Part Thirty Seven: Party, Baboon and Performance (23rd – 29th July)

We had a ‘long weekend’ in that Carla and Hannah taught our Monday lessons so we could continue with the Art Displays. For the Europe board background (also two boards) we drew out a map of Europe and then painted the countries different colours. Chelcie copied the map from an atlas but then ‘Chelciefied’ it; this means that the countries size depended on how much Chelcie liked it (massive England and Ireland) and some countries like Kazakhstan seemed to mysteriously disappear and don’t feature on our map. I tease her about this but we all know what would happen if I had to copy out the map – I would probably still be doing it now I’m such a perfectionist!

The Art Room now longer looks like a classroom – all the chairs have gone into storage with a couple of the tables and the rest have been rearranged to create a shop. This means that all our Art lessons for the next two weeks will take place outside or in other locations. For G3 this was just too much excitement and the lesson was pretty chaotic. Luckily lots of picnic tables have come out of storage and we have created a classroom outside the art room so lessons shouldn’t be so unruly from now on.

At lunch time I went for a walk on the tar road (meeting four warthogs) and was stopped by a tourist bus who was very concerned about me. They seemed to think I was trying to walk to Outjo and wanted to give me a lift and couldn’t understand that I was just walking to go for a walk as opposed to trying to get somewhere!

We have started working in the Art Room after supper in order to try and get everything completed. We stuck up all the children’s Europe work on top of the map and started on the Australasia boards. One has a black background with lots of Koru art work stuck on and the other one we have created an Ayres rock on which we have stuck turtles and lizards which have been done aborigine style. The Ayres rock has been made with literally sand paper – paper covered in glue which we put in the sand outside the art room to create authentic sand paper! Also very busy making and printing off name tags to display next to the children’s work. I have started making the people for the world – we painted a giant world on a piece of fabric in bright, block colours which is going up on one of the walls. We are making 7 people to be stuck up around the world; one representing each continent and they will be wearing clothes traditional to a country from that country.

                        Europe – Greece (a toga and green garland)

                        Africa – Namibia (body paint and an Ovambo skirt)

                        Asia – China (a kimono)

                        North America – Hawaii (sequin bikini, grass skirt and flower garland)

                        South America – Rio (carnival outfit – sequin top, feathered skirt and mask)

                        Australasia – Australia (t-shirt, shorts, cork hat and surf board)

                        Antarctica – Arctic (snow suit)

All the clothes are made from Material and so actually took ages to make. I painted the body of the person the same colour as the continent was painted on the map, so when they are stuck it will be really obvious where they come from. (Europe – lilac, Africa –yellow, North America – orange, South America – light green, Asia – dark green, Australasia – red and Antarctica – pink)

The Africa board is now completed as well. For the background we stuck up loads of red African patterned material which looks very effective. We then displayed G6’s silhouette work – sunset background with a black tree or animal in the foreground, and G7’s charcoal drawings of African trees. We decided that the Europe board didn’t have quite enough WOW factor so subsequently some of it is becoming 3D. Each country has various drawings stuck on to it and now some of the drawings are attached to half a loo roll so they stick out. This was an absolute nightmare to achieve but the whole thing looks a lot better. I had to use a mixture of glue, masking tape and selotape and they still all repeatedly fell down until I thoroughly lost my sense of humour with it all!

Matilda posted a picture today on Facebook of her diary with 26^th of August marked as ‘O coming home’. All very exciting but can’t really believe it’s so soon. Flu has now hit Otjikondo and most of our cast seem to be suffering – aghhh. Uapiona one of the four main parts has lost his voice which isn’t very conductive to successful rehearsals! So now we are trying to look after all the cast in order to make sure that they all stay healthy and happy!

Friday was a bit weird – all of the teachers apart from Mrs Vermaak, Ms Fabiola and Ken were away at workshops, meaning that we had responsibility for Grades 1 to 4. We did PT for two Grades at a time while the other two Grades watched a film, so it worked out quite well. In the afternoon we had a dress rehearsal in front of Gilly - this was to determine whether we were ready to perform and subsequently whether our first performance to St Mike’s on Sunday would happen….or not. Despite Uapiona being unable to sing, Paulus being in bed and a couple of out of tune songs we were deemed ready for performance. Button Your Lip (Damian’s rap), Crow’s Button (Wlatraudt’s solo) and the Irish Leprechaun Dance were absolutely brilliant and we were both ecstatic. This was the first time that we had actually allowed Desvino (Granddad) to eat on stage – we supplied him with a packet of biscuits and sweets and he was marvellous. We also realised that we hadn’t yet worked out a bowing sequence of an encore song which is customary so that was quickly remedied. They will repeat the second half of ‘The Pgyama Button’ (the last song) to bow to and then the encore song is ‘Button Your Lip’ with everyone joining in on the chorus rather than just the three backing singers. This is a risk as Damian still tends to rush but everyone enjoys singing the Chorus so much that hopefully it will work out. Gilly rated us 95% ready however we are going to change our set….

Just before TV started Byron arrived at our flat with a two week old baby baboon! It was so, so, so, cute. He had called it Thomas Philemo. When out hunting he had seen a lone baboon which means that it is a male one so he shot it (they have way too many baboons here so this is a form of population control) however, it turned out to be a female and there was Thomas. Byron was giving it to a conservation trust and was just waiting for it to be picked up. Thomas was like a really ugly little old man with a lot of hair. He was really sweet and we would just cling to you- he was fascinated with the collar of my jacket. His hands were amazing and he was just like a little baby but apart from the fact that he was a baboon! The children did not except our excuse for being late for TV and wouldn’t have believed us if a couple of children hadn’t also met Thomas.

After TV we joined Paul, Sara and Byron (now minus the baboon) to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. I can’t say I was overly impressed. Despite everything being executed amazingly and the lighting design being incredible, we all thought it was a bit random. I’m not sure if it was just because we were watching from Namibia but the commentator was awfully dull and much too quiet. The highlights for me were Mr Bean and fire beacons right at the end which did make it worth staying up for, just. What were the Germans wearing?

So, on Saturday morning it was time to redesign the set. Before we had our window on the backdrop stage right and stage left we had two ‘armchairs’ in fact two chairs draped with duvets. In between the chairs a table and on the wall behind some photos and a painting Chelcie did. Gilly has now given us two wicker chairs and a matching coffee table, a little desk and a book shelf. We have hung a painting over the desk and Chelcie’s painting (although amazing now doesn’t fit in with the rest of the set) has been replaced with a lovely wooden clock. The bookshelf has been filled with books, some DVDs and board games on top. The stage now looks a lot more filled and much more like a home. I only hope the children like it….

On Saturday evening Hannah and Carla returned from their Etosha trip where they had spent two days with Aileen, having had a great time, and we had Hannah’s leaving party. We decided it was time for another fancy dress party and Chelcie and I became matching Aborgine people/African warriors, Carla was an African witch doctor and Hannah was a clown complete with an Elephants head! I made a curry and Chelcie a syrup cake and we had a great evening.

On Sunday both my Intermediate and Advanced Recorders played in Church and they performed really well. They usually get quite nervous and it never sounds that good but I played with them both and it worked really well so I was extremely happy. In the afternoon it was our opening night of……The Button Box! We were starting at 3:00 but the lorry with St Mikes aboard turned up at 2:00 which momentarily through us until Sara sent them all to watch TV. Our first hurdle was to discover that we were missing two cast members. Firstly Tuhafeni who declared he was too ill to perform, the children all said there was nothing wrong with him but when I went to talk to him he said he was ill and couldn’t perform. Frankly, it was his loss not ours. The second person missing was Robertine. In the holiday she was bitten by a dog so she has been going to have lots of injections this term. She had gone to have one and hadn’t bothered to tell us. We were both seething. Luckily, Waltraudt said she knew all of her parts and she managed to fill in beautifully twice. Tuhafeni’s absence we just had to ignore. We then opened the curtain to show the cast their new set and the ‘wows’ from the children confirmed it clearly that they approved of our decisions. St Mike’s were a hard audience to perform to as they didn’t particularly respond to us but for a first performance I was very proud of them. It was completely flat but nothing major went wrong. The main four weren’t really acting which meant that the whole thing lacked life. Damian forgot his words at the start of the rap but then recovered brilliantly. The Uncle Tom Duet was horribly out of tune but luckily that was it. Kenisha sang her solo the best she has ever done it and it was stunning and once again the Crows Button and Irish Leprechaun dance were brilliant. Damian was really reluctant to do his song as the encore and bless him was totally petrified but I managed to persuade him that he could do it and he proved me right. I really, really love that boy.

We came back to the flat and just collapsed – totally exhausted. Home in four weeks. This time next week Parents Day will be over – aghh, lots to get done still before then. Once again a very busy week which seems to have flown by. I could really do with a time machine at the moment just to slow everything down as everything seems to be speeding up. Love and hugs to everyone

Love Ottilie xxxx

Part Thirty Six: Preparations (16th – 22nd July)

Monday morning started with Finger Painting with Wings Art which they really enjoyed; when we sent them back to class not only were faces, heads and shoes covered in paint but we were exhausted! It was absolutely freezing so as the children played football Chelcie and I walked laps up and down the pitch, much to the bafflement and amusement of the children, in order to keep warm. 

With the G3’s, G4’s and G5’s lessons we did Origami in Art to add to the Asia board – with the G3’s whales, G4’s penguins and the G5’s birds. They all enjoyed it although the G3s were significantly better (I’m sure nothing to do with the fact that the whales were a lot less complicated to make!). They all started off on a practice piece of paper and then they made their real ones on different brightly coloured paper. With the scraps of paper they then made little animals so at the end of the class we ended up with families of animals! With my boys craft group we made Chinese Lanterns which we hang underneath the Asia board and they look really good. Figo (G4) turned up to my Craft group for the second week running which was incredibly impressive – these are the only two times he has come in the last two terms; I think he has heard rumours of a craft party at the end of term!

Our G3 music class was very lively and we taught them 3 new songs – “She sat on her hammock and played her guitar”, “I’m taking home a little baby bumble bee” and “John Brown’s body lies amouldering in the grave” which they loved. I’m very aware that all the songs I have taught them involves someone or something dying and there are a lots of worms featured! Not really sure what this tells you about my childhood and what my parents taught me! The new GAPs are going to find the children’s repertoire of songs very bizarre and maybe slightly inappropriate?!

My G7 boys turned up to Remedial definitely not in a conductive working mood and were much more interested in the laptop in the next door room where Carla and Hannah were making our 3D Big Ben. They were very un-amused at the boy’s behaviour; luckily I am more used to them and could see the funny side of it. At the moment they are being pushed so hard for their exams that they are exhausted and I don’t feel the need to push them quite so hard in Remedial and am happy to relax a little bit. I also know which battles aren’t worth fighting!

I have now also worked out the perfect sleeping arrangement to keep me properly warm at night; I have a blanket under my sheet, I’m sleeping inside a silk sleepliner with a blanket on top, then my duvet and then another blanket. Also when necessary I can add a jumper and hot water bottle. I think it’s going to be a real shock to my body when I come home and it’s not sunny every day. Going to need to invest in some warm jumpers!

On Thursday, while collecting the Irish Sashes from the Costume Room I managed to fall of a stool and ripped my black jeans all the way down the inside of the right thigh which was a bit of a disaster. All my clothes are dying on me and not really sure what I’m going to wear for the rest of this term!

On Thursday afternoon we had the G7 behavioural meeting which was very entertaining. All the hostel staff, teachers, Mrs Vermaak and Gilly met in the staff room after lunch to discuss the G7s. Between us we had to fill in a form about each child which would be sent to their prospective high schools. This included things like their behaviour in class, in the hostel, respect for teachers, and compatibility with other learners…For each category we had to stay whether they were excellent, above average, average, below average or awful. It was a very amusing meeting as everyone had their favourites who they stuck up for fiercely and there were a number of disagreements. Certain people dismissed the child if they weren’t academically capable and others who could see past this were fighting their cause. We also had to decide which High Schools they were going to apply to. The children had already indicated schools that they were interested in but we had to check that they were financially viable as well as if they were academic enough to get in and if not make other suggestions. Out of all the children Diodores caused the most controversy and disagreement. Ken and Rob were very pro him even going as far as saying he could have been Head Boy (even I think this is going a little far) but Mrs Vermaak and a couple of other teachers were very down on him – he isn’t bright and at the moment his average is only 43% so he will really struggle getting a high school place. I am so protective over him and won’t let him go undefended if people are criticising him. I ended up going bright red and very hot fighting his cause and Gilly and Chelcie were laughing at me. Luckily he has ended up with a very good behavioural report which should help his High School application. I really want to get him into Outjo High School as Brenden (his best friend) is going there and is sensible as well as lots of other people from Otjikondo so there will be people to look out for him. His best friend, Sagittarius, from last year is also there along with other boys so lots of people to look after him. It also means when I come back I could visit him!

We were very cheeky and during G3 music and Wings PT we got the children to clean the bid display boards which we would use to display the children’s art work for Parents Day. On Friday and Saturday we spent the whole day camped out in the Art Room working on the North and South America boards. We have one board for North America and two for South. The North America board is a city sky line (New York) and it will have the G7’s collages displayed on top. It’s all done in black and white except some of the windows that are painted colours and it looks really effective. The South America boards have become a rainforest. We dyed tissues light and dark green which we stuck over balls of tissue to make a 3D background. We didn’t have any dye so we mixed paint and water together and used that to dye the tissue which worked really well, the only issue was it worked rather too well and we ended up green too. We then added vines and giant leaves before displaying flowers, butterflies and frogs which the G1’s and G2’s coloured in. The butterflies are attached to pipe cleaners so it looks as if they are flying away. I’m uber happy with how these two have turned out as they are just how we pictured them in our heads when we planned it all. We have now also stuck up the ‘hello’ words in different languages upon the walls which looks good – they are either orange, yellow, purple or red and really pop out on our cream walls.

Friday is keyboard lesson day – as usual Theopoldine progressed really well and we learnt a new piece. Revonia on the hand seems to have gone backwards again. I have made the decision to give up on teaching her to read music and teach her by heart – this is how she learns the recorder and I think she will enjoy it more if we give up the reading music battle.

The norm here is that various children end up wearing my jumpers when I’ve taken them off. Friday night was no different and Damian was curled up in my lax jacket – it looked slightly like a dress on him. The only difference to normal was that I was wearing Diodores jumper – he had given it to me after the matches at St Michaels to wash as it was black (it’s supposed to be white) and then I put it in the kitchen to give back to him. However, this meant that when I was leaving the house without a jumper I would see it and just end up wearing it. It is a really comfy fleece and to be honest I think he quite likes me wearing it although he pretends to be outraged!

Having promised to sing weekly until we leave Chelcie and I sang ‘Lord of all Hopefulness’ in Church accompanied by Hannah on the piano, which went well. My Intermediate recorders played ‘Amazing Grace’ on the recorders, which was interesting. At the end of the service Chelcie, Hannah and I sang outside for ages. We made Gilly nostalgic for her school days as we were singing lots of different English hymns from my Marlborough hymn book. We have also started to teach the children ‘Shine, Jesus Shine’ which was an instant hit and is now going to be used in the First Communion service.  Before lunch I went for a run and on the way back to Otjikondo I got clapped by a group of tourists who had got out of their car on the road side. Quite embarrassing! We went for a braai at Paul and Sara’s and Peter and Byron were also there which was really fun. We haven’t seen Peter since we stayed at Ohorongo in October! Everyone was on really good form and it was great fun.

I really can’t believe this brings me to the end of another week at Otjikondo. Time really does seem to fly when you most want it to slow down – not only do I not want my time here to finish but there seems to be an inordinate amount of things to do before Parents Day. Sundays are now very scary days as the each week it is one less week until we fly home. At the start of this year Wednesdays were very special days as we would exclaim “I can’t believe that we’ve been away for three whole weeks!” it seems ages ago since we started counting in months rather than weeks! Love to you all as usual, soon you can be talking to me in person rather than reading blog to hear all my news, can’t wait!

Love Me xxxx

Part Thirty Five: Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal and St Mike’s (8th – 15th July)

Having said that now we have internet I would be able to post my blog more regularly, I feel slightly awful only sitting down to write this now (today is the 9^th of August), my only excuse is that I have been incredibly busy. Luckily I write my diary in great detail so hopefully you won’t miss out on anything. And better late than never?!

Luckily, the antibiotics worked very quickly and I soon started to feel more like myself (I was about to write feel more normal but I can’t say I ever feel normal!). On the afternoon of the 8^th we had our much anticipated full run thorough of the play in front of Sara. This would determine whether rehearsal would continue or whether all our hard work would be scrapped. Luckily we got through without any major mishaps and it was deemed a success, a much lacking energy and pizazz success but still a success. Hannah and Carla (who the children call Miss Colour!) also watched and wrote us an objective list of things to work on to add to our already lengthy one! Much to my delight Glenn also made it back in time to join in with the performance.

This week I worked with Damian daily in order to improve his Rap. When he speaks naturally he has a bit of a stammer and he is very under confident but I love him dearly. I was working with him especially as everyone who has watched the play says that his song is the weakest and I could no longer make excuses for him. I was getting him to slow down so that the audience would have a chance of understanding what he was saying as well as keeping the energy up so that it was interesting to watch. Suddenly, something clicked and he got it. Not really sure how or why but I couldn’t have been more proud of him. Ruben who sings the solo in ‘Uncle Jack’s Button’ is now going to say his solo rather than sing it which is a shame. He has a lovely voice which is why we cast him originally but he can’t project it and suffers dreadfully from nerves. At least when he says it we get some life to the song – this is the other one that lets the play down. Hopefully it will work better this way. Xunta-I and Vanessa have always struggled with the tuning of their duet – we have admitted defeat on this one and are going to have Evangelina and Tuyambeka singing behind Vanessa in the Wings and Albertha and Waldraudt behind Xunta-I.

Not having any armchairs we have made big normal chairs into armchairs by covering them with a duvet each which surprisingly doesn’t look too bad. We have borrowed some cushions from Gilly and Granny and Grandpa should be rather comfortable! On Friday’s rehearsal Damian showed the rest of the cast his huge improvement and he was my star player. I ended up throwing a glass of water in Diina and Uapiona’s face. During the first scene they run in having been in a downpour and they weren’t doing it well so I thought it might help them to be actually wet! It did help but they didn’t appreciate it!

The preparations for Parents Day were still full on – during Wings’ art lesson we drew out words in bubble writing saying ‘Hello’ in lots of different languages – Bonjour, Hola, Privet, Saalam, which they then painted. With the G3s we carried on with the Europe work – they all had different pictures of things that European countries are famous for. For example a pizza for Italy, the Eiffel Tower for France and a cauldron full of goulash for Hungary! We have also finished our painting of the world map ready for the wall and now we just need to make the people. With G7 we started doing collages for the North America board – Brendon and I worked together on a baseball cap with L.A on the front. This put Diodores in a foul mood as Brendon got to sit with me alone (it was because everyone else had a partner and he was the last one and the odd one out so he became my partner) and he had to work with Milla. Bless him, he was acting like a 3 year old but luckily I saw the funny side of it!

I had a very amusing conversation with my advanced recorder group. I mentioned how I had heard from Mummy saying that she was tidying my room and all the children said how much they missed her and could they skype her, which was really sweet. Kenisha (the head girl) then asked me “What if she finds condoms?” which made me laugh a lot.

This week has been absolutely freezing and on Monday morning and I had to do a lot of running around in PT in order to feel my body! The bitter wind was really unappreciated. Luckily my lacrosse jacket has now arrived which I have pretty much lived in since. It wards off the wind and makes me very cosy, unfortunately Diodores has also discovered this. If I take it off even for a moment, it disappears and before I know it Diodores is wearing it! I had a great game of football with the G7s and took an inordinate amount of exercise – I’m good at getting to the ball but then I struggle to kick it!

Chelcie and I joined our craft groups together to get lots of hammer bead coasters made for Parents Day. The children made them and then we ironed the ones which looked good! Neither of us can understand the children’s fascination with the colour brown – it is really rather unattractive! Hannah then used up all the brown colours and made me a beautiful brown heart with a yellow x on which is now stuck on our fridge! With my Boys playgroup I made bookmarks and their colouring in was a lot better than the girls had done the week before.

On Wednesday we decided to have a music day and instead of during Art with G1 and G2 we did singing. We sang all the songs we’ve done with G3 and G4 in music as well as ‘Old Macdonald’, ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ and ‘The Wheels on the bus go round and round’. In between these lessons we had music with Kindergarten, with my voice rapidly disappearing, which once again was great fun. We took along the bells again and taught them all ‘I am the music man’ which they all enjoyed. They are all really sweet and it’s great fun teaching them.

On Wednesday night Glenn had another episode and Gilly took her home to her Father in Khorixas on Thursday morning. We only found this out after she left and I was devastated to hear this as I never had a chance to say goodbye. On Monday she had made me a card saying how much she loved me and asking if I would still be her pen pal when I went home. I reassured her saying that of course I would and I would give her all my details before I left, and I never got a chance to. The school have decided that she should live at home and go to school in Khorixas until she is totally better. If this happens she is welcome to come back for G7 but only if it is totally sorted. Gilly told us in confidence that Glenn’s father had told her that in the holidays he had finally got her birth certificate from her Mother (they are separated) and is name wasn’t on it. Glenn subsequently found out that her father wasn’t her birth father and they think the stress of not knowing whether he still loves her or not is causing these attacks. Hopefully living with her father for a while will reassure her and she will get better.

Did some rehearsing for the BOOF song (Build Our Own Future) and selected some solosists. We don’t know if Laurie will be able to use them but we need to have 2 for soprano and 2 for alto just in case. We selected Joyce and Kenisha for the sopranos and Albertha and Debbie-Debs for the alto one.

Hannah went on Facebook and discovered that she and Matilda have about 60 mutual friends and she is really good friends with Hugo Cod which is so bizarre! Hannah, Chelcie and I played the dictionary game using my Kindle dictionary, which is very lengthy, which was brilliant fun. There was no TV this weekend as the children had been noisy in Friday night supper and Sister Cornelia punished them. Little bit mean in my opinion but it meant we ended up playing a great game of ‘Who’s in the Bag’ which was very entertaining – mostly as I hadn’t a clue about who most of them were much to the amusement of Chelcie and Hannah.

Saturday was an absolutely incredible day. Happy birthday to Sam and Zim! We left at 7:30 for St Michaels on the back on the cattle truck along with the U11s, U12s, and U13 netball and football teams as well as an overage football team. This was the ‘second half’ of the match that we played at the start of the term. We played full matches but the score was continued (this meant that we were start off at a loss for all the matches apart from the U12 football and the overage which hadn’t been started yet). The drive there was absolutely freezing and it was very difficult to stay upright. Chelcie and I ended upstanding in the middle of the truck hugging each other with Johannes (G4) nestled between us and his blanket wrapped around us. I held the blanket up and Chelcie held on to the top rail to balance us – it was a successful way to remain standing until we turned into the drive. St Mikes have an 8km drive which is filled with pot holes. I had Marvelous clinging on to me to balance (not a good idea) and as the whole truck lurched everyone would just grab whoever was nearest to try and remain up right. I failed. I ended up on the floor with various children on top of me and I decided it was easier to stay that way! The atmosphere on the truck was brilliant- everyone was raring to go and singing at the top of their voices. I was confident it would be a fun day out.

The Netball matches were all very tense and exciting to watch – did I just say that about a netball match?! The U11s played brilliantly and won their match qualifying for the finals at Outjo. The U12 match was so tense – we were on form and soon we were drawing, today the teams seemed to be very evenly matched and as soon as one team scored the other team would draw even again. We ended up having two lots of extra times as they kept on drawing, sadly we just lost out losing 22-21 but they fought well. Let’s not mention the U13 team… By now the boys were raring to go and we started off well however they were better and the U11s just missed out. However our U12 team vanquished St Mikes and everyone was happy. Once again better not to mention the U13s – to be fair to us there team included 8 regional players. In particular John played incredibly – he captains the U11 team but then went on to play for the U12s and U13s without a break. We then had the overage match with the likes of Brenden, Diodores, Abner and Tjirondwauvi playing along with the help of Ken and Rob. Luckily they made us proud and we won easily.

We also went to see where Sam lives (the Project Trust volunteer at St Mikes), it wasn’t as nice as where we live but we are jolly lucky. While we were watching the football we had little St Mike’s girls playing with our hair. They were talking about us as if we couldn’t speak English and it was very funny. They were calling us ‘boers’ which is an Afrikaaner, and they were saying how if they were at Otji they would come and play with our hair every day. They said we should just stay at St Mikes but then all the Otji children would cry! It was very amusing. It was then time to go home….what I hadn’t reckoned for as we left in the freezing cold was that the sun would eventually come out. I returned resembling a lobster. Not a good look. By now I was absolutely exhausted from all the cheering and the sun and I curled up at the back of the truck between Diodores and Chelcie. Everyone was in extremely high spirits and it was another great journey.

In the evening we went for supper at Paul and Sara’s – there were lots of jokes made at the expense of my face: “Do we need to take a torch with us?” “No, Ottilie’s face will guide us through the dark”! Not amusing at all. Sara made lasagne and chocolate mousse which made me very happy and made up for all the jokes. Lasagne is one of my favourites and I haven’t eaten it in the last 11 months. This will be my first meal home with peas – please Mummy!

On Sunday I read in Church, luckily my face wasn’t too red due to the vast quantities of after sun I had smothered on during the night. I spent the rest of the morning writing out recorder music which is not one of my favourite activities but it is necessary. In the afternoon we had a great run through of The Button Box with Ms Laurencia watching who was very impressed. It was a really fun weekend overall and a very busy week.

Time to say goodbye now and I shall fill you in on the next week as soon as possible. I am sitting outside the classrooms on a picnic bench at the moment and Dankie has just come running over to give me a big hug which was sweet. He is looking rather interesting in a bright yellow hoodie and his Matilda green cords! I love him none the less.

Lots of love to everyone

Me xxxx