Well I've made it to the first weekend and lucky for me I get the weekend off! It has been an interesting week. Not stressful, but definately exhausting! One thing I didn't think of before is how much the grade 1's watch the grade 2's and 'model' their behaviour. So with no grade 2's in my classroom this year it's just me telling the kids over and over how they should behave. I think some of the rules are beginning to sink in; we'll see if they have forgotten them all on Monday or not. My biggest challenge is keeping their attention. They seem to have extremely short attention spans and are VERY easily distracted! We're trying a more 'hands on' approach to teaching this year (more manipulatives and centers and less book work) which I think will be very good for this particular class especially as the majority is boys. Of course this also means I need to be on top of my planning and organizing. I'm working on that...
Have a great weekend!

2012 begins

Well I made it back to Sakeji. I have decided I am never again going to do the back to back flights if I can help it! I managed to survive the 7 or so hour layover in LHR airport through drinking large amounts of caffeine, shopping and an amazing masage. The flight to Lusaka was far too long having had no sleep the previous night and of course being hopped up on caffeine. I did however, manage to snooze on the 3 hr flight to Sakeji.

Since arriving back we've had 2 staff meetings (one was just for the teaching staff), and I've had to re-arrange and set up my classroom. I have yet to look at the curriculm, other then labeling all the kids books of course.

I currently have 11 new students coming which I'm pretty excited about. This year we have separated the 2 classes, so now I just teach Grade 1 (for the most part). I will tag-team-teaching Science/Social Studies with the Grade 2 & 3 teachers as we're combining all 3 grades for those classes.

We have 3 new staff this term. Sarah Peat and Sam Morphat are just part time and Hannah Garcia is part time with the possibility of becoming full time. They seems like great people and are pretty excited to meet the kids and start teaching. Hannah will be working down in Lower school with Mark Ronald and myself (Grades 1-3). Sarah and Sam will be working in Upper school (grades 4-9) with Janette Young, Lina Burklin and Phil Towse.

It looks to be a pretty promising year. I can't wait to get started... except the planning and marking of course. :) Please pray for the students and their families as they arrive over the next two days by car and plane. Being the rainy season the roads are starting to get pretty mucky again.

One other item for prayer before I sign off and go to bed is for my work visa which expires at the beginning of February. Originally I was planning to just renew it for another 2 years. With the new government in place however, things are getting more complicated. Right now it looks like it would be $100 cheaper to get a new Visa than to renew. Of course either way, the price has nearly doubled! Please pray that things will work out smoothly without too many issues. This does not just apply for myself, their are several missionaries here in Zambia in the same situation.

What thrills your soul?

As we were singing the hymn "All That Thrills My Soul" this morning in church I started to think about what I was singing... "All that thrills my soul is Jesus; He is more that life to me; and the fairest of ten thousand, in my blessed Lord I see". Can I sing that and honestly mean it? Thought provoking isn't it. The one verse that caught my attention was "Every need His hand supplying, every good in Him I see; on His strength divine relying, He is all in all to me." Something I have learned in the past few years is that God does supply all my needs and I do rely on His strength to get me through each day, particulariy the difficult ones. It disturbs me to say I don't think I can honestly say "He is all in all to me". I have spent the past month enjoying time with my family and shopping for things to take back with me next year. During the past month how much time have I spent thinking about God and thanking Him for my wonderful family and the means to buy the things I need/want. Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas, the reason I am who I am and the reason I am at Sakeji School. This year (and I hope eternally)I am going to strive to live my life so that I can sing/say "All that thrills my soul is Jesus" and mean it with all my heart!

Been home (in Canada) a week already.... can't catch up with time! I've enjoyed some great family time already, mostly with my sister and very cute nephews. Now I'm already enroute (currently waiting in the airport in MN)out west! I'm pretty excited about it for a few reasons. 1) get to spend time with Chris & Laura 2)i've never been west (that i remember) and am looking forward to taking in the sights.

sorry this is so short but running out of internet time. will have to write more once i arrive in Seattle.

so this is my second attempt to send out this blog. i was sitting in a cafe typing away totally unaware that my time had run out. :( but that seems to be the theme of my life the last week or so as there hasn't seemed to be any time to sit and figure out where i'm at!
i got my report cards done 3 hours before deadline and only had one correction to make. hurray! i think i'm getting better at it. :)
the last few days of classes were a blur of getting the classroom cleaned and keeping the children occupied. our end of term show rehearsels went reasonalbly well but i was still pretty nervous about the actual show.
wednesday came and with it the parents and visitors and a whole bunch of stress! i made it through the parent/teacher interviews with most of my sanity intact. got the kids sorted out with their costumes and proceeded to the end of term show. it was quite the "interesting" show with the kids messing up 2 of their songs and myself making up all my lines as i went along; then completely blanking on one of them! by the end i was just ready to "go home!". unfortunately i still needed to pickup costumes, wash the 1/2 container of baby powder out of my hair and finish packing before stumbling to bed sometime before midnight.
thursday dawned bright and early with 3 grade 1 entrance interviews to do before 10am! thankfully i was able to divide the work with mark and pam ronald and we got through them rather efficiently. then last minute house cleaning (especially getting my dishes done)and up to the airstrip for my 11am flight OUT OF THERE! :D
the first 15 mins of the flight was kinda fun as i had 3 of my students baraging me with "miss sheach look at that!" and "what is that?" etc. then suddenly the excitement changed when their stomachs started turning over. thankfully only one ended up getting sick and i didn't really have to deal with it too much. the rest of the flight was rather miserable. when we landed it was around 3pm and we were starving (not having eaten since breakfast) so lina and i grabbed a coke and some chips at the airport. we spent some time window-shopping at the marvelous Mandahill Centre (you'd think you were in north america is crazy!) and grabbed a latte before heading out for supper. the supper was an amazing, mouth-watering steak meal which was to die for after being in the bush for awhile! unfortunately we didn't get much sleep between the heat, pouring rain and the dogs (the usual problems here in lusaka).
this morning after breakfast we hired a taxi to take us "around town" as we had some errands to run before Lina caught her flight. we got most of the errands we needed done and finished my christmas shopping as well. i've taken the rest of the day to relax and try and get caught up on some sleep!
tomorrow at 7am i leave for the airport for my 9am flight to London. back in canada on monday... i think.

Once again avoiding work..

I am 'taking a break' from report cards at the moment (AKA avoiding); I've actually got all the marks in, which is the easy part. (Well, once I'd sorted out the new report card format! - there was a LOT of baking going on to relieve the stress caused by that on Friday)Now comes the part i totally detest... writing the comments! i know it's important for the parents, it's one of the only ways of communicating with some of them. it's just so hard to write all that needs to be said in the space provided. sometimes the hard part is trying to think of how many different ways you can politely say 'your child is lazy and needs to get their butt in gear'. my goal is to get all my report cards done by thursday night so that i'll have friday to pack (lina and i need to ship our suitcases down to lusaka earlier then we fly) and the weekend to relax/ work on my lines for the play.

The play is coming along quite well, i'm mostly frustrated with myself and my sieve-like brain that can't seems to remember my lines as soon as i stand up on stage. i know lina's rather stressed over the music end of things (and her lines) but i think the kids seem to be doing quite well.. but then i'm not musical so ... :)

Tomorrow the 3 TA's fly out around breakfast time, so it's back to just me in the classroom. I've been slowly working in more Christmas crafts and less work so it shouldn't be too bad. the kids are starting to get antsy though and it's getting harder to keep them in control. i TOTALLY understand how they feel, i don't really want to be in the classroom any more either. unfortunately we don't get much of a choice there. i really only have Tues-Thurs full class days, a few periods on Friday and Saturday and then Monday and Tuesday are only 1/2 days as we have play rehearsels. yahoo! Lina and i have already been planning out what we're going to do/buy as soon as we get to Lusaka. high on our list is going to the new cafe or any restaurant really!

please pray for
1) the parents as they drive up on Wednesday and home on Thurs. we've been getting a lot of rain so there will be bad patches on the road, especially if a storm hits that day.
2) the end of term program will go well, but more importantly will touch the lives of those who hear it as they hear the true meaning of Christmas
3) of course for safe traveling for myself and Lina as well. we fly out of Sakeji next Thurs Lina leaves Lusaka on Fri and I leave on Sun (arriving home Mon).

ok, now back to work i go!

counting down again!

What a crazy day it's been, and it's only 11am! The end of term insanity is officially beginning.
This morning at breakfast i was asked to interview a potential grade 2 student. i had no problem with doing this except that i have never done the grade 2 interviews and am unfamiliar with the process/tests etc. on top of that, i had to re-vamp my morning plans (which i had actually done in advance for once!) so that i could get one of the TA's to supervise my class. i spent 15 mins running around looking for the people i needed and finally gave up and wrote them a note on the blackboard, which thankfully worked out ok.
the interview went fairly well (considering i didn't know what i was doing and the girl was pretty nervous) but it took much longer then i expected so i didn't get through all i had wanted to do. after the interview i went back to my classroom and proceeded with the usual classroom mayhem. (actually they were fairly well behaved this morn). 45 mins later (tea time) i was in desparate need of a cup of tea but was only able to get down about 1/2 a mug (it was really hot!)before i had to run out to get the truck to pick up Bethany from Ikelenge. Today was the first day of grade 9 national exams. as we only have 1 grade 9 student she had to go to the local highschool to sit her tests. Bethany Fuller went with her to keep her company in between tests (hour long break) because she's she and it's her first day. please pray for her this week as she not only has the pressure of the exams, but apparently the students from the local highschool are pressuring her for answers as they figure she should know them b/c she's from Sakeji.
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it's now 6:30 pm and I'm just getting around to finishing my blog. i was supposed to pick Kahalu up but due to the problems she was having our headmaster went in to talk with the headmaster from Ikelenge school and let him know what was going on. apparently it will be 'sorted' tomorrow. we're not holding our breath about it tho'. the rest of my day flew by rather quickly. my class was excited to find out that the Brownies they had written to in England had replied. So we spent the afternoon classes working on writing back to our penpals. the kids were excited about this for several reasons: 1) usually only the senior classes get penpals and 2) it meant they didn't have to do creative writing. :) (not their favourite subject).
i keep forgetting that i am in charge of 'senior girls games' on mondays. so after school i was racking my brain trying to think of something to do with them. however, phil towse asked if we could do 'swiches' (meaning i got the senior boys instead). although i wouldn't normally be pleased with this it actually made my descision easier. they've been drilling on rugby all term so they were over then moon when i suggested we play football (aka soccer).

now i'm back in the class trying to get some marking done and my report card grades all tallied up (so i'll be ahead of the game for once). and plan for tomorrow as i have another interview. i think i've figured out what my 'sub' can do with the class. hopefully she'll be able to reign them in tho'! must go if i'm gonna get all that done as i also have to drill my lines for end of term program tonight. sigh. i just keep telling myself that we're almost done! 13 class days left!