Le Weekend

During the weekends, I’ve been trying to alternate between staying home in Shyorongi (first, because I like it here, and second, because I want my fellow Shyorongians to feel like I’m actually a member of their community, not just a weekday worker) and traveling throughout the rest of the country (first, because there is honestly sod all to do in Shyorongi, second, because the rest of the country is beautiful, and third, because I’ve got a great collection of fellow volunteer friends to catch up with). This last weekend was spent away, and it was one of my favorites yet.

I left Shyorongi on Thursday night, rather than Friday morning, due to an uncharacteristically trying week of classes that left me wanting to escape. Even though Shyorongi is only half an hour from the outskirts of Kigali, entering the capital feels like landing on another planet. Standing on the side of the muddy road in the rain while waiting for the bus in Shyo, being laughed at by a pack of hyenas/teenaged boys across the street while trying to deflect questions from a heartbreaking man who wants nothing more than fast-tracked United States citizenship, seems like a hazy dream while I’m sitting at Kana Khazana, an amazing Kigali Indian restaurant, having perfect lentils and chicken spooned onto my plate while chatting about novel writing with my buddies. I hated Kigali when we first arrived, and I still prefer the beautiful mountains and fresh air of Shyorongi, but I have definitely learned to appreciate the amazing convenience of the capital. As Jane says, Kigali is like Disneyland: crazy expensive and covered in a pleasant artificial lacquer of convenience and comfort.

However, just like Disneyland, Kigali makes me want to throw up after a day or two, so I was excited when Jane, Susan and I parted ways with the rest of the group on Friday and bought our tickets for the 2:30pm bus to Nyagatare, where we planned to spend the weekend with Zach and Evan. We commandeered the whole back row of the bus, which is a great victory (five seats between three people is basically akin to flying on Air Force One) and settled in for a comfy ride. We were slightly concerned when it took about an hour just to escape the borders of Kigali proper, which usually only takes about twenty minutes. The rest of the ride followed suit, and the journey that should have taken us about two and a half hours managed to take four. This is probably due to the fact that busses here just stop whenever anyone wants to get off, rather than stopping at a predetermined central location in each tiny town, so you stop to drop one guy off in front of his house, and then stop again fifty yards down the road to drop the next guy off in front of his house. This was infuriating, but here we don’t get infuriated, we just get belligerent, so to pass the time the three of us decided to sing the classics at full volume from the back of the bus. We belted out oldies like Build Me Up Buttercup, I Think We’re Alone Now, Lean On Me, and other greats, much to the delight of the locals, who often applauded our acappella efforts. We finished up with a prize-worthy version of All Shook Up just as we rolled into the Nyagatare taxi park. We tumbled off the bus, scooped up Zach and Evan from the Nelson Mandela Bar, and headed off to a great café where we ate mélanges (like a random mix of all the Rwandan favorites, including chips, mashed plantains, rice, pasta, beans, veg, etc.) and drank tea (the best tea I’ve had in Rwanda so far!) for just 900Rwf, or about $1.50 US. Afterwards we trooped back up to Nelson Mandela to relax and chat over surprisingly ice cold beers. I haven’t been able to see Z and E much at all since orientation because they live so far north, so it was a real treat to hang out with them. These guys manage to seem like opposites (Zach is pretty soft-spoken and reserved while Evan is louder and crazier) while still both being funny, uber intelligent, and excellent hosts. At around midnight, we got motos for the three-mile journey back to their house and went to bed.

When I woke up at 6am on Saturday, I fell in love with Z and E’s little patch of Nyagatare. The area just beyond their back porch is covered in lush trees that house more bird species than I thought existed in Rwanda, and there’s no traffic noise anywhere to compete with them. Zach (the other early riser in the group) showed me their garden, which was planted last year by the students using another volunteer’s seeds. They’ve planted way too many seeds for the small plot, so Zach is hard at work strategizing how to thin things out, but for now they’ve got basil coming in through the window, and some cucumbers will be ready soon. [As soon as the torrential rains calm down in Shyo for five minutes at a stretch, I hope to do a bit of gardening myself.] When the others woke up, we had a breakfast of corn muffins with blueberry jam (from a farmers’ market in Georgia) and cheese (from Kigali, courtesy of Susan) with cups of tea, which ranks among the best meals I’ve had so far in Rwanda. We hung around reading until it was time to start the walk into town for lunch. The walk in takes about an hour and is gorgeous. It had been hot all morning, so we were in short sleeves and had little (Evan and Jane) to no (me and Zach) rain gear, which is probably why the gods above looked down at the arrogant muzungus thinking they could predict Rwandan weather hours in advance and decided to send the most torrential downpour of softball-sized raindrops to gush upon us. At points, the rain was so strong that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and by the time we got to town, we could easily have canoed down the ditches at the side of the road. We were as wet as if we had just climbed out of swimming pools, and in this totally presentable state we parked ourselves at the café for another mélange, this time with double portions of tea. Thankfully, my friends are Huckleberry Finn-esque in their capacity to appreciate adventure and find the humor in things, so all of us loved every minute of it and had no complaints. After lunch, we treated ourselves to moto rides back home, piling two per moto to lower the cost. Slipping and sliding along the mud roads in the pouring rain on a moto with Jane was terrifying, unforgettable, excellent. Back at home, we dried off, changed clothes and hunkered down in our sleeping bags for a marathon of the third season of Dexter, while the rain raged heavy outside. Sheer bliss.

The rain calmed down and fully stopped by late afternoon, so we set off to accomplish our one solid goal of the day: to see a monkey. Evan had heard that monkeys come out to play in the trees around the Akagera River at dusk, so we headed out at around 5:30pm for the two-mile trek to the river. After the day’s rain, the walk down the mud path was fully ridiculous. At one point, the path devolved into a knee-deep lake, which we had to wade through, steadfastly not thinking about what heinous diseases and creeping things were probably swirling around our bare ankles. We were heading towards the gorgeous orange sunset the whole time though, so had no real complaints. We eventually reached the serene river, and after about fifteen minutes of tree-scanning, we saw our prize: a lone monkey hanging out in the upper branches of a tree on the opposite bank, stretching out his long limbs just enough for us to see his monkey-ish silhouette against the sunset. Sweet success. We retraced our steps, this time in the dark, and the only really hairy part of the walk home was when we realized we were being pursued by a pack of longhorns, traveling just a little faster than us up the path. We thankfully lost them at an intersection. The electricity was on when we reached home, and Zach whipped up delicious spaghetti with fresh basil, garlic, and onions for us, after which we lapped up some more Dexter and finally slept.

The next morning, after more corn muffins and jam, I got the welcome news that the next day, Monday, was a holiday off from school. Getting news like that is an interesting process here; no one from my school mentioned anything about it to me, even though I talked to many teachers and students about a test I was planning to give on Monday and told all of the students that I would see them on Monday and that they had assignments due on Monday, etc. I heard a vague rumor from some of my friends that their schools had a Monday holiday, and once the rumor was confirmed for more than half of them, I finally sent a message to my Dean of Studies about it. I got a reply back right away, telling me that there was no school. So while I’m pleased for the extra day off, I wouldn’t have been averse to hearing about it ahead of time. It seems like you can get any information you want here if you ask the right questions, but it’s only through blind luck that you discover the right questions to ask. Anyway, the longer weekend took off the pressure for getting any work done on Sunday, so we didn’t have to rush home. The ride back to Kigali was pleasant (another conquering of the whole back seat of the bus) and fast (just three hours!), and after a late lunch in town I was back in Shyorongi before evening. I’m always happy to be home after a long weekend away, to come back to my own space and my routine. So now it’s Monday morning, and it’s raining to end the world outside but I’m warm and happy in here; I’ve got a cup of tea and bananas for breakfast, and plenty of time to work, and plans to visit my friends up the road in the afternoon. Happy for weekends like this, where I end up appreciating the whole country more, even my little spec of it.

tuesdays hair of the dog

again all appologies for my late blog lagging at the end of the line, lost in a stack of papers somewhere on someones desk (dog knows not mine as i have no desk), perhaps forgotten and found again and again until at last, at the last minute in my usual style this unedited collection of days remembered in type is offered up for who to read? anyone with a password

I am saddened by bens censored blogs. I enjoyed reading these entires and hope he can come up with way to continue to describe his situation to us without using any descriptive words or phrases, nor any informations on locations, dates, policies, procedures, equipment which might jeopardise security. Such as it is i suppose, truth be told i was surprised someone hadnt censored sooner. ben im sure you can make it work.

February 18th

'nae bother! it dinae mata tae me. but if ie'were up tae me, id haf t'ho tin outa n pu in a wee gas burner outside. ts jus no in line wi the current technology. nae bother. ah il jus ga n tal i tom n fi wa na hablena be. bye the noe!'

So we've been having this problem with the arger in out house. The arger is supposed to perfrom the double function of being a stove and heating water for the radiators in our house. The problem is that while it does heat, it does so with the side effect of filling the house with smoke and soot. A shame, because otherwise the house is set up quite comfortably. The above quote is from the engineer who came to fix our stove. He was pretty awsome. A scotsman, he was a very loud talker with such a thick accent that most of the time i had no idea what he was saying. As the root of the problem has yet to be discovered, he as well as others have been here several times attemping to remedy the situation without success, ultimatley only making more mess for us to clean up. On his last visit it seemed he had given up and said the arger should be replaced. But as he says nae bother. He had a device with him that could read gas levels in the air and he said there was no carbon monoxide in the house and that the situation was not bad for our health.

Febrary 25th

i step out of the kitchen and stand in front of the hotel. My black leather shoes sink into several inches of snow, and the cold and the blizard flurry around me - a cold welcome after the smokey heat of the kitchen. I warm my hands against a half pint of roibus tea, the hot amber liquid visble through the glass as i stare through it out towards the loch, thinking about the events of that morning and the possible application of cluster theory.

the power had gone out some time inbetween my leaving the green house and when i walked in to work just before 8am. There were 10 people in for breakfast and 2 servers, inge (sounds like inga) and myself, scheduled on. by 20 past 8 no chef had arrived and the power was still out, i began to wonder what kind of breakfast would be served.

I stepped out for a moment im not sure why. When i returned Tom had shown and had obviously dealt with power outs before. The stove tops were gas so he got those going to boil water. We took the scones over to his house to cook in his oil powered arger. Then i went off to help jim set up a generator. After passing up a couple that didnt work we found a good one and got it going. Jim brings it over with the tractor close to the hotel. Run the cord ovens are on toasters working. By the time i got back to serve, a few guests had arrived and the scones ready for them. As the remaining diners filtered in we lit the fire in the bar and set up some candles. Service continued as usual save the dark kitchen. As breakfast wrapped up tom said something like 'It's really great having it so quiet in here isn't it? you dont notice it when its there but without the hum and buz of all the fridges and lights you can really tell the difference.' We all agreed. Then as Inge left the kitchen to take toast to a table she said, 'Silence is golden'.

February 22nd

I had a day off and nicki was on a split. If you google map us - monachyle mhor, fk19 8pq, scotland - you'll see that, as the crow flies, loch lomond is 15-20 miles west of our hotel. This was our target destination when we set off early afternoon this day.

We cycled as far as we could. About 2 miles of tarmac followed by another four miles of 4wd track winding its way up through a wide valley to the west. At the end of the 4wd track we left our cycles and set off on foot to hike up to a low point on the ridge at the end of the glen, from where we hoped to have a view of loch lomond. This was before the snow came last week. The terrain was mostly frozen wild grass, with snow on the north faces and the ridges. It was sunny and cold. We went from fully bundled up while biking to hiking in shorts and tshirts through the sun. By the time we reached the top of the glen the temperature had dropped and we were back to wearing thermals, trousers, fleeces, jackets and scarves hats n gloves.

At the saddle the terrain really flattened out to reveal our view to the west. As we were not using a real map, we were not sure what the terrain would actually be like once we reached this point. As it turned out there was a mountain inbetween us and loch lomond. however, we were able to see loch katrine to the south, and we had reached the end of the glen. We rested, ate, enjoyed the last of the sun and began to head back to work.

On the way back we talked to a sheppard who said it was possible to reach loch lomond without having to go over the moutain we saw. To do this we would have had to head north before reaching to saddle at he top of our glen to loop around, and bring a proper map.

Oops!

Some of our readers will have noticed that several posts (namely, all of mine) have been deleted and that our blog is now invitation only. This was entirely my fault - I was politely informed by my chain of command the other day that some of the things I was writing about constituted a violation of operational security and needed to be removed. Apparently more people read this blog than I thought!

Anyhow, my apologies if I've disappointed anyone. Over the next few days I'll be modifying and reposting my previous entries sans the security violations, and we're collectively deciding whether to continue invitation only or not. In the meantime, if you know anyone personally who would like to read this blog and can't, please feel free to email one of us and we'll get you invited asap. If you don't know our email addresses you can try contacting the US Department of Defense directly; they seem to be pretty good at finding things on the internet. ;)

That's all for now, look forward to writing more soon!

<<CENSORED FOR OPSEC>> Sortie - Part I (Warning: This blog entry may contain acronyms.)

Unfortunately this entire entry is censored for OPSEC purposes.

Keeping the Home Fires Burning.

Surprise, here is a random contribution from the ones left guarding the bags, so to speak. We still count as part of the team, so here's what it's like from our end ...

Under "Life goes on" we have working at Bart including meetings, capitol verses operating budgets, homeland security, the commute and so on. Also, house and home, dogs, pond life, spirituality and recreation. All goes on much the same as usual.
For "Seasonal Changes" we have fog and rain and clouds giving way to large patches of blue sky and sunshine beginning to make itself felt. Weeds sprouting alarmingly all over the yard/creek/neighborhood/town. Bulbs bravely poking their little heads up amongst it all - crocuses, tulips, daffodils and some surprise things that I planted and forgot about. Buds forming on the hydrangeas and wisteria and camellias out in full force in the front yard.

Stetson has been back for a few days and Rutland just put in her first appearance as I was typing this sentence, no kidding.

We are enjoying the fire pit on the patio every chance we get, sitting in the great outdoors cocooned in our own little circle of warmth and light and love :-) Australian open over, we move on to SAP open in San Jose this week and soon Pac Life Open in Indian Wells, and on the telly, starting today, the Race is on.
Under "Supporting our Troops" we can list car covers x 2 (custom fit, no less) for Ben's cars,

packing up and storing Jo's things, faithfully searching for and reading blogs twice daily (if not hourly) and - our new way to exercise creativity - care packages! Don't worry Ross, yours is in the works. It is just a bit harder to think of things that we could send that you don't already have in superior form where you are. I still actually think you should be sending packages to everyone else ... haggis anyone?
"New and Exciting" has to start with the Work Shop (not shed). All consuming. Taking up every inch of space in the yard, every spare minute of Dad's evening/week-end time and large chunks of budget. It will be GREAT when it's finished. Could even turn into a second career/home. Well worth all the above.

A close second in this section is Grandma's visit - countdown is at T-14 :-D We are going to make the most of having her to ourselves for the first time ever. Also in this section we have the new and (the jury is still out on this) improved street view due to neighbors installing solar panels and consequently cutting down large, decades old tree. Opens things up a bit ...

Oh, and also my new camera - how am I doing so far?
Final category is "Ways to Take Minds off Stuff". Here we can include running, spinning, Louie, chocolate, facebook, reading, plays, dining in or out, playing cards, pumping iron(?), helping other people and now blogging.
Life is good.

SCHOOL or Why I'm Here I Guess

So far, nothing in Rwanda has really turned out at all as I expected. Sometimes, I've expected doom and gloom and received sunshine and comfort, while other times what I expect will be painless turns out to be a giant and taxing ordeal. Surprisingly and thankfully, my first two weeks of school turned out to be a perfect example of the former.

I've never taught before, fullstop. My ESL experience in the United States consisted of me observing a slightly antiquated English class for adults in the Mission, just kind of sitting quietly off to the side and listening to a melancholy group of students repeat ridiculous sentences about their brothers looking for tomatoes but buying carrots instead in stilted English. Hardly rock solid prep for handling 27 hours per week of Rwandan teenaged girls in groups of 40 or more. We had some practice here during our teaching practicum in Nyanza, but there were three of us then for a class of less than 20, and we were teaching English, and there was no curriculum. Again, helpful, but not enough to erase my nerves about suddenly becoming a full-time high school Entrepreneurship teacher.

So I planned my lessons thoroughly. I didn't leave a single minute where I wasn't sure what I would do. I had topics to lecture on, work for the students to do in groups, ice-breaker exercises, writing work, reading work, reasoning work, problems for them to solve, tough semi-ambiguous questions for them to think about. I stuck with the curriculum and tried to measure out a reasonable amount of work for each class, and the more planning I did, the less nervous I became.

I showed up to school on the first day at 7:30am (which means I left my house at around 7:28am; huzzah for living inside the school walls!) and sat in the teachers' lounge, meeting my colleagues and going over my lesson plans one last time. School started on a Tuesday, which is one of my long days: all eight periods spent teaching, all four different classes represented. As 8am drew nearer, I was expecting some kind of extreme terror to take me over; I had been so nervous for so long about the first day of school; surely some kind of miserable sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach should be hitting right about now, yes? I held my hand in front of my face, like I usually do when I'm nervous, to see if it was shaking. Rock steady. Huh. I walked through the door of my first class at 8am on the dot, still waiting for the heavy weight of gloom and terror to paralyze me. I started in on my lesson. I explained class rules. I had them introduce themselves. I gave them an assignment. They handed it in. We had a discussion, they were a bit quiet, somewhat painfully so at first, but by the end of the short period, they had opened up considerably. The school secretary rang a bell to signal the end of period one. I checked my schedule and headed to my next class. Similar experience, except these kids were older and therefore more engaged, more feisty, more fun. The period passed quickly. Class number three. The rest of the day kind of whooshed by, with its fair share of awkward silences and embarrassing mistakes, but with one overwhelming theme: each class was taught with a complete absence of nervousness on my part, and shockingly, incomprehensibly, each class had at least a few moments that were fun to teach. This day that I had feared and fretted about since I began considering applying to this program back in February 2009, that I had dreaded for a year, was somewhat uneventful, and was even a little fun.

Weird.

Since then, there have been ups and downs; some periods have been rough, and others have been a blast, but there have been no disasters, and on the whole, the trend continues: teaching is not terrifying, and is actually pretty fun. I'm finding that it's a bit like acting. I get to go up in front of the class and be whoever I want to be. These kids have no idea that I'm nervous talking in front of groups; they don't know that I'm terrified of talking on the phone or of meeting with people one-on-one. They aren't aware that I've never taught before, and they sure as shit don't know that I'm actually younger than the oldest student in my class.

In coming to Rwanda, I found what I thought was a rare opportunity to reinvent myself. I'm generally and broadly ok with who I am, but like most people (I think?), there are some significant chunks of my personality that I wish were different. When I came here and found myself an anonymous stranger in a foreign land, where even my "friends" didn't really know me at all, I realized that this was my chance to break away from some of the personal ruts I'd allowed myself to slip into. I started thinking about some of the things that I had an almost crippling fear of back home, simple things like speaking in front of groups, dancing in public, playing sports. I hated to be watched for fear of being judged and of coming up short. But I knew other people who did these things freely and seemed unfazed. I wished so often that I could be like them, that I could break away from my fear, but I had already established myself as someone who couldn't let go in front of other people. Here, I hadn't established myself as anything. I was free to pretend to be whatever I wanted. So I pretended that I liked to dance, and I danced like an idiot until 3:30am, and it's on video somewhere, and I had an amazing time. I pretended that I liked to play group sports, and now I'm essentially leading a running troupe through the trails of my rural village most mornings. I pretended that, rather than being ready to throw up at the idea of speaking in front of a classroom, I was raring to go, and now I actually look forward to keeping my students on their toes, being unpredictable, having control of a class, lecturing, leading discussions, listening to what they have to say and responding, adapting, even teaching. Here in Rwanda, I've been pretending to be who I want to be. There are still big, ugly rough patches in my personality that I'd love to smooth out; I still can't seem to shake my inability to shut up (hello, blog post!) or my fear of being out of the loop, but I'm working on them, and that's alright for now I guess. But I'm relishing this chance to change, and starting to realize that I probably didn't have to wait for an intercontinental move to take it.

Before I left, I saw a documentary called Proceed and Be Bold! (which I recommend sans reservation) about a man who, in his mid-40's, junked his pleasant middle-class life and started making printing press posters full-time. Talk about jumping out of a rut. I don't think there's anything wrong with a pleasant middle-class life; I hope to enjoy one myself. But he wasn't all that happy doing what he was doing, so he struck out to change it. His words at the end of the film have been on my mind every day since I first heard them:

"Do you want my life? You can have my life. All you have to do is declare yourself crazy, then go out and do whatever you want."

So family, friends, here it is: I have gone crazy. I'm doing whatever I want over here. There's really nothing to stop me, and it's a pretty damned good time.

It's worth saying, in light of the whole idea of this blog: I am lucky and proud to come from a family that has already declared itself crazy, and is spread all over this world as we speak, doing whatever it wants. Keep it up, family. Keep building, keep flying, keep trekking. Thanks for the inspiration <3

The day before yesterday

Breakfast split; 8am-11am, 630pm-close. Breakfast service is always more relaxed than dinner. There’re no pre-drinks, only 3 courses, table cloths aren’t ironed on. A lot of people had the porridge followed by a full Scottish. How do they fit it all in? Once they all left we set up for lunch/dinner service – change the used table cloths, iron them all, add some more silverware, put out the glasses and decorative plates, vacuum and mop. Then I was off.

It was a brilliantly sunny day. Finally. Nicki had bought me a new cycle computer as a present so I thought I’d take it out for a test ride. Not to be deceived by the weather, I packed my camelbak with an extra thermal top and my rain jacket, and set off just before noon. Since we arrived Nicki and I have both wanted to ride the cycle trail which connects us to Calander (the closest town with more than one street), so I chose this for the ride. This section of National Cycle route 7, or the lowland highland route as locals apparently call it, crosses our glen road at Balquidder 4 miles from the hotel. It stays on the road for a while passing through beech and pine forests gradually climbing before opening into a 4wd track with views down the loch towards Calander. (photo). It then drops down slowly becoming a single track trail through farmland, and runs through the bottom of the valley on the west side of a loch. For the last few miles the trail is a nice gravel path running next to a river and then more farmland til it hits town. I kept looking at the cycle computer knowing that with each mile further I went I would have to go that much further to get back home. By the time I got to Calander I had ridden just over 17 miles. I sat for a while on a bench by a river watching a father and son feed the ducks, and ate the apple and the orange I’d brought in my pack. Bought a snickers to eat and two huge blocks of cadbury’s chocolate for the house and set off again. At 20 miles my legs were tired and at 25 they were fairly jelly like. But as I got closer to the hotel I felt a second wind and the exhilaration that comes as the end of a long ride approaches. To my surprise the sun was still on the glen road as I turned on for the last 4 miles towards the hotel. Finished the 35 miles just before 4pm with plenty of time to relax before going back to work at 630. This was the first real ride I’ve done since we got here and it felt good.






Yesterday

8am-4pm shift. I wear a black shirt, trousers, apron and shoes. Black tie with red stripes. Brown socks. This was a quiet morning with only 8 guests in for breakfast. Again the sun was met by a cloudless sky around 10am as it rose above the mountains facing the hotel. With most of the guests checking out and the newcomers not arriving until the afternoon, I kept myself busy cleaning the conservatory windows, polishing glasses and organizing the cellar, and splitting logs for the fires. There were a few walk-ins for lunch. The residents (this is what we call guests after the first day, if they are staying for more than one night) returned just before my shift ended from a long walk up Monachyle glen with tales of having seen a large stag silhouetted by the sunlight upon a ridge. I left them talking over sandwiches and pints in the bar by the fire.

Today

Off today. A sleep-in was very welcome as the ride from the day before yesterday seems to have caught up with me. I had a bid of time to play the mandolin (which I’ve not been playing enough) before nicki came back from work at 11am. The weather being unseasonably nice, I suggested a bike ride. We headed the other direction this time towards inverlochlarig – where, incidentally, Rob Roy spent his later years leading a relatively quiet farm life. After just a short 2 mile ride to the end of the tarmac road we locked up the bikes and set off on foot up a mountain to the north. Nicki had to be back at work by 6:30 so this was only a short excursion. However, had we had more time this is the very same route we would take to reach the top of Ben More, the highest mountain in our area at just over 1100 meters. We had been comfortably biking in just shorts and tee-shirts, but after we rose above 500 meters it began to get cold. Time to put on the thermals and fleeces we had brought. We stopped in a sheltered spot at about 700 meters for a feast of hot soup from the thermos, sandwiches, apples and chocolate. From our vantage point we saw the potential for many other outdoor excursions. To the south a couple of glens head towards loch Katrine. To the west a farm road leads to loch Lomond. To the north Ben More and the Crianlarich hills. And of course east back to loch Voil and the hotel.