Tuesday 26th October

Oh, today has been tough. For some reason the whole of Precious was difficult today (was is a full moon?), with all teachers having problems with the little darlings. Even my beloved standard 4 kicked off at one point today (mind you it was the first time they’ve really been uncooperative).


Short rains are occurring at the moment as well which makes the journey to work even more hazardous. Now dodging massive puddles/floods on ‘roads’ through Shauriyako and the rubbish and sewage that is just chucked out of homes is really noticeable now. Pair of wellies now on the list of essentials for Jono to bring out at Christmas!

Didn’t sleep well last night – it was very hot, and in the end slept on one of mattresses in our lounge that we use to sit on as there are so many of us. It is cooler in the lounge bit of the apartment, but paid the price with the mossies as didn’t have a net over me……got absolutely munched on my arms and ankles.

Friday 29th October
Things have got a lot better with standard 4 after our ‘bad’ day, and we have had a lot of fun together this week. I introduced to them the ‘alphabet game’, a game that my family have played for many years at my Uncle Des’ summer party each year. Without going into too much detail, you have two teams (at our party it is always girls against boys [and generally the girls win!]) and a set of alphabet cards for each team. One person runs from each team to the organiser, who whispers a word in their ear which they then have to run back, grab the relevant letters with their team, run back and spell the word correctly in front of the organiser. What a laugh to play with the kids… they are so competitive, a few sulks when one team realised they were drastically losing, but once the concept of the game got, managed to play it with ‘opposites’ which was a topic we were covering this week. Mind you, after the hard time we always give my Uncle Des when he chooses a word that has a repeated letter in so therefore void, I made quite a few mistakes myself much to the kids annoyance. Needless to say, every other teacher at Precious have now adopted the game, and my alphabet cards are almost ruined already through over use and lots of dust…..I’ll just have to write some more out.

Presented the grammar programme and schemes for teaching of English to volunteers and staff earlier on this week with Michelle, absolutely 100% positive feedback from everyone, so now we just have to complete it for all the standards. It’s about 200 weekly/fortnightly topics to write up and then match with grammar teaching, and phonics, but Michelle is here for another 7 weeks and we will get it done!

Saturday 30th October
Sat here making myself a skeleton costume as am going on a Halloween night dive tomorrow evening. It is taking ages, but will be worth it I hope. Has to be quite cleverly designed so can get it over all my gear, and also be safe. Perhaps I should patent my design?! Promise will post a photo of me looking vaguely skeletonish! I do find it a little odd sometimes that I've gone from never having enough time in my previous life to do anything resembling normal activities, and now I find myself having enough time, (and sadly wanting to) to sit cutting and sewing a skeleton.  Mmmmm .........