Saturday, July 26, 2014

In Brief

* Term 2 of 2014 is officially over! The kids were all gone before lunchtime on Thursday, and we staff members are slowly recovering in our various ways. For me, this includes a lot of sleep... I usually find it all I can do to stay awake till lunch time on Thursday!

* Wednesday was a crazy day: parent-teacher interviews, a big scavenger hunt, the annual general meeting, and a bonfire in addition to a morning of finishing off the last few things. Praise the Lord all went well, and I had some good conversations with parents.

* Beth, Bethany, and Sharese flew out this morning--I'm going to miss those girls! They made it safely to Lusaka, and will be flying out over the next few days.

* I got a kick out of this storage area for the grass the school bought last week. Our new container depot!

Parting shot: This was taken on my last river duty of the term.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Bracing for exam week and scolding my cat

This week was far too short of a school week because of half-term, and this coming week is exam week, so I'm spending my last weekend on getting as much work done as I can in between weekend duties. I must say though, that I am SO thankful that I have the last weekend off to attempt to sleep enough to be coherent when I do parent interviews!

I've had to apologize of my cat's meddling with my marking before, but I came home this morning to grab some laundry and found this:

The good news was that the assignment that I need a grade on wasn't harmed! Java seems to get rather passive aggressive as the end of term comes up; I think she resents me being gone so much. And, because she's a cat, there isn't a whole lot I can to do discipline her! She may look innocent, but I am not fooled...

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Now the madness begins…

Last Wednesday was our school birthday party; the theme was “Transportation.” I dressed up as a cowgirl, and the kids had a great time as always enjoying the delicious meal and all the cake and candy. Saturday was our annual Sports Day, and then Monday and Tuesday are our second Half-term. Four regular school days follow, then exam week starts. I’m not sure who will be more tired at the end of the term—the kids or the staff! I was the scorer and ribbon awarder for sports day, which means that in between bouts of action I was able to get some knitting done (I have a deadline). It was a lovely day—cool, but not to hot, and the kids had a blast. It always amazes me to see kids who usually dawdle and putter about the school streaking about! Here are a few pictures of Sports Day.

Every Sports Day starts with the whole school helping to carry our tug-o'-war rope, "Big Bertha" up to the sports field.

Each of our four house teams, Poole, Hoyte, Moleneaux, and Fisher had a tent to be in while they were not competing in a track or field event. I'm on Fisher, which meant that this is the one day a year when I will wear a yellow shirt.

I had a good view of the javelin and ball throw from where I sat distributing ribbons and entering in race scores,

I also had a good seat to cheer for the different races. Here’s what my view of Sports Day looked like:

We had some very tired kids and staff members by the end of the day, but we had no major injuries, and I was really encouraged to see some great displays of sportsmanship by kids of all ages. Also, the staff won the tug-o’-war against not only all our junior students, but against the seniors as well. Totally worth the sore muscles today!