! Here it is!

There was a trip planned to San José this morning, and I was told that I could come as a passenger, come and just drive for the last part of the journey around Turrialba, or not come at all. Keen to get practice in, I opted to drive for the last part of the journey. The road is mad winding and it was proper scary shit because it's a big ass mountain with valleys and ravines and if you're not careful, you're dead. Nobody died.

Back at Fieldbase, I saw that head office had posted my blog on their Facebook page, so they didn't think it was shit, and it had a lot of likes and comments, which was lovely. A few of my colleagues here on the Advance Team said it was really good. Nice and positive buzz!

This afternoon I tried to get on top of my corporate blogs - get some ideas together and put together at least a framework for some of the ideas. I'd been told that I needed to stockpile some blogs because it'll be very busy when the rest of the Volunteer Managers arrive. If only I could get a chance to do so.

That's kind of it. I've been too busy to have any deep reflections of stuff.

Time for bed.