Saturday, June 26, 2010

Update

Oops! Falling behind in my updates, sorry about that. The closer we get to end of term the less time i have. Yesterday I finally got caught up in some of my marking but there is still SO much to do! where does it all come from??? It got rather piled up this week because i was busy with other things instead. Tuesday night we had a long staff meeting, Wednesday I was in the dorm, and Thurday we had a staff/board meeting. Having the board memebers on station was nice (they had 2 days of meetings) but it always gets the kids riled up to have 'visitors' and having so many at one time is crazy! It was nice to meet some of the board members, some of whom I haven't seen for 15 years.
Also this week I have 'opened Pandora's box' by starting a reading competition in my classroom. The children must read to a staff member or senior student and have them sign a paper stating that the book was read to them. I'm trying to encourage them to read more. The girls have gone gung-ho with this and are pestering the staff every spare minute they have "can i read to you!" It's hard to say no when they're so excited about reading. The senior girls have been very patient with them and many of them will listen to the younger girls read. It's great to see the different ages interacting in a positive way.
The end of term program is slowly beginning to fall into place. Lina and i are worried that we're not going to get it all together in time! There are so many solos to co-ordinate as well as costumes to figure out and make, backdrops, etc. Hopefully we can pull in some more staff support on this otherwise i think we're in for nervous breakdowns! only 4 practice days left before dress rehearsle. yikes!
Well, i should get off the computer and get my classroom set up for craft time. Today we're taking the 'one stroke' painting techniques we have been practicing for 3 weeks and applying them to wood. No redos now! this could be an interesting class :S

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Weekend Getaway

What a weekend! Friday morning i was ready for a breakdown, my students were not behaving or listening or obeying and i was ready to send them all to the headmasters office! Thankfully i had friday afternoon off, and i baked and baked to get rid of my frustration. We now have a house full of baked goods. :P God obviously knew i needed a break because friday at noon Margie Young (grade 3&4 teacher) asked if i wanted to join herself and 2 other staff members on a weekend getaway. of course i grabbed at the offer! Bruce and Marilyn Poidevin (Bruce is a CMML pilot at Kalene) have just opened an awesome getaway for missionaries (or whoever can wants to pay to stay there). It's very reasonably priced and is completley private. 4 of us jumped in the truck Saturday after lunch (we still had to teach morning classes on Saturday) and headed out for a day and 1/2 of relaxation and QUIET! It was exactly what we needed. We spent our time soaking up the sun, reading, shopping at the local market, hiking in search of the 'slave caves', swimming in the chlorinated pool (a treat for us), playing games, watching movies and overall just relaxing. We left early (5:30am) Monday morning in order to make it back to school in time for breakfast. Although I was a little tired from the late night and early morning, i felt renewed and ready to take on the world... or at least the students at Sakeji! Yesterday and today is our 1/2 term, so although it's two days of no classes, we still have to organize events to keep the students occupied. but the teachers still get a break as we're not all needed all the time, we take turns supervising different activities. right now the kids are bike riding or in hte computer lab (depending on their age) but in about 20 minutes i'm going to get a soccer game going. the kids know how much i love soccer, so they get me every time, begging me to get a game going. I managed to resist yesterday, but i gave in today. it should be quite fun as long as the students play by the rules, they have 'sakeji rules' here which makes the game a 'free-for-all' which i can't stand! so today the rules will be, 'i'm the ref and what i say goes.' if they whine, they'll be doing laps. ya, i'm that mean. :)

tomorrow we go back to the regular school day routine (or at least we try!). we now have 5 weeks left of the term. i can't believe that's it! yesterday i was working on sorting out my flights sorted out, still trying to iron out the details. but if all works out as planned i should be landing in canada on August 10th. to those of you in GB reading this, i'll be arriving in London on July 22nd. other then that, no firm plans yet. well, i must go get the field set up. more later...

Friday, June 11, 2010

birthday party

(written Thurs. June 10/10)

Well i managed to survive yesterday. I think it was my longest day yet! I started 'on duty' at the usual 7am but wasn't 'off duty' until 11:30pm. This morning i must confess i'm struggling to stay awake so this blog may not be comprehensible. i'm quite happy that the birthday party is over and seemed to go well. Lina and i had about an hour and 1/2 to get the dining room ready with the artwork the children had made, the backdrop and last minute touches on our costumes. We only had time to read through our scripts once, so things weren't as smooth as they should have been but it wasn't any worse then other years/terms. If anyone has ever seen a VeggieTales movie, we planned out the 'show' to follow along in the same mannor as the movies. starting with the theme song at the beginning,then the 'letter', story, silly songs, Quirty the computer and even the ending song that Bob hates so much. After birthday party Lina and I still had no time to rest as we are now in charge of the girl's dorms on wednesday nights so we had to make sure 32 girls had brushed their teeth, washed their faces, changed into pj's and were tucked into bed with hugs, kisses and a song. the dorm mom had the night off and went visiting some friends so we had to stay in the dorm until she returned. we popped in a video and 'vegged' on the couch till she got home. another long day today, but not nearly as long as yesterday, i was originally going to begin the end of term program practices today, but i think they can wait one more week!

by the way, my solution to the costume party was using a large piece of red cloth pinned onto a mosquito net ring. it wasn't perfect but it sufficed.



the 'veggie tales' counter back drop (we put the canisters on too high so they appear to be floating)


my Quirty the computer cake (someone else added the 'mouse')


Bob and Larry (not the best pic, but the only good one i have on my camera)


Room one 'asleep' (grades 1/2 girls)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

help i need ideas!

Birthday party is just around the corner and i'm not ready yet! I just spent the last 45 minutes making a "Quirty the computer" cake. actually the 'veggie' cakes all look pretty great. i'll have to take some pictures of them tomorrow... if i find the time. Lina and i previewed some rather... interesting skits today. some of them had the right idea but they were too long, others had no idea of what they were doing... it should be interesting tomorrow to see how they end up. the thing that has me most worried is a costume. i'm supposed to play 'Bob the tomato' but i'm not exactly sure how to make that costume. i've had some scattered ideas and even attempted to die a mosquito net red last night, it turned a very nice shade of pink... hmmm. now what? any ideas? i have about 26 hours to come up with something. :S if you get some brilliant ideas let me know!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

On the mend...

So my cold seems to be finally coming to an end. My voice has been located again (for the most part) and life continues on.

I was just writing out a 'to do' list for myself and i suddenly realized i might have bitten off more then i can chew! i have volunteered myself (and lina) to be the MC's at this terms birthday party which means we have to plan and organize pretty much the whole thing, this includes, songs, skits, games etc. basically an hour or so of entertainment. The theme this term is VeggieTales so we've got TONS of ideas and stuff it's just getting it all organized. Lina will be Larry and I'm Bob. This is not because of our personalities (or it would probably be the other way around) but more because she's tall and i'm short. We suddenly realized this weekend, that birthday party is scheduled for June 9th... that gives us just 8 more days. THis wouldn't be so bad except that we are also both incharge of directing the end of school program, Lina will be doing the music and i'm in charge of the acting end of a musical called "We Like Sheep". I think it will be pretty cute. Lina's already got the kids learning the songs and we've auditioned and chosen the kids for the speaking/acting parts. now i just have to find the time to get the kids organized and start learning lines etc. this is definatly going to be a busy term! but it's bound to be a lot of fun. my only regret is that i won't be here the final night when the preformance will be going on as i'll be in lusaka waiting for my flight to London. :(