The children in the Senior Class are aged 10 - 14 and suffer from a range of disabilities. There is a girl with Down's syndrome, a boy with cerebral palsy, a couple of children with autism and a couple with brain damage. This means that each child has different needs to the next, so you constantly have to adapt your communication techniques depending on who you're interacting with. The boy with cerebral palsy for example could be your average eleven year old, but he is unable to join the mainstream because of his fragile physical state. He is extremely socially aware and you can have a very nice conversation with him. He actually shares the same birthday as me and when I told him it was all he talked about for the next couple of days. We planned our joint birthday party which is going to be an 'Underwater theme' and gave everyone different creatures to dress up as...
Earlier in the week I was chosen to help the Enrichment Centre children at the swimming gala which was a lot of fun. The kids had to swim one length of the pool while holding a float with us helping alongside them. The boy I was helping suffers from autism so he was a good swimmer but I don't think he fully understood the meaning of a 'swimming' race because when we reached the shallow end of the pool he just stood up and started to run... We did manage to get him to start swimming again but I think he was just very determined to win the chocolate bar.
There was also an 'International Day' festival at the school. It hosted stalls from all around the world that allowed you to try different foods - some nicer than others. When we investigated the South Africa stall we discovered some dried worms and I tried one because I said to myself before coming to South Africa that I would try something interesting. I wouldn't recommend them for taste...
Last night I had a very nice Skype call with my family. It's the first time I've properly spoken to them in a month so it was great to see them all (cousins included). To my immense joy our cat was also included in the Skype call and I think some people got a bit offended when they compared my reaction to seeing them with my reaction to seeing him. But never the less, I obviously love and miss you all and it was lovely to see you all again. And Tom - if you manage to do well in your upcoming prelims I will get you a very cool Christmas gift.
Apart from that it's been quite a quiet week with everybody getting ready to leave for the holidays. As I mentioned before we're planning to go to Swaziland but are still trying to figure out some cheap transport. At the moment the only thing we can find is a bus that costs over a hundred pounds and we're debating whether it's worth spending that amount of money on transport for just five days away. But we definitely want to go somewhere so if we can't find a cheaper way then we'll go for it. I think we'd rather spend a lot of money and see something than not see anything new.
So I don't know where I'll be next Sunday but if I'm here I will write another blog post. If not then you'll hear from me in two weeks time with some travelling stories!
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| The Worms |
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| Trying the Worms... |
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| The Grade 00 Concert - A Great Success! |
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| Concert Light Duty |
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