Monday, July 18, 2016

Dinosaurs!

The big event this week was our birthday party, which was delayed when Mr. Y passed away in June. The theme was dinosaurs, and I didn’t get around to taking a single picture. The staff had foam dino hats provided by some short termers, so dressing up wasn’t too big a chore, and the kids had a blast with the dino goodie bags by their plates. The show was a pretty typical birthday party show; there were some funny skits, some awful ones, and some that were funny for reasons totally other than what the kids intended. My students were surprisingly with the day after, but there was some late homework on Wednesday. I was able to get two of my exams out of the way, and I have official started working on the report card comments.

Please pray for the teachers at Sakeji as we put in our tri-annual Herculean effort to get all the exams and report cards finished by Saturday, and also that the horrible flue that is sweeping through the school will pass the staff by. It’s bad enough trying to sort out the sick and faking kids, but to try and go through the busiest week of the year being sick yourself would be a very big trial.

Just a week and a half left! Where has term 2 flown?

Parting shot: Thank you Lord, for roses in the midst of the crazy.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Week 10--two and a half more to go!

Monday and Tuesday of last week was half-term, so there was a nice break from the rigors of school. I got pretty much caught up on marking, took some sorely needed naps, and got a sore arm after participating in the tug o’ war that was part of the ‘fun’ races day. My kids brought their brains back to class to varying degrees, and one of my students pride and ungratefulness is really wearing at me. They burned most of the fire break around the school, and though my house sat in a cloud of smoke for two days, I felt much better knowing that if I did hear the crackle of a fire, at least my house wasn’t first on the gone list!

This is our last ‘normal’ week of school, with the coming week being exam and report card writing week. I am going to be giving a few of my exams this week; one of the benefits of first and second term being you can finish a unit for the report card, and then roll the last few days week onto the next. Third term, unfortunately, allows no such luxury… I’m going to try and start writing my comments as I can this week to ease my work load in that last full week.

Parting shot: Here is a picture of the lower school as it looked a week ago. Since then they have got a few roofing sheets put up. Chovu, chovu!

Monday, July 4, 2016

Highlights from Week 9

* Our two staff members who’s father passed away are back with us now, so we have all our staff again. It’s going to be a busy last three and a half weeks of term.

* Saturday was Sports Day. It was my first Sports Day as the headmistress of Fisher house, and my kids did me proud. The second half of sports day will be this Tuesday; after that we’ll find out who won! Here was my view as the official scorer—of course I had knitting!

* On Sunday there was a bush fire that got out of control and almost swept across the airstrip to the school. I was out walking on the airstrip, so I had a ringside seat for the excitement. Out of all the fires I’ve seen over my years here, that was the first time I was worried. Hopefully this means we’ll get our fire break burned this week…

* For your enjoyment a few more ‘howlers.’
“Tasmanian devils in zoo’s would probably have chuncks of meat throne to them…”
On being told that Bach had 20 children, “Are you SURE?” A second grade student.
“Second Declension Newter” and the Pyramids are apparently located on the Giza Plato.
Did you know “The Nile river flows from downer Egypt to Upper Egypt”?
And, there was a return of the ‘fool’ instead of full grain.

Parting shot: One of my seventh grade students got creative with her rough draft of her research paper on chipmunks.