Monday morning was very sad as we had to say goodbye to Luise. I also woke up sounding like a man with a chesty cough – absolutely brilliant. We had a special goodbye assembly where all the children sang goodbye songs and both Mrs Vermaak and Gilly made little speeches about Luise. By end of this she was crying, I was crying and Chelcie was laughing at me! We had one last group hug and then waved her off as she sat on the front of Gilly’s quad bike. We all became really close friends in the last three months and we will miss her.
I then had the tricky job of trying to teach with no voice. The children found my voice absolutely hilarious but then were actually very sympathetic and well behaved. I also had Ken in the next door classroom who would pop in to check that they were listening to me. They actually had to be silent in order to hear and understand my voice so maybe it was a good tactic to employ! John, Sophie and Tyche left for St Michaels after assembly and after having lunch there returned with Sam in tow. By lunch time I was actually feeling pretty ill and retired to my bed for a bit before remedial and two hours of Recorders. Tyche came with me and the others came and listened for a bit and John came to the last part of my Advanced Recorders session. Tyche was very impressed that I could manage to teach Recorders for two hours in a row and I admit this is often a challenge and there is only so much shrillness the ears can take!
We then had some very mixed news from Gilly.....on the plus side our visas are now officially stamped and Robert has them. This is a huge relief as not only are we now legal but it means we can travel without difficult at Easter, Vic Falls and Cape Town here we come. On the down side they are only stamped until the 6th of June and we don’t fly until the 25th of August. This is so totally ridiculous that it left us both pretty speechless. They are trying to sort it all out but the worst case scenario is that we will be flying home on the 6th June which does not amuse me at all.
John is took all the other volunteers to Etosha on Tuesday, there wasn’t room for us all in the car so Chelcie and I didn’t go and we needed to teach anyway. Gilly said we could have an extra day at the Easter Weekend instead which was very exciting. We definitely got the better deal as they only ended up seeing one Giraffe and lots of birds anyway!
Lesson went really well all week and the children seemed to enjoy them which was good. Teaching English was very different to teaching Maths and Science but equally enjoyable. It’s weird out here as although English is the language of education it is still taught as a second language out here but still from English which is probably quite unique. I had only had one slight problem when one girl called Franzelle didn’t turn up to my double social studies lesson first thing on Tuesday morning. I was informed that she had been told by the hostel mother not to come to school until she had found her school shoes. I thought it was a bit weird that she didn’t manage to come to any of the lesson so I checked with Mrs Vermaak at break time. I discovered that this was a lie....the Hostel Mother had actually locked the hostel and told her that she would have to come to school in her pluckies (flip flops). However she knew she had a test with me and she hadn’t completed her Maths homework for Mrs Vermaak, the lesson after mine, so she went and hid in the sick bay! Needless to say when she was found she got into a lot of trouble. This isn’t the first time that she has lied and the teachers are starting to worry about what to do with her.
On the Wednesday evening after I made Chicken curry – this was pretty experimental but worked out well although a little spicy for Chelcie, we went over to Paul and Sara’s to chat. We wanted ideas as to what to do over the Easter Weekend when we have 6 days off. Our original plan was to go to Brandberg and then that fell through and then we were going to go down to Luderitz but that is so complicated to get to and back so we wanted ideas. Our only idea was to try and hitch to Botswana
On Thursday night Chelcie managed to break a chair! In our kitchen we have a long table with benches on either side and a chair at either end. Chelcie always sits at one end on the chair and I sit on her left on the bench. For some reason while Chelcie was eating a bowl of coco pops she sat down on the other chair which was obviously already a bit broken as she went straight through it! This was extremely funny but quite painful for her as she scraped her back and then was stuck! I was sympathetic but insisted on photographic evidence.
On Friday evening after our Button Box rehearsal we started making some of the costumes. We need four chocolate costumes – Crunchie, Smarties, Bar One (a bit like a mars bar but smaller and not as nice) and Chocolate Buttons. I started sewing a Chocolate Buttons outfit while Chelcie started taping boxes together to make the others. We had a really fun night and even made homemade pizzas to eat.
On Saturday I suddenly realised why getting the whole of G5-7 to write Creative Writing pieces was not actually such a good idea – it meant I had about 100 stories to correct and mark and some were awful! I gave them four marks out of five; firstly if they had put in any similes, metaphors and onomatopoeias, secondly if they had used speech and if so if they had used different words apart from ‘said’ (during the week we had a competition to see how many alternate words we could come up for the word ‘said’. G5 came up with 32, G7 60 and G6 62 which was pretty impressive), thirdly how many interesting adjectives they had used and lastly how good their actual story was. They had an overall mark out of 20 which could be slightly misleading – some of them had written brilliant stories but had failed to put in the first three elements while others wrote rubbish stories but filled them with adjectives, description and other words for said. Luckily, a few managed to do all four things which was brilliant. I had given them all the title of “The Island” but hadn’t given them any other stipulation so that “The Island” if they wanted could be the name of a street, a boat, a school, anything they wanted, so they had a very free reign. In order to spur them on I said I would award the best three from each year group a prize which went down very well. The way to the children is definitely through their tummies!
Sara also gave me some more cough syrup which I managed to not drop this time and told me to start taking some antibiotics as not only did Paul tell me I sounded like I had tuberculosis but I still was feeling pretty rubbish. In TV we watched a DVD that Nina had sent – she had made it from all her photos put together with music. The children absolutely loved this and it’s something that Chelcie and I will definitely do once we’ve left.
I cannot believe that it’s the end of March, we are now properly in our second half which is seriously scary. On the other hand tomorrow is April and April is when our parents come out, aghhhhhhhhhhh!! So records for this month: I’ve cried twice (fewest times so far!), read 20 books, sent 22 letters and received 25 (you win)! Throughout the month I’ve had a massive influx of things arriving for my birthday which has been amazing and meant I’ve had a very long birthday! I’ve seen 13 cheetahs, turned 19, got into Exeter Namibia
Okay lots of love to everyone at home and everyone who is also away travelling. I hope you are all having a brilliant time and I can’t wait to see you in 5 months time!!!
Lots and lots and lots of love
Ottilie
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