A Little Bit More Detail...

As my last blog post wasn't exactly detailed I thought I should add a bit more before I go to the Masai Mara and get pre-occupied with leopards and elephants and the like.

Last weekend was a lot of fun; a lot of people, including my housemate Rebecca, went to climb Mount Kenya (I decided that 300 pounds was too much to spend on an inevitably painful 4-day climb up a sheer face of rock) and so some of the girls who were left decided to sleep over at Ellen and Amy's house on Friday and Saturday night. This was LUXURY. The house was huge and we had two pillows (I had no idea how much I'd missed this until now and this has prompted me to take to 'borrowing' cushions from the living room each night to put under my pillow at home), a huge television with Charmed playing on it, and a breakfast of cereal and eggs and beans and TOAST (our house has no toaster!) and pineapple :) It was sooo good.

So, aside from taking advantage of their lovely house, we spent Friday night watching many many films, slept in for a long time on Saturday and then went to Summit on Saturday night. Whereas Summit is usually free and has just the right number of people in it, this week there was an event with the 'best' DJs in Nakuru (they were awful) and so we paid 2 pounds for entry, got two free beers just for coming (these tasted foul and so we sold them to some men who claimed to be related to Barack Obama), and the whole place was way too crowded. Money and phones got stolen from people on the dancefloor, thankfully not mine, and some German men caused some chaos to say the least. We learnt never to go to events at Summit.

I also took two motorbikes this weekend :D Like the boda-bodas, they are motorbike taxies with a man driving and you sitting on the back. The first time was to Ellen and Amy's house and was fun but they went extremely fast and I spent quite a substantial amount of time wondering if I was going to die. The second time was in the dark on the way to Summit - Annie and I went on the same one and it was AMAZING just zooming along in the dark with the stars and screaming at our friends on the motorbike next to us.

Reassuring note for Nanny and Mum: we only ever get motorbikes with drivers we know are safe :)

In terms of school and teaching, this week has been really difficult. With Rebecca away, Annie and I still had full responsibility for Standard Three who were a nightmare some days. There were incidents of stealing, beating and cutting-themselves-with-razors-to-get-plasters. It was ridiculous. I felt extremely bad and incompetant some days as, because we can't speak swahili, some of the more complicated issues we had to pass over to the Kenyan teachers to resolve, which led to children (some of them innocent) being beaten. I felt so terrible and so guilty watching them squirming and sobbing as they were beaten because I should be able to discipline them myself and in a way that doesn't lead to them being harmed, but because I don't know how yet I had to pass it to other teachers, which is as bad as beating them myself . I am now busy thinking of ways to control them and determine what's going on without beating them or speaking swahili, but thankfully next week Standard 3's teacher should be coming back so I will return to my original Standard 4 class, who are far better behaved and who are all absolutely lovely.

To contrast with the above 'standard three are evil' paragraph, here are the best parts of my school week:

-- P.E. with Standard 4. I didn't really have any choice about this; I hadn't seen my class all week and then yesterday I was walking past their classroom door and heard 'TEACHER IT IS P.E. IT IS P.E.!!' I walked into their classroom and they all leapt up and down cheering :) We spent a very happy hour or so outside, them teaching me Kenyan games (and picking me to do all of them, cheering 'TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER' when I was competing) and all fighting to hold my hand and show me what to do.

-- Lovely girls in Standard 4 - a group of them ran up behind me and clasped their hands over my eyes, giggling at breaktime yesterday. I love them :) They are so sweet.

-- Hearing that Class 3 would be getting a BLACK blackboard. So happy. Their current blackboard is a very white shade of grey. All the kids have to wander up and stick their noses right in front of the board to read the tasks set for them. The blackboard is being painted black over the weekend :)

-- Being asked to take an art class by the headteacher. He wandered up to me on Tuesday and said that Standard 7 had been asking if I could teach them an art lesson for ages :) I have excitedly planned a lesson about how to draw faces :D

I have been through my blog today and added some photos to some of the older posts, so if you're interested then take a look :)