An interesting start to March....
I know I’m starting to say this in every blog but I cannot believe that it is now March; February seems to have flown past even though we managed to fit an incredible amount in. The most exciting thing about March, apart from it being the month dedicated to me (!) is that April is the month that follows it and at the end of April Mummy and Daddy arrive!
On the 1st of March we finally heard word that our passports had been stamped with our visas. I haven’t actually written much about my visa here as you never know who might read this and it’s all been a bit dodgy. We came out to Namibia on a 3 month tourist visa while our year working visas were being sorted. Our first visa ran out on the 30th of November and ever since then we have been illegal immigrants. This is why we were unable to go to Cape Town at Christmas as we would have been unable to return to Namibia and we were told we were lucky not to have been chucked out of Namibia. All very scary and every time we passed a policeman (quite often in Namibia) my heart would stop. In January we were told there was a 50% chance that our visas wouldn’t be sorted and we would be sent home, as you can imagine this was very upsetting but luckily it didn’t come to fruition. Anyway, apparently it is now sorted, however, I won’t believe it 100% until I have my passport in my hand and I can see the visa stamp. However, we can start thinking about where we want to go in our next holiday and take the chance to visit as many surrounding countries as possible in the time we have!
That evening we went to Gilly and Reiner’s house for a braai; this was a combined celebration for visas being sorted and a goodbye braai for Ian and Katie who left on the 5th. We had a delicious braai which actually felt very English: steak and chips with salad followed by apple crumble and ice cream. Reiner was being very funny and forcing me to drink the most disgusting shots as I had to make the most of my last few days of being 18! We then had another little concert – singing after the very potent alcohol was easier said than done but it was good fun. Ian had very kindly photocopied a lot of the music that he had brought out so that we could continue to use it.
On Friday there was a lot of preparation for the next day which was not only Parents Meeting but an athletics match against St Micheals. I also gave my first two keyboard lessons....I taught Theopoldine (G6) followed by Revonia (G5) and they both went very well. Theopoldine picked it up very quickly and Revonia less so – she was struggling to remember to lift up one note before pushing the next one down but I’m sure she will get there next time. I am going to have to brush up on my reading the bass clef skills as they are a little rusty but I think this will be a really fun project and I can’t wait to see how far they get in the next six months. Friday being our sixth month anniversary we painted our faces as usual, although this is the first month we’ve actually managed to do it on the right day! So we transformed ourselves into Zebras...I was in the Art room cleaning (Friday afternoon becomes Saturday morning when Saturday mornings are taken up with other things) when Ken (G6 teacher) walked in and got the shock of his life. Although we have face painted a lot we haven’t actually been seen by the teachers as we do it in the afternoons and don’t tent to bump into them. He was very puzzled and amused as to why I had a white face with black lines all over it!
I got a really sore tummy in the afternoon and I wasn’t feeling very well so I decided to have an early night and was in my bed by 7. Sadly I got a tummy bug and spent the rest of the night throwing up. I spent Saturday in the same position feeling incredibly sorry for myself while listening to the cheers and singing from the Athletics pitch. Chelcie bought me some Coke to drink flat and later Sara arrived with medicine and the most disgusting tasting mint tea! Unfortunaltely Otjikondo lost to St Micheals although we did our best HOWEVER Diina who I have been training since Outjo won the 1500m at Regionals and will now compete at the Nationals which made me very happy and proud. I was supposed to have been introduced to all the Parents at the Parents Meeting but Mrs Vermaak introduced Chelcie and told everyone that I was in bed throwing up – how kind of her!
I woke up on Sunday (my birthday) feeling slightly better but not really in the best birthday mood ever! I went into the kitchen to be greeted by a large stack of present which did improve my mood! Chelcie made me a cup of tea as I still wasn’t up for food and then I opened my presents. Chelcie had created a treasure hunt around the garden and my birthday card included the first clue: "The first is to eat but for you and to me. You’ll find it underneath not a chair, bush or tree." I discovered under our large rock a big packet of sour skittles and my second clue: "The second you’ll find, where the cat liked to climb. If you look up, you’ll find it in time." In the branches of a tree was an elephant necklace on a yellow chain (like the cheetah necklace on a blue chain I made her for her birthday) and the third clue: "Where it is won’t work, if the sky turns to rain. If you touch while it’s ‘on’ you’ll feel a great pain." In our braai I uncovered a package containing two friendship bracelets and the fourth clue: "Down in Rachel’s plots, in the soil and the dirt, you’ll find the next one. (Digging won’t hurt)". Buried in the soil, in Rachel’s newly planted flower bed, I discovered a bag containing a very arty ‘Ottilie’ sign and... the fifth and final clue: "Lastly you’ll have to search, where visitors rest. It may be spiky, but it’s good for a guest." Behind the curtain in our spare room which is called ‘Porcupine’ (I sleep in Gecho, Chelcie in Tortoise and Luise in Warthog) I found my favourite present. Having lived with me for the last six months Chelcie knows me very well – she is very aware of my lack of artistic talent but she knows how much I like to colour in so she made me my very own colouring in book! She has drawn lots of our favourite photos of things that we have done together or of people and drawn the outlines for me and then made them all into a book. A very clever idea which I absolutely love. Luise had also made me a lovely card with photos of us on and bought me some smarties and wine gums. She had also made the most incredible sign which says "Happy Birthday" in 3D letters and there is a giraffe and two balloons made from cardboard stuck on. She also found sweets in the shop called ‘Dimples’ which she stuck all over it!
Mummy had sent out lots of cards and jiffy bags with lots of little things inside so that I would have something to open on my birthday, so that was very exciting. Inside all of the cards was a DVD so we now have a very exciting new collection to watch – Chelcie and I watched ‘Footloose’ that night which was very good. I got lots of yummy goodies to eat like tangfastics, toffee sauce, popcorn and sour skittles as well as some ingredients to cook with. I also got a mint gel pen, a silver O key ring (almost as much fun as my ring to play with), sunflower seeds to grow in elephant poo (!) and lots of balloons. It was really lovely to have all these things and made it feel like my birthday. Throughout the day lots of children came over to say Happy Birthday and to bring me cards they had made me so that was really sweet.
At lunch time we went over to Paul and Sara’s for a special birthday braai which I watched them eat as I still felt very sick...it smelt good! Ian and Katie gave me a beautiful necklace which has lots of blue and green stones on – this was very kind and totally unexpected of them. Gilly and Reiner, my "Otjikondo family" gave me the most incredible fabric painting – it’s of an African sunset with some round huts, people and a tree in the foreground which I love. This will definitely be framed and go up when I return home. I got lots of lovely texts from people – African and English friends which was brilliant and I talked to all my family including all three sisters! Mummy told me that she had Daddy are giving me two large green photo frames which have been engraved with OEM and Namibia for my birthday. This is hugely exciting and I am already considering what to put in them! All in all I had a good birthday, even though I was feeling pretty ill, as so many people had put a lot of effort into making sure that it was a special day and I felt very cared about.
Monday and Tuesday were spent in bed doing not much apart from reading and doing numerous Sudoku. I have now finished my 100th book – a comfort read book "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Mayer. Wednesday and Thursday were back to normal and teaching – on Wednesday I took my birthday cake in to have at break time with the teachers and there was much discussion about how much weight I would have lost and how jealous they were all of me! I can’t say I can agree! On Thursday night we went down to Gilly’s and there was a German couple who are in Namibia for two weeks doing research on the English language and how it has been affected in Namibia. We stayed and had a drink with them and they gave us German chocolate which was amazing!
Next week I am back to being a science, maths, agriculture and life skills teacher as Ken is away doing a life skills workshop in Windhoek so I am taking over his classes which is very exciting. Hope that you are all well and that you are keeping you Lentern promises!
Lots of love to everyone
Me xxx
Friday, 9 March 2012
Part Nineteen: 45 things about my life in Namibia (2nd March)
Just to keep you all updated and to ensure that you aren’t forgetting me now that I’ve been gone over 6 months....!
Most frequent letter writer: Mummy – I’ve received 50 things from Mummy (not including anything for my birthday) which is pretty amazing and I love knowing that I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a letter with news from home when someone collects the post. (Daddy has written twice which is once more than I expected, so also very grateful!)
Non family best letter writer: Emma C is officially the best friend ever and has written to me endlessly and always sends me little bits and pieces such as a jumping plastic frog and a balloon that screams!
Best Sister at writing: 1st place: Cluny 6 letters
2nd place: Lou Lou 5 letters
3rd place: Matilda 3 letters
Most useless letter writer: Sam texted me on the 16th of October to ask if I had got my letter, it has yet to arrive and no other letter has been lost/stolen so.....! Abi has also yet to manage to get a letter in the post!
Funniest letter: Staighty, her letters make me laugh out loud: this is one of her own teaching experiences from Orchard House in London "Q1. Define the phrase ‘To Knock with Force’ using these letters: A, P, R, E, F, S, L. (child’s answer) RAPE (instead of RAP), of course this just so happened to be on the white board when the deputy head walked in...luckily he laughed."
Best thing sent out to me: Photos of me and Emma with friendship quotes on the back and emergency sweets from Mummy.
Weirdest thing sent out to me: Garlic powder....
Best Text: "Hunting lion in Damaraland, back next week." Byron
Best Quote: "I recognised you by your shoes and it was confirmed by your face"
Weirdest chat up line: "You have a very adorable chin"
Chelcie’s Best/Worst Joke: When teaching Long Jump – "He’s such a bad jumper, he’s a cardigan!"
Most beautiful sight: Ohorongo sunset
Most disgusting sight: Dead and gutted wildebeest
Number of Months without rain: 2.5
Number of Days without sun: 0
Best Moment: There are so many fantastic moments out here so I’m really not sure I can pin point this so here are a couple instead - watching the Nativity was amazing and it made me so proud of how well they did and how hard the children had worked, being told that we are the best/their favourite GAPs by the children is always wonderful or when they say "I love you", singing with the Swakopmund girls always made me immensely happy and every time we did it I was surprised by how talented they were. Generally being with the children when they are happy or doing something that makes me proud of them, even if it’s just a dyslexic child getting full marks in their spellings.
Worst moment: The second month was difficult as we were both homesick – not so much that we wanted to go home but we wanted to be able to share our experiences with our friends and family and show what an incredible place this is. It was also difficult getting news about how Cluny was and trying to deal with that so far away from home. Christmas day was hard but that was only one day out of six months so we both survived. Hearing what some of the children have been through and go through is always hard to hear and makes me realise very quickly that we are in Africa and not in a developed country. When Chelcie said she was going to go home and leave me alone....!
Near Death Experiences: 1 – Tate Daniel and a tree cutter tried to "poison" me one day as I returned to the flat to collect something, they ushered me over and then scooped with a mug what looked like muddy water from a bucket. They then encouraged me to drink it much to my peril – it tasted absolutely disgusting and the taste remained in my mouth for a long time, supposedly it was a mixture of sap and mealy pap syrup, never again! Also the many thunder and lightning storms have potentially been very perilous!
Most useful bring: A sharp kitchen knife, we all use it at least twice a day as it’s the only knife in the kitchen that is actually sharp. My head torch has also been very useful, especially this term during the frequent power cuts. My camera kind of goes without saying, I couldn’t imagine not being able to capture some of these moments. My blanket...
What I should have left at home: Fanny bag, second pair of pyjama bottoms, blue Aladdin trousers, pen knife...
What I miss most: Family, friends, Peppermint, Parents cooking for me, being able to sleep through the night without waking up, playing lacrosse, my scent, Marlborough Choir, having a variety of food rather than the same ingredients every week but most of all being able to share what I am doing with friends and family.
What I haven’t missed: Television, exams!
Number of books read: 94
Favourite book read: Afterwards by Rosamund Lipton
Least enjoyed Book read: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James – it took me ages to get into and then nothing really happened and it had a very disappointing ending.
Favourite film watched: Bridesmaids
Number of times cried: 30 – one of these was when I first chopped onions and it got counted, if I had continued counting how many times I have cried while chopping onions this number would be A LOT bigger!
Number of Arguments: 1
New Countries Visited: 2 – Namibia and a flying visit to South Africa
Total letters received: 108
Total letters sent: 123 (I win!)
100th letter received is from: Godmother Jo from Singapore on her way to Australia
100th letter sent was to: Mummy and Daddy
Number of photos taken: 3498 (technically this is only half of my photos as Chelcie and I take it in turn to take photos and don’t generally take photos of the same thing....)
Favourite Meal that I make: Spaghetti Bolognaise or Mashed Squash with boerwors and peas
Favourite Meal that Chelcie makes: Pancakes (and worst has to be when she made me try her Banana bread!)
Worst Food eaten: Liver and sweets which tasted like feet which I bought from the shop to inspire the children to run faster while training for athletics
Best African Recipe: Bobotie
Broken Kitchen Ware: 6 (2 plates, 2 bowls, 1 butter dish and a tin opener – I blame Chelcie for 4 of these items!)
My most annoying habit according to Chelcie: Cooking supper for half an hour without turning the oven on at the wall, this happens probably three times a week! (The arga at home is permanently on so there is no need for me to remember to switch it on!)
Visitors to the Gap Flat: 10 (Nina, Ralph and Paul Mollman, Rachel, Luise, Sam, Random German Couple, Another random couple, Faustinas and friend)
Unexpected Visitors to the Gap Flat: 4 (Snowy, Nesbo, 2 mice)
Nicknames gained: Ottowa, Smeegs and Dimples
Face paints worn: Tiger Cub, fireworks, Reindeer, Yellow star, hearts, a jester and today a zebra
What I can’t wait to do in six months time: Have a proper hug from Mummy and Daddy although I only have to wait 7 weeks and two days for this now. See everybody including the animals and go riding on Orange. Eat sticky toffee pudding and bagels! Sleep in my own bed upstairs.
Love Me xxxx
Most frequent letter writer: Mummy – I’ve received 50 things from Mummy (not including anything for my birthday) which is pretty amazing and I love knowing that I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a letter with news from home when someone collects the post. (Daddy has written twice which is once more than I expected, so also very grateful!)
Non family best letter writer: Emma C is officially the best friend ever and has written to me endlessly and always sends me little bits and pieces such as a jumping plastic frog and a balloon that screams!
Best Sister at writing: 1st place: Cluny 6 letters
2nd place: Lou Lou 5 letters
3rd place: Matilda 3 letters
Most useless letter writer: Sam texted me on the 16th of October to ask if I had got my letter, it has yet to arrive and no other letter has been lost/stolen so.....! Abi has also yet to manage to get a letter in the post!
Funniest letter: Staighty, her letters make me laugh out loud: this is one of her own teaching experiences from Orchard House in London "Q1. Define the phrase ‘To Knock with Force’ using these letters: A, P, R, E, F, S, L. (child’s answer) RAPE (instead of RAP), of course this just so happened to be on the white board when the deputy head walked in...luckily he laughed."
Best thing sent out to me: Photos of me and Emma with friendship quotes on the back and emergency sweets from Mummy.
Weirdest thing sent out to me: Garlic powder....
Best Text: "Hunting lion in Damaraland, back next week." Byron
Best Quote: "I recognised you by your shoes and it was confirmed by your face"
Weirdest chat up line: "You have a very adorable chin"
Chelcie’s Best/Worst Joke: When teaching Long Jump – "He’s such a bad jumper, he’s a cardigan!"
Most beautiful sight: Ohorongo sunset
Most disgusting sight: Dead and gutted wildebeest
Number of Months without rain: 2.5
Number of Days without sun: 0
Best Moment: There are so many fantastic moments out here so I’m really not sure I can pin point this so here are a couple instead - watching the Nativity was amazing and it made me so proud of how well they did and how hard the children had worked, being told that we are the best/their favourite GAPs by the children is always wonderful or when they say "I love you", singing with the Swakopmund girls always made me immensely happy and every time we did it I was surprised by how talented they were. Generally being with the children when they are happy or doing something that makes me proud of them, even if it’s just a dyslexic child getting full marks in their spellings.
Worst moment: The second month was difficult as we were both homesick – not so much that we wanted to go home but we wanted to be able to share our experiences with our friends and family and show what an incredible place this is. It was also difficult getting news about how Cluny was and trying to deal with that so far away from home. Christmas day was hard but that was only one day out of six months so we both survived. Hearing what some of the children have been through and go through is always hard to hear and makes me realise very quickly that we are in Africa and not in a developed country. When Chelcie said she was going to go home and leave me alone....!
Near Death Experiences: 1 – Tate Daniel and a tree cutter tried to "poison" me one day as I returned to the flat to collect something, they ushered me over and then scooped with a mug what looked like muddy water from a bucket. They then encouraged me to drink it much to my peril – it tasted absolutely disgusting and the taste remained in my mouth for a long time, supposedly it was a mixture of sap and mealy pap syrup, never again! Also the many thunder and lightning storms have potentially been very perilous!
Most useful bring: A sharp kitchen knife, we all use it at least twice a day as it’s the only knife in the kitchen that is actually sharp. My head torch has also been very useful, especially this term during the frequent power cuts. My camera kind of goes without saying, I couldn’t imagine not being able to capture some of these moments. My blanket...
What I should have left at home: Fanny bag, second pair of pyjama bottoms, blue Aladdin trousers, pen knife...
What I miss most: Family, friends, Peppermint, Parents cooking for me, being able to sleep through the night without waking up, playing lacrosse, my scent, Marlborough Choir, having a variety of food rather than the same ingredients every week but most of all being able to share what I am doing with friends and family.
What I haven’t missed: Television, exams!
Number of books read: 94
Favourite book read: Afterwards by Rosamund Lipton
Least enjoyed Book read: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James – it took me ages to get into and then nothing really happened and it had a very disappointing ending.
Favourite film watched: Bridesmaids
Number of times cried: 30 – one of these was when I first chopped onions and it got counted, if I had continued counting how many times I have cried while chopping onions this number would be A LOT bigger!
Number of Arguments: 1
New Countries Visited: 2 – Namibia and a flying visit to South Africa
Total letters received: 108
Total letters sent: 123 (I win!)
100th letter received is from: Godmother Jo from Singapore on her way to Australia
100th letter sent was to: Mummy and Daddy
Number of photos taken: 3498 (technically this is only half of my photos as Chelcie and I take it in turn to take photos and don’t generally take photos of the same thing....)
Favourite Meal that I make: Spaghetti Bolognaise or Mashed Squash with boerwors and peas
Favourite Meal that Chelcie makes: Pancakes (and worst has to be when she made me try her Banana bread!)
Worst Food eaten: Liver and sweets which tasted like feet which I bought from the shop to inspire the children to run faster while training for athletics
Best African Recipe: Bobotie
Broken Kitchen Ware: 6 (2 plates, 2 bowls, 1 butter dish and a tin opener – I blame Chelcie for 4 of these items!)
My most annoying habit according to Chelcie: Cooking supper for half an hour without turning the oven on at the wall, this happens probably three times a week! (The arga at home is permanently on so there is no need for me to remember to switch it on!)
Visitors to the Gap Flat: 10 (Nina, Ralph and Paul Mollman, Rachel, Luise, Sam, Random German Couple, Another random couple, Faustinas and friend)
Unexpected Visitors to the Gap Flat: 4 (Snowy, Nesbo, 2 mice)
Nicknames gained: Ottowa, Smeegs and Dimples
Face paints worn: Tiger Cub, fireworks, Reindeer, Yellow star, hearts, a jester and today a zebra
What I can’t wait to do in six months time: Have a proper hug from Mummy and Daddy although I only have to wait 7 weeks and two days for this now. See everybody including the animals and go riding on Orange. Eat sticky toffee pudding and bagels! Sleep in my own bed upstairs.
Love Me xxxx
Part Eighteen: Dankie and Reiner’s 80th (February)
Month Number Six...
For the start of February I carried on being Mrs Vermaak and teaching Maths to G6 and G7 which I continued to thoroughly enjoy. I have now returned to my normal job of teaching Art, Music and PT however I hope to be able to do some more academic teaching this term. This term we have got little books for all the children to do their spelling tests in so that they are able to see what they got wrong rather than just get a mark out of 15 rather than 20. My job of marking all the tests now takes considerably longer as I have to write in corrections; G5 – 7 tend to get the majority of the spellings right but in the lower grades its not uncommon only to get a couple right at this stage of the year.
Luise had been having toothache so she went to the Dentist with Gilly in Otjiwarango. It turns out she has a little bit of wire in her gum left over from when she had braces which she needs to have removed when she returns to Germany. Gilly bought us lots of goodies as she thought that we might have been jealous of Luise having the day off so she returned with Coco Pops (Chelcie’s favourite), raspberry jam, nutella, and a cake from the bakery for us. This was a very welcome surprise and Luise also bought us a bar of Crunch chocolate and printed off a picture of Me and Chelcie from sports day which has been added to our collection on the board in the Kitchen. This was very kind and sweet of her.
On Saturday after making Sticker Charts for all the Grades we went to Paul and Sara’s house for a braai which was delicious and great fun as usual. On Sunday after Church I went to the big Girl’s Hostel and watched their Fashion Show which was brilliant. They had four judges from the G7 girls and 14 models. The fashion show took place in one of the dorms and the rest of the girls sat on the bunk beds or the floor and therefore created a runway for the models to walk down. They all walked four times: first they just walked, secondly they walked and then stopped to introduce themselves and say a message, thirdly they walked and then did a song with a dance and lastly they walked again. The audience sang to create a beat to walk to and for each walk they were marked out of 20. At the end it was my job to add up the scores to see who would be crowned the Queen and then Princesses.
Button Box: We finished our second round of auditions and we now have a cast of 26 which is very exciting. We have sixteen people in our chorus, four of which are G7 boys which is very exciting. It was difficult to narrow it down but we wanted a really strong small group to work with. I cannot wait until next Friday when we will have our first rehearsal. The plan is to try and learn all the songs by the end of this term and a couple of dances which will leave the rest of the dances and fine tuning to next term.
We have now taught them the four songs that all the Chorus are involved with – Before the Dreamtime, Paradise Island, Impuku Nekati and Bombay Button. They know the first three off by heart which is brilliant and they are already starting to sound really good. All of them have elements of "round" singing in them and it sounds really effective. We can’t use the backing track for the performances as we don’t have a sound system in the Dining Room so we are teaching it to them all unaccompanied. This means that we are able to bring the songs down in pitch as African children tend to have lower voices than English ones so the songs are too high for them as written.
Dankie: Dankie, meaning thank you in Afrikaans, is the child I have chosen to sponsor. He is six years old and incredibly cute. He is missing two of his front teeth which means he has a slight lisp at the moment which is very endearing. He is one of the children I do Environmental English with – his first language is Damara but his English is rapidly improving. I had a text from Sam saying "Dankie’s a very lucky girl (he’s actually a boy!) to have you! Make sure she grows up to be president or something.", I can’t promise he will become president or something but I can promise to be a very good sponsor and make sure that he is happy here at Otjikondo and hopefully afterwards. He always comes running to see me and likes to hold my hand or sit on my lap which is very sweet. He told another boy Tenneses, Chelcie’s sponsor child, that I was his mother!
Outjo: On the 10th we got up at 5:00 in order to be at school for a 5:20 leave to go to Outjo to compete in Athletics against 7 other schools. When we got there we thought we had missed the cattle truck as it wasn’t there and we thought we had been left behind.....no, it turned out that Outjo had been cancelled so everyone was still in bed! Mrs Vermaak had sent me a text the night before but I had turned my phone off 10 minutes before as I wanted an early night as it was going to be such an early start! Feeling very unamused we walked back to the GAP flat and tried to have a little more sleep before getting up again to go and teach our usual Friday classes.
Outjo was rescheduled for the 15th; however, it was only for the U13s so only 18 children went from Otjikondo. I managed to persuade Mrs Vermaak that it was very necessary for Chelcie and me to accompany the children along with Ken and Rob, luckily it worked as we really weren’t very necessary but the children appreciated us being there. We competed against seven other schools who were a lot bigger than us and stronger. We were slightly out of our league although the children did their best and made us very proud. I felt very sorry for Marvellous and Brinoldt who were representing us for high jump as their personal best is 1.26m and the high jump started at 1.20m and they only lasted to the second round. Stacy and Sitaleni did very well in the sprinting and managed to qualify for the finals. Both Glenn and Brinoldt did well throwing the javelin achieving 5th and 6th place, however, our star of the day was Diina. She came 2nd in the 800m and won the 1500m setting a new record and has therefore qualified for the regionals for both of these events. It is now my job to train her in preparation for this. One of the schools was a private school and all the children were white which we both found very weird – out here we expect white people for some reason to be English but they are still African and their first language is Afrikaans. One of the girls from this school was incredible at the javelin. The old record was 23m and she threw without a run up 27.5m which was very impressive. However, Chelcie and I were very suspicious as either some of the children from the other schools definitely weren’t under thirteen or they were on steroids – there were girls there with legs up to my armpits. After Outjo High School finished for the day the old Otjikondians walked down to see us. It was lovely to catch up with some of our old G7s and hear how they are enjoying their new schools, it also made us realise how much we miss some of them. The end results were: Outjo with 85 points, 83 Jack Francis, 68 St Micheals, 56 Moria (the private school), 36 Otjikondo, 6 Maarseen, 5 Queen Sofia of Spain and 2 Okaukuejo. Although we were badly beaten at least we were in the double figures! As only the U13s got to compete we have organised an athletics match to be held here against St Michaels so that all our children who had been training so hard would get to compete.
Reiner’s Birthday: On the 12th we celebrated Reiner’s 80th birthday. Family had been arriving all week to celebrate: Jenny (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) and her family from the Caprivi Strip, Gilly (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) with Oliver from Cape Town, Heinz (Reiners 82 year old brother) from Germany and Katie (Gilly’s sister) and Ian her husband from England.
During Art lessons all week we had been busy making the world’s biggest and best birthday card! We had a large piece of white fabric and in the middle we painted in black "Happy Birthday Mr Stommel". We then got all the children to do their hand prints around this on the rest of the fabric in a different colour for each grade. G7 – purple, G6 - jade, G5 - blue, G4 - pink, Wings - orange, G3 - red, G2 – yellow and G1 – green. When it was finished it looked really amazing and we wrote each child’s name on the bottom of their hand print.
We started the day with a special Church Service, the priest from St Michaels led the service and he brought with him a choir. The St Michaels choir were very good and there were two girls in particular who were very talented. The service was filled with music and it was lovely. We all then went up to the Dining Room where we gave Reiner our card and we cut the birthday cakes. There were four of the biggest cakes I have ever seen – each cake made 80 giant slices which we then gave out to all the children and workers. The Stommels then went to have a family lunch and we spent the rest of the morning sitting and dancing with the children outside the takeaway. We then all ate lunch together which was a meat stew (Reiner had given the school and community a cow as a present) with rice which was actually quite nice.
In the evening we had an informal concert, which wasn’t that informal, at the Stommel’s house which had been Chelcie and my job to organise. I had taught six girls to play "Pokare Kare" on the Recorder, Desvino and Paulus played "Happy Birthday" on the violins, our Drama boys sang the school song and a group of girls plus Ruben sang "We just want to say thank you Lord". I can’t say that this was their finest hour! We hadn’t had that much time to practice and they were a little rusty, a little out of practice of performing, and quite out of tune, apart from that it all went well! The hostel workers came down later and sang three songs followed by the farm workers which was lovely. The rest of the time was left to me and Chelcie to entertain everyone. We were accompanied by Ian who is a very talented pianist and we had been practising with him for a couple of days, and occasionally by Heinz on the violin. I ended up singing two solos which anyone who knows me is my ultimate nightmare, after being forced to eat bananas, but it actually went okay. I only thought I was going to have to sing "Ich libe dich" which I worked myself up about and got very panicking but later it was requested I sing "Don’t cry for me Argentina" which I did unaccompanied. By then I had drunk some wine which had relaxed me and it was much more successful! Ian really likes me singing "Ich libe dich" so I think I will be performing again in the near future. It was a really fun night and I think that Reiner had a birthday to remember. Gilly has already promised to fly us out to sing at his 100th birthday which Chelcie and I will definitely take her up on!
Rachel: Rachel left for England the day after Reiner’s birthday for England which was very sad. It was very lovely having another English person about and someone who is not a child to talk to! The week before she left she went into Outjo and she kindly printed some photos off for me that I was then able to send to various people. I hope the lucky few appreciated them! I gave her my blog details so if you are reading this HELLO! I hope you got home safely and that the seed head survived! Sara gave Rachel a tremendous seed head which we then made a cardboard box for, the ones we already had weren’t the right shape or deep enough, so that hopefully it would survive the journey home.
Thunder Storms: We have had a couple of terrifying storms with terrific thunder and lightning. I really don’t like the storms, nor does Savanna the Stommel’s dog, and it means that I am often sitting in my bed curled up with my blanket while the lightning illuminates my room. I can’t even go and get Chelcie as that involves leaving my room, too scary, but she says she thinks of me as she lies awake in her bed!
Dancing: Luise does a lot of ball room and Latin American dancing in Germany and she thought it would be fun to teach some of the children some of it so last Saturday she gave us all a dance lesson which was great fun. Sam (the GAP at St Micheals) had come for the weekend and we all had great fun learning some steps. There were about 26 children from G6 and G7 and they all really seemed to love it so hopefully we will do it again at some point.
Valentine’s Day: We had a Valentine themed week during Art and the children either made cards or created boarders for love poems or decorated hearts. I received some lovely cards from the children, a little leather shoe from Kenisha (the Head Girl) and a homemade friendship bracelet from Luise! The G7s made bunting and banners for our Valentine Disco which we had in the Hans Seidel Hall on Saturday night. The children loved the disco and they took hundreds of photos of themselves on my camera – they really loving "catching photos"!
Cooking: This term I have been trying out some new things and changing some recipes to fit the ingredients I have so far I have made vegetable and bacon stuffed peppers, a lentil and vegetable curry, baked sausage and vegetable pasta, bobotie....
It’s a part of life: This is the children’s new phrase which they use, especially the boys, as an excuse for EVERYTHING. If something goes wrong then the answer is "It’s a part of life", if they did badly in their spellings then "It’s a part of life", this got a little annoying at first until we started using it back to them if they complained about something and then our answer would be "It’s a part of life"!
Nesbo: We adopted a kitten for 24 hours...ever since the children discovered that we liked kittens they have been bringing us various specimens to see if we would like to adopt them! On the 15th Chelcie came into my room and asked if would keep a kitten, I said no that it was impractical and anyway Luise is allergic...and then she showed me the kitten. It was very little, incredibly little, and looked just like Snowy, Paul and Sara’s kitten. We were thinking of a name and I came up with Nesbo – it looks identical to Snowy, I read a book called The Snowman which is written by Jo Nesbo so hence Nesbo! We didn’t have any milk so we went over to Paul and Sara’s to borrow some and we were planning to go and ask Gilly then next day if we could keep it. Nesbo was absolutely petrified – I think he had a bit of a terrifying experience with the boys who brought him as he arrived on the end of a piece of string! He was absolutely silent which we thought was good because Snowy is a very noisy cat which is very irritating. He spent the night cowering under my bed even though we had made him a nice bed in a box with a blanket. We left him some milk and went to lessons as usual. At lunch time I suddenly realised that we couldn’t keep Nesbo as there would be no one to look after him in the holidays or when we were away so we had to let Nesbo go. We put him outside our gate and let him be a feral cat once more but Nesbo decided to punish us....he spent the next week or so meowing very loudly outside our windows throughout the night keeping us all awake. Luckily he has now been reunited with other cats and has ceased to haunt us.
Lent: In Germany they have a festival before the start of Lent and we celebrated the last day of the festival here. On Shrove Tuesday all the prefects arrived at our flat at 6am to have their faces painted! I painted Kenisha a red butterfly with red spots, Diina a lion and Joyce a pig. Tjirondwauvi became a very scary vampire, Mario a clown, Tomas a zebra, Paulus a devi, Brenden had the South African flag and Xunta-I and Sevelina were both butterflies. Chelcie made me a jester, Kenisha did patterns and waves on Luise and Chelcie ended up looking like a Picasso painting after the children attacked her with face paints. We were supposed to be done in time for assembly but we ended up being 5 minutes late for lessons which caused some sense of humour failures! It was Gilly’s idea and supposed to be a surprise so the teachers didn’t know what was happening....luckily we all had fun so it didn’t matter too much.
On Ash Wednesday we had a service in the afternoon and we all wrote our Lent promises on a piece of paper which we put in a bowl which will stay in the church for 40 days and nights. I think this is a lovely idea. I have given up carbohydrates and fizzy drinks as well as taking up reading the Bible every day, trying to do a good deed daily and learn 10 Afrikaans phrases by the end of Lent. I am yet to break my Lent!
Activities: These are now back in full swing after the end of Athletics. I have new groups from last year; on a Monday I teach Intermediate Recorders followed by Advanced Recorders (two hours is a ridiculously long time to be forced to listen to the sound of a recorder), on a Tuesday I have G1 girls for playgroup followed by G6 girls for Craft (we are making juggling balls), on Wednesday I have a Beginner Recorder group followed by a young boy craft group (I had been positively dreading this but it actually went really well and we have started to make Desk Tidies), on a Thursday I have G1 boys for playgroup followed by G6 and G7 boys for table tennis and on Friday I have rehearsals for the Button Box. My remedial sessions have also started up again although I don’t know who I have yet for G6 but I have two nice G7 groups at the moment.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATILDA!
When Ian and Katie arrived from England they brought an electric piano and a keyboard which was very exciting. Chelcie and I are going to be giving a couple of children keyboard lessons which will be fun and should start next week. While discussing some music things with Ian we had a glass of white wine and had some nibbles, Chelcie then said "Grapes are made of wine" which made me laugh and she’d only had one glass by then!
Last Sunday was an incredible day – after reading in Church I spent the rest of the morning preparing for the following week. After lunch Chelcie and I go into our pyjamas and walked over to the Hans Heidal Hall carrying our duvets, pillows and my blanket. We then made a bed on stage with the blankets that live there and then settled down to watch ‘P.S I love you’ which was absolutely brilliant and we are now planning a road trip to Ireland together! Towards the end of the film a most terrific storm started – there was incredible thunder and lightning which actually shook the stage and it was raining in sheets which we could hardly see through. After a quick run about in the rain which left us soaking and freezing we curled back up to watch ‘27 Dresses’ as were now obviously stranded in the Hall. We had to watch with the subtitles on as the storm was so loud but we were very happy until the power went! Luckily there was a break in the rain so we managed to make it back to the flat but not before being caught in our pjs by a couple of children and teachers!
I hope that you are all well and that February has been a good month for everyone. Love as usual to absolutely everyone and I can’t believe that I am about to spend my 19th birthday in Namibia! Let’s hope it’s a good one.
Lots and lots of love
Me xxxx
For the start of February I carried on being Mrs Vermaak and teaching Maths to G6 and G7 which I continued to thoroughly enjoy. I have now returned to my normal job of teaching Art, Music and PT however I hope to be able to do some more academic teaching this term. This term we have got little books for all the children to do their spelling tests in so that they are able to see what they got wrong rather than just get a mark out of 15 rather than 20. My job of marking all the tests now takes considerably longer as I have to write in corrections; G5 – 7 tend to get the majority of the spellings right but in the lower grades its not uncommon only to get a couple right at this stage of the year.
Luise had been having toothache so she went to the Dentist with Gilly in Otjiwarango. It turns out she has a little bit of wire in her gum left over from when she had braces which she needs to have removed when she returns to Germany. Gilly bought us lots of goodies as she thought that we might have been jealous of Luise having the day off so she returned with Coco Pops (Chelcie’s favourite), raspberry jam, nutella, and a cake from the bakery for us. This was a very welcome surprise and Luise also bought us a bar of Crunch chocolate and printed off a picture of Me and Chelcie from sports day which has been added to our collection on the board in the Kitchen. This was very kind and sweet of her.
On Saturday after making Sticker Charts for all the Grades we went to Paul and Sara’s house for a braai which was delicious and great fun as usual. On Sunday after Church I went to the big Girl’s Hostel and watched their Fashion Show which was brilliant. They had four judges from the G7 girls and 14 models. The fashion show took place in one of the dorms and the rest of the girls sat on the bunk beds or the floor and therefore created a runway for the models to walk down. They all walked four times: first they just walked, secondly they walked and then stopped to introduce themselves and say a message, thirdly they walked and then did a song with a dance and lastly they walked again. The audience sang to create a beat to walk to and for each walk they were marked out of 20. At the end it was my job to add up the scores to see who would be crowned the Queen and then Princesses.
Button Box: We finished our second round of auditions and we now have a cast of 26 which is very exciting. We have sixteen people in our chorus, four of which are G7 boys which is very exciting. It was difficult to narrow it down but we wanted a really strong small group to work with. I cannot wait until next Friday when we will have our first rehearsal. The plan is to try and learn all the songs by the end of this term and a couple of dances which will leave the rest of the dances and fine tuning to next term.
We have now taught them the four songs that all the Chorus are involved with – Before the Dreamtime, Paradise Island, Impuku Nekati and Bombay Button. They know the first three off by heart which is brilliant and they are already starting to sound really good. All of them have elements of "round" singing in them and it sounds really effective. We can’t use the backing track for the performances as we don’t have a sound system in the Dining Room so we are teaching it to them all unaccompanied. This means that we are able to bring the songs down in pitch as African children tend to have lower voices than English ones so the songs are too high for them as written.
Dankie: Dankie, meaning thank you in Afrikaans, is the child I have chosen to sponsor. He is six years old and incredibly cute. He is missing two of his front teeth which means he has a slight lisp at the moment which is very endearing. He is one of the children I do Environmental English with – his first language is Damara but his English is rapidly improving. I had a text from Sam saying "Dankie’s a very lucky girl (he’s actually a boy!) to have you! Make sure she grows up to be president or something.", I can’t promise he will become president or something but I can promise to be a very good sponsor and make sure that he is happy here at Otjikondo and hopefully afterwards. He always comes running to see me and likes to hold my hand or sit on my lap which is very sweet. He told another boy Tenneses, Chelcie’s sponsor child, that I was his mother!
Outjo: On the 10th we got up at 5:00 in order to be at school for a 5:20 leave to go to Outjo to compete in Athletics against 7 other schools. When we got there we thought we had missed the cattle truck as it wasn’t there and we thought we had been left behind.....no, it turned out that Outjo had been cancelled so everyone was still in bed! Mrs Vermaak had sent me a text the night before but I had turned my phone off 10 minutes before as I wanted an early night as it was going to be such an early start! Feeling very unamused we walked back to the GAP flat and tried to have a little more sleep before getting up again to go and teach our usual Friday classes.
Outjo was rescheduled for the 15th; however, it was only for the U13s so only 18 children went from Otjikondo. I managed to persuade Mrs Vermaak that it was very necessary for Chelcie and me to accompany the children along with Ken and Rob, luckily it worked as we really weren’t very necessary but the children appreciated us being there. We competed against seven other schools who were a lot bigger than us and stronger. We were slightly out of our league although the children did their best and made us very proud. I felt very sorry for Marvellous and Brinoldt who were representing us for high jump as their personal best is 1.26m and the high jump started at 1.20m and they only lasted to the second round. Stacy and Sitaleni did very well in the sprinting and managed to qualify for the finals. Both Glenn and Brinoldt did well throwing the javelin achieving 5th and 6th place, however, our star of the day was Diina. She came 2nd in the 800m and won the 1500m setting a new record and has therefore qualified for the regionals for both of these events. It is now my job to train her in preparation for this. One of the schools was a private school and all the children were white which we both found very weird – out here we expect white people for some reason to be English but they are still African and their first language is Afrikaans. One of the girls from this school was incredible at the javelin. The old record was 23m and she threw without a run up 27.5m which was very impressive. However, Chelcie and I were very suspicious as either some of the children from the other schools definitely weren’t under thirteen or they were on steroids – there were girls there with legs up to my armpits. After Outjo High School finished for the day the old Otjikondians walked down to see us. It was lovely to catch up with some of our old G7s and hear how they are enjoying their new schools, it also made us realise how much we miss some of them. The end results were: Outjo with 85 points, 83 Jack Francis, 68 St Micheals, 56 Moria (the private school), 36 Otjikondo, 6 Maarseen, 5 Queen Sofia of Spain and 2 Okaukuejo. Although we were badly beaten at least we were in the double figures! As only the U13s got to compete we have organised an athletics match to be held here against St Michaels so that all our children who had been training so hard would get to compete.
Reiner’s Birthday: On the 12th we celebrated Reiner’s 80th birthday. Family had been arriving all week to celebrate: Jenny (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) and her family from the Caprivi Strip, Gilly (one of Reiner and Gilly’s daughters) with Oliver from Cape Town, Heinz (Reiners 82 year old brother) from Germany and Katie (Gilly’s sister) and Ian her husband from England.
During Art lessons all week we had been busy making the world’s biggest and best birthday card! We had a large piece of white fabric and in the middle we painted in black "Happy Birthday Mr Stommel". We then got all the children to do their hand prints around this on the rest of the fabric in a different colour for each grade. G7 – purple, G6 - jade, G5 - blue, G4 - pink, Wings - orange, G3 - red, G2 – yellow and G1 – green. When it was finished it looked really amazing and we wrote each child’s name on the bottom of their hand print.
We started the day with a special Church Service, the priest from St Michaels led the service and he brought with him a choir. The St Michaels choir were very good and there were two girls in particular who were very talented. The service was filled with music and it was lovely. We all then went up to the Dining Room where we gave Reiner our card and we cut the birthday cakes. There were four of the biggest cakes I have ever seen – each cake made 80 giant slices which we then gave out to all the children and workers. The Stommels then went to have a family lunch and we spent the rest of the morning sitting and dancing with the children outside the takeaway. We then all ate lunch together which was a meat stew (Reiner had given the school and community a cow as a present) with rice which was actually quite nice.
In the evening we had an informal concert, which wasn’t that informal, at the Stommel’s house which had been Chelcie and my job to organise. I had taught six girls to play "Pokare Kare" on the Recorder, Desvino and Paulus played "Happy Birthday" on the violins, our Drama boys sang the school song and a group of girls plus Ruben sang "We just want to say thank you Lord". I can’t say that this was their finest hour! We hadn’t had that much time to practice and they were a little rusty, a little out of practice of performing, and quite out of tune, apart from that it all went well! The hostel workers came down later and sang three songs followed by the farm workers which was lovely. The rest of the time was left to me and Chelcie to entertain everyone. We were accompanied by Ian who is a very talented pianist and we had been practising with him for a couple of days, and occasionally by Heinz on the violin. I ended up singing two solos which anyone who knows me is my ultimate nightmare, after being forced to eat bananas, but it actually went okay. I only thought I was going to have to sing "Ich libe dich" which I worked myself up about and got very panicking but later it was requested I sing "Don’t cry for me Argentina" which I did unaccompanied. By then I had drunk some wine which had relaxed me and it was much more successful! Ian really likes me singing "Ich libe dich" so I think I will be performing again in the near future. It was a really fun night and I think that Reiner had a birthday to remember. Gilly has already promised to fly us out to sing at his 100th birthday which Chelcie and I will definitely take her up on!
Rachel: Rachel left for England the day after Reiner’s birthday for England which was very sad. It was very lovely having another English person about and someone who is not a child to talk to! The week before she left she went into Outjo and she kindly printed some photos off for me that I was then able to send to various people. I hope the lucky few appreciated them! I gave her my blog details so if you are reading this HELLO! I hope you got home safely and that the seed head survived! Sara gave Rachel a tremendous seed head which we then made a cardboard box for, the ones we already had weren’t the right shape or deep enough, so that hopefully it would survive the journey home.
Thunder Storms: We have had a couple of terrifying storms with terrific thunder and lightning. I really don’t like the storms, nor does Savanna the Stommel’s dog, and it means that I am often sitting in my bed curled up with my blanket while the lightning illuminates my room. I can’t even go and get Chelcie as that involves leaving my room, too scary, but she says she thinks of me as she lies awake in her bed!
Dancing: Luise does a lot of ball room and Latin American dancing in Germany and she thought it would be fun to teach some of the children some of it so last Saturday she gave us all a dance lesson which was great fun. Sam (the GAP at St Micheals) had come for the weekend and we all had great fun learning some steps. There were about 26 children from G6 and G7 and they all really seemed to love it so hopefully we will do it again at some point.
Valentine’s Day: We had a Valentine themed week during Art and the children either made cards or created boarders for love poems or decorated hearts. I received some lovely cards from the children, a little leather shoe from Kenisha (the Head Girl) and a homemade friendship bracelet from Luise! The G7s made bunting and banners for our Valentine Disco which we had in the Hans Seidel Hall on Saturday night. The children loved the disco and they took hundreds of photos of themselves on my camera – they really loving "catching photos"!
Cooking: This term I have been trying out some new things and changing some recipes to fit the ingredients I have so far I have made vegetable and bacon stuffed peppers, a lentil and vegetable curry, baked sausage and vegetable pasta, bobotie....
It’s a part of life: This is the children’s new phrase which they use, especially the boys, as an excuse for EVERYTHING. If something goes wrong then the answer is "It’s a part of life", if they did badly in their spellings then "It’s a part of life", this got a little annoying at first until we started using it back to them if they complained about something and then our answer would be "It’s a part of life"!
Nesbo: We adopted a kitten for 24 hours...ever since the children discovered that we liked kittens they have been bringing us various specimens to see if we would like to adopt them! On the 15th Chelcie came into my room and asked if would keep a kitten, I said no that it was impractical and anyway Luise is allergic...and then she showed me the kitten. It was very little, incredibly little, and looked just like Snowy, Paul and Sara’s kitten. We were thinking of a name and I came up with Nesbo – it looks identical to Snowy, I read a book called The Snowman which is written by Jo Nesbo so hence Nesbo! We didn’t have any milk so we went over to Paul and Sara’s to borrow some and we were planning to go and ask Gilly then next day if we could keep it. Nesbo was absolutely petrified – I think he had a bit of a terrifying experience with the boys who brought him as he arrived on the end of a piece of string! He was absolutely silent which we thought was good because Snowy is a very noisy cat which is very irritating. He spent the night cowering under my bed even though we had made him a nice bed in a box with a blanket. We left him some milk and went to lessons as usual. At lunch time I suddenly realised that we couldn’t keep Nesbo as there would be no one to look after him in the holidays or when we were away so we had to let Nesbo go. We put him outside our gate and let him be a feral cat once more but Nesbo decided to punish us....he spent the next week or so meowing very loudly outside our windows throughout the night keeping us all awake. Luckily he has now been reunited with other cats and has ceased to haunt us.
Lent: In Germany they have a festival before the start of Lent and we celebrated the last day of the festival here. On Shrove Tuesday all the prefects arrived at our flat at 6am to have their faces painted! I painted Kenisha a red butterfly with red spots, Diina a lion and Joyce a pig. Tjirondwauvi became a very scary vampire, Mario a clown, Tomas a zebra, Paulus a devi, Brenden had the South African flag and Xunta-I and Sevelina were both butterflies. Chelcie made me a jester, Kenisha did patterns and waves on Luise and Chelcie ended up looking like a Picasso painting after the children attacked her with face paints. We were supposed to be done in time for assembly but we ended up being 5 minutes late for lessons which caused some sense of humour failures! It was Gilly’s idea and supposed to be a surprise so the teachers didn’t know what was happening....luckily we all had fun so it didn’t matter too much.
On Ash Wednesday we had a service in the afternoon and we all wrote our Lent promises on a piece of paper which we put in a bowl which will stay in the church for 40 days and nights. I think this is a lovely idea. I have given up carbohydrates and fizzy drinks as well as taking up reading the Bible every day, trying to do a good deed daily and learn 10 Afrikaans phrases by the end of Lent. I am yet to break my Lent!
Activities: These are now back in full swing after the end of Athletics. I have new groups from last year; on a Monday I teach Intermediate Recorders followed by Advanced Recorders (two hours is a ridiculously long time to be forced to listen to the sound of a recorder), on a Tuesday I have G1 girls for playgroup followed by G6 girls for Craft (we are making juggling balls), on Wednesday I have a Beginner Recorder group followed by a young boy craft group (I had been positively dreading this but it actually went really well and we have started to make Desk Tidies), on a Thursday I have G1 boys for playgroup followed by G6 and G7 boys for table tennis and on Friday I have rehearsals for the Button Box. My remedial sessions have also started up again although I don’t know who I have yet for G6 but I have two nice G7 groups at the moment.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATILDA!
When Ian and Katie arrived from England they brought an electric piano and a keyboard which was very exciting. Chelcie and I are going to be giving a couple of children keyboard lessons which will be fun and should start next week. While discussing some music things with Ian we had a glass of white wine and had some nibbles, Chelcie then said "Grapes are made of wine" which made me laugh and she’d only had one glass by then!
Last Sunday was an incredible day – after reading in Church I spent the rest of the morning preparing for the following week. After lunch Chelcie and I go into our pyjamas and walked over to the Hans Heidal Hall carrying our duvets, pillows and my blanket. We then made a bed on stage with the blankets that live there and then settled down to watch ‘P.S I love you’ which was absolutely brilliant and we are now planning a road trip to Ireland together! Towards the end of the film a most terrific storm started – there was incredible thunder and lightning which actually shook the stage and it was raining in sheets which we could hardly see through. After a quick run about in the rain which left us soaking and freezing we curled back up to watch ‘27 Dresses’ as were now obviously stranded in the Hall. We had to watch with the subtitles on as the storm was so loud but we were very happy until the power went! Luckily there was a break in the rain so we managed to make it back to the flat but not before being caught in our pjs by a couple of children and teachers!
I hope that you are all well and that February has been a good month for everyone. Love as usual to absolutely everyone and I can’t believe that I am about to spend my 19th birthday in Namibia! Let’s hope it’s a good one.
Lots and lots of love
Me xxxx
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