Tour de Timor in Timor-Leste is considered one of the world’s hardest mountain bike races. The five day race travels over 450km, and is not for the faint of heart. English Language Fellow, Joanie Andruss, was lucky enough to travel as part of a support crew for these brave riders. She visited the communities of Manatuto, Quelicai, Iliolmar, Lospalos, and Baucau.
In addition to exploring rarely visited parts of Timor-Leste, she began working on a new English language project. Andruss is currently writing a choose your own ending graded reader based on her experience with the communities and riders of Tour de Timor. She thought it would be exciting to create a resource that was for beginning English readers and was motivating to read because it was about their local context. Tour de Timor was a perfect event for this writing project.