12th June - Timo's big day of his 24's

We have been informed today is Timo Ros birthday and will have a making food section for dinner together

Rachou - 18's young mature France girl, one of my roommate

She's join the family just 2 days after me, together she came with one of her University friend - Noémie

Noémie, another 18's young mature France girl, and one of my roommate

She study 2 foreign languages in her University, one of it is Chinese. I did practiced with her sometimes with her Chinese story book

 

Birthday Boy today - Timo Ros

We are ex-roommate before I moved out to another building for less people staying around

Mathilde, a mix-blood of France and British lovely 19's old girl, one of my roommate

Seriously, I was thought she's mature than her real age

Gemma, the only Spain lady who older than me. She is a good teacher in teaching me a lot of cooking skill

Etienne, a less talk France boy
But he really has a good heart can only seen when people need help

Marzia, our supervisor of every housekeeping works in Backpacker Plus, a friendly and kind Italian lady

Lidia, a photography lover from Spain

 

(start from left) Don Liri, Lidia, Alex Gutiérrez and me

Don & Alex are friends of Backpacker Plus, but not one of our work exchange team member

 

Rachou and Mireia Molina

Mireia is the really rare quadruplet

She has 3 others brother and sisters who born in the same time with her

One of her sister even have a same face as her

Absolutely cute!!! And save up a lot time and money to give birth 4 times for 4 babies

Juan, a great cook of pizza from Spain
He always speak very gentle and nice, somehow, someone complained that he is rude >.<
That make me realized that no matter how good you tried to be, still have someone who doesn't like you.
What more can we do but ignore it??

Alex, an American journalist student who having his holiday and work exchange here

Mitsuki, a Japanese brave traveller who study in Hungary

He used to travel by hitchhiking and couch surf without using the couch surf web site >.< The local who see him long time hitchhiking on the road and take him home with offer him a night to stay

He is the one who shift with me the sleeping place

 

Toast for the Birthday boy today 

 

Eat as much as I could... The food are nice like made from the restaurant or bakery shop

After the feast, we all went to Skipinnish - a local Scottish music pub which we used to visit every Thursday for learning the traditional Scottish dance

 

The owner of Skipinnish knew Peter and Timo very well as Timo stayed about 2 months in Oban

 

Timo and his parent who came far away from Netherland for his birthday and holiday in Scotland at the same time

Me and the Scottish dance

The Wild Mountain Thyme Lyrics:

Oh the summer time has come

And the trees are sweetly bloomin'

And the wild mountain thyme

Grows around the bloomin' heather 

Will ye go lassie go?

Chorus:

And we'll all go together

To pull wild mountain thyme

All around the bloomin' heather

Will ye go lassie go?

I will build my love a bower summer house

By yon cool crystal fountain

And round it I will pile

All the wild flowers o' the mountain

Will ye go lassie go?

 

I will range through the wilds

And the deep glen sae dreamy

And return wi' their spoils

Tae the bower o' my dearie

Will ye go lassie go?

If my true love she'll not come

Then I'll surely find another

To pull wild mountain thyme

All around the bloomin' heather

Will ye go lassie go?

And we'll all go together

To pull wild mountain thyme

All around the bloomin' heather

Will ye go lassie go?

Oban & Backpacker Plus

Let's take a look on this city - Oban

And my temporary home - Backpacker Plus

At the beginning I wrote my exchange request to Maria I never thought they are only exchange 1 meal a day which is only breakfast. I think I'm too tired in reading so many host details and missed up the most important exchange requirement. When I realized and wrote back to confirm with Maria, meanwhile, I didn't get any response from others host which I sent out before Backpacker Plus. And I did promised myself that I will take the 1st host who reply me to be my host, no matter how better the second host to me

 

Therefore, I go for Backpacker Plus

I think it's good to know others backpacker & traveller around the world during travel

 

Every morning we have our breakfast from whatever time we like to have up to 10.30am

I always used to have toasted bread with butter & sugar

 

And a duty briefing start on 10.30am (usually around the dinning table) then we separate to 3 buildings for work

Let's take a tour to this colorful Backpacker lodge~

 

Pool corner

 

Kitchen

 

The long dinning table

 

The entrance

 

The reading / study long table

We used to do our personal work or spending our private moment on this table

Everyone seems understood if someone sitting here meant they don't like to be disturb at this moment

I was spent 1 week here at the very corner side with doing my journey planning and ticket purchasing

 

Over view

 

In the post office today trying to send something home 

A shirt for my father as his belated Father's Day present and some finished use Scandinavia travel guide books

 

To reduce my luggage size, sending home is the best way I can do

1.6kg cost me 23 pound T.T

 

Oban city and it's famous beach side

 

I'm sure most of the postcard of Oban with this picture on it

Boats and Mc Craig's Tower is the icon of Oban city

 

Oban located at the west of Scotland, but we still need to depend a good weather for a good sunset view 

Sometimes, you might engaged in work

Sometimes, you might with some special event

Sometimes, you might have bad weather

Sometimes, you might out of town

and sometimes, you might just not feeling to go out

A good sunset view is precious

 

Life is beautiful

But it's only beautiful once you slow down your footstep to discover the nature of beauty, 

listen the heartbeat of the normal creature surround,

and breath the fresh of freedom air~

8th June - Easdale Island

Everyday we start work from 10.30am - 1pm

Work for a short period are able to exchange us the accomodation, laundry, and daily breakfast

Peter is the owner of the Backpacker Plus

He returned from holiday since yesterday and he would like to bring us for a walk in Easdale Island

Which located about 45mins drive away from south of Oban

The Easdale Island have about 20++ residents, a small small town

However, the resident here won the World Skimming Stone campionship

 

 
We stop at Clachan Bridge, a hump-bucked masonry bridge
About 13 kilometers Southwest of Oban in Argyll

 

 

After 20mins we crossing the bridge, we arrived the ferry port in Seil

We rang the bell to call the ferry, and the distance between two island are surprisingly close, just 5 mins on boat I presumed

 

Thing really go well when people hang out for a trip together and almost everyone have their own camera

The same moment you capture a photo of people, people do it to you as well, then others do for them

 

The Skimming stone

Kuan intended to capture the photo of sky, meanwhile I'm walking slowly as the last person in the team

  

Found a seagull nest

Never touch the eggs, as the bird's mother might destroy the touch egg, most of the bird nature

 

Small island, no people around, just few of us

I don't even talk to people most of the time, but really enjoy a small group hanging out

 The stone here are so special with its thin body

Really suitable for skimming water

Natural born training center for the resident here

 

Timo even brought his ukulele for hiking, playing alone on the cliff, sing on the same song everytime ^o^

 

I found very funny when Timo play the ukulele

He has a big hand and the tallest among us but playing a tiny guitar which only the finger can cover the whole neck of ukulele ^o^

See Kuan is taking our photo behind us?? 

 

Something attracted my attention, seems like Kuan asked me something and I pointed to her

 

After a walk uphill, I try to be the fastest one going down. This young people are just walking without a pause on the half way for any photograph or view enjoying, which I found very hard for me to do not do that.

Therefore, I'm trying to walk in front of them on the way back, otherwise they will just kept telling me to hurry up, quiet annoying sometime >.<

 

There's some trapped fresh water in the island

Excellent turquoise my favorite colour

 

Walking about 1.30 hour in the island, we are heading back to Oban for dinner

 

Not a hard walk but quiet tired on our way back, especially we are just the passenger do nothing but just sit in the car