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 9th 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 8th 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
No comments:
Post a Comment