Mainstream, Monks and Mechanics

This week has been a long one with lots of things happening, lots to prepare for and lots of memorable moments. I was back in Mainstream this week working with the little ones which was, as always, exhausting but highly entertaining. 

Because it was the last full week of term before the summer holidays, Santa paid the Grade 00s and Grade 0s a surprise visit. Sadly Santa's beard was a bit too big for his face and kept falling off, and from that some of the kids worked out that it wasn't actually Santa but the director of sports... But apart from that minor slip the morning was a huge success. All the children loved going up individually to get their presents and getting a turn to sit on "Santa's" knee. After that the week was completely Christmas themed and I spent a whole day with the Grade 00s making little Santas, decorating trees with glitter and playing Christmas games. I'm pretty sure I was loving it as much as they were - if not more.

On Thursday we had the EC Christmas concert and after weeks of preparation it couldn't have gone better! All the kids managed to stand up in front of everyone and perform, which for some of them was a huge achievement. The costumes and stage props that we'd been working on for days ended up looking great and the compliments were rolling in by the end of the show. 

One of the older boys from Lifeskills will be leaving us after Christmas to study at a local music college so he decided to stand up and say a few words before the concert was over. The speech started of well but then started to deteriorate when he just started thanking everyone in the audience individually. It was very funny but we had to step in when a child ran across the stage and he ran after the kid thanking him for making an appearance. 

After such a hectic and exciting week I was very much looking forward to spending the day at the Buddhist retreat. I thought it was going to be a very relaxing experience but I couldn't have been more wrong - it was actually the most exhausting day of the whole week! 

We started the morning by getting picked up outside the hostel by Niki, one of the teacher at the school who had trained to become a monk for three months. He was telling us that he also spent ten days training in a cave, not able to see daylight, having to go to the toilet in the same space and just being alone with your thoughts in the dark for the whole time. I can imagine it must seem like a lifetime. A psychologist has to be on hand because the experience can actually be maddening, but you're allowed to leave whenever you want.

After getting picked up by "The Plum" (Niki's small purple car), we drove for an hour until we reached the jungle in which the Buddhist retreat is situated. The roads through the jungle are the roughest I've ever experienced and the bottom of The Plum took quite a bashing. At one point we all had to get out of the car so that Niki could drive up a particularly tricky road... About another hour later we finally arrived at the retreat.

The farm building in which the Buddihist retreat was held was absolutely beautiful. It was like we were in a completely different country. The contrast between the setting of Polokwane and the farm was huge. Compared to the hot, dry and dusty landscape surrounding Mitchell House, this place was misty, cool and lush with vegetation and when there was a break in the mist you could see the surrounding valley from the porch of the farm house. Down the road a little bit from the farm, there was a small area of pine forest and that really reminded me of the woods we have up in the north of Scotland. You couldn't ask for a better place to meditate!

We started the meditation at 8am and carried on until lunch, with small medication walks in between. As well as silent meditation we practiced chanting and learned more about the Buddhist culture. In total I think we meditated for about 7 hours and I found myself drifting off at various points... But apparently in Tibetan Buddhism the monks fall asleep all the time so I didn't feel too guilty.

After a surprisingly tiring day, we started to pack up and get ready to leave. Sadly when we tried to start up The Plum we found out that the bashing she took was more serious than we thought so Niki had to do some quick mechanical work. That's when we came up with the phrase "monk by day, mechanic by night."

Turn Up The Heat...

In the last week we have really experienced the variety of African weather. Apparently summertime is usually very unpredictable - it can be 35 degrees one day and then raining and cold the next. For somebody used to Scottish weather, experiencing so much heat at this time of the year is strange... I think my body is still expecting to go into hibernation mode. It is however, quite funny seeing staff wandering about the school wearing a Santa hat accompanied by shorts and a t-shirt. And because of the current postal strike in South Africa, everyone's joking that Santa will take this year off - the kids don't find the idea too amusing though.

This week I continued working with the Lifeskills class which was lovely. The kids are making great progress with their performances for the Christmas Concert and all the costumes are almost finished as well. One of the dances is very traditional and I get to wear a very fetching Zulu outfit along with all the other girls. The boys have to wear leopard skin and headbands. I'm personally very impressed with one of the kid's progress with the song Umbrella by Rihanna - she's gone from knowing almost no words to singing each line perfectly. She suffers from epilepsy and has difficulty remembering and pronouncing words, so I decided that the best way to help her remember the words was through actions. By working on a couple of lines each day and then rehearsing what we'd previously gone over, she improved slowly and steadily and now - almost two weeks later - she's singing them better than RiRi! It's a huge achievement for her and an extremely rewarding experience for me being able to see that my method of teaching actually worked!

I also had the pleasure of meeting one of the Lifeskills students who has been out of school since we arrived. Her absence is sadly due to sickness, but she'll hopefully be well enough to come back soon. It was her 18th birthday on Monday so we all sang Happy Birthday in the various languages of South Africa and finished by having a very impressive cake. Her Mum then handed out personalised face cloths with a thank you message on the back to all the staff - I was very touched as it was my first introduction to her.

In other news: I sent off my Christmas parcel yesterday (hurrah!). It will hopefully reach home by next week and then I'll leave it up to my parents to hand out the cards. I had to send it via DHL so that it wouldn't be affected by the current strike - a little pricey but worth it. We've also been invited by one of the teachers to accompany her on a weekend Buddhist retreat in the mountains in two weeks time. I think it's going to be so interesting and I can't wait to see the mountain setting. Since being here we've only visited the mountains once and I do miss them because living in Scotland you grow so used to that kind of environment.

Next week I'm back in Mainstream and I can't wait to see all the little rascals again. I'll definitely have some funny stories for my next post. Before I go I'd like to add a quick link to a video I took in Swaziland. I've had great difficulty trying to upload videos for you all to see and finally found a solution by creating a Youtube account where I can post all my South Africa footage. This particular video was taken when we went to visit the cultural village in Swaziland and the local choir performed for us - Enjoy!

Cultural Village Choir

Summer Flowers

Summer Flowers

A very desperate sign 

Morning walk to the Enrichment Centre

Christmas Market

This week I was back with the Lifeskills class and our time was either spent practicing dances for the Christmas concert, or getting things ready for the Christmas market which is being held later today. Because the Lifeskills class are older and more independent, some of the kids are doing solo performances for the concert. You Raise Me Up by Westlife and Umbrella by Rihanna are two of the chosen songs that are going to be sung, and I can assure you that I now know these songs better than the artists themselves. We've also interpreted some actions for both songs just to jazz it up a little bit.

Lifeskills is the class I have been placed with for the concert on the 27th so we're stopping the rotation of classes for next week meaning we can continue practicing with the children. I'm helping one of the boys during the dances which is very funny. He's quite a lazy individual and he sometimes needs encouragement to lift his arms or move his feet so I'm almost taking the role of a puppeteer! But the kids are already performing the dances and songs so well that I think the concert is going to be a complete hit. Sadly being with the Lifeskills class means that I don't get to take part in the Sid the sloth number, but I can dance from the sidelines... Can't let those moves go to waste.

Today the Enrichment Centre is hosting a Christmas market and we've been preparing for that all week as well. The children in Lifeskills have made about fifteen bottles of lemonade and ten jars of pickled cucumber to sell later this afternoon. As the gap students we've been put in charge of decorations, so for the last couple of days we've been painting, sticking, cutting and pasting. Hopefully the outcome will meet expectations!

This week we were also lucky enough to have the Swaziland volunteers join us. They arrived on Wednesday and helped out at the Enrichment Centre all week - it was great to have the extra hands and show them around our project. I felt so proud introducing them to all the kids. Telling them about each child really showed me how much I've learnt about each of them over the past ten weeks. I know what each personality is like, what they find funny, what they don't find funny and what they need help with. It was lovely to suddenly see this proof that my connection with each of them is growing.  On Saturday we decided to go out for a meal and see a film as a goodbye treat. The film we chose was Interstellar and it completely blew us away... It is now my new favourite film and I insist that if you haven't seen it yet - go! When the movie finished everyone in the theatre just remained in their seats with this look of awe on their faces.

In other news: this weekend we had the privilege of looking after Stuart the mouse who is a very cute individual. We had to hide him from the cleaners but he'll be leaving the hostel on Monday so the pressure will be off. On Thursday I experienced one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen - the picture below doesn't really do it justice. The way the light hit the clouds against the vast, flat African landscape made everything seem tiny in comparison.

Sunset

Stuart Little

Stuart Little

Sid costume

Christmas market decorations

Christmas market setup

Christmas Concert

Now that the Christmas holidays are only three weeks away all the classes in the Enrichment Centre are focusing on their performances for the Christmas Concert. I was working with the Senior class this week and had the opportunity to help out with their practices - some of which were very funny. My personal favourite dance piece that they're doing in called 'Continental Drift' which is rapped by Sid the sloth from Ice Age:

Click here to watch!

The kids are very good at remembering the dance moves and it's so funny to watch them get into it. I had to make a cardboard cutout of Sid for one of the girls so she can wear it during the performance and it just completes the dance number. Seven dancing sloths and one cardboard sloth aimlessly wandering about it the background is bound to get a standing ovation. 

At Aftercare this week we had a very dramatic afternoon when a girl in Grade 3 managed to cut her finger using a guillotine. The guillotines here are much more hazardous because the blade that you use to cut the paper is a massive knife that you pull downwards instead of sliding it across. The teacher left the room for five minutes and in that time, the poor girl sliced her middle finger extremely badly. So badly, that when we were called to help we didn't need to ask where it was because of the trail of blood that led us to the classroom. When we got there she was already heavily bandaged up and had been taken good care of. We just stayed with her until her mum arrived and took her to hospital. When we were cleaning up the classroom afterwards, we came to the conclusion that she must have hit a vessel in her finger because the blood had even hit the walls... But thankfully the next day we got a phone call to say everything was okay - the finger was fine and she'd be coming back into school. As for the guillotine, it has now been placed out of reach.

In happier news: on Friday we took part in the staff charity cycle. It was at the local Polokwane gym and you had to cycle on an exercise bike for an hour while alternating between standing and sitting position. It was a lot of fun and really nice to spend some time with the other teachers away from the school environment. We saw them all again yesterday when we went to the Polokwane Game Reserve for a staff function which was held under a beautiful grass roof. The evening consisted of a Braai (a South African BBQ), some talks from the Principle and a nature walk around the safari with the children. We didn't actually see any nature on the nature walk because of the noise that the kids were making, but it meant everyone else got some quiet time. We were told before going on the walk that, "if you see a rhino, walk around it and not towards it" which put us a nervous state of mind before setting out with fifteen children.

On Monday I'll be back in Lifeskills and I'm really looking forward to learning some more Christmas dances and seeing all the kids again. On Wednesday the Swaziland volunteers are coming up to spend a few days here to experience life at our project - it'll be great to see them all again and discuss our Christmas travel plans! 

Charity cycle staff T-shirt

At the event

The nature walk

Staff function venue

A very unwanted nighttime visitor

Goodbye October

Now that  I've settled into work and life here at Mitchell House, it's harder for me to think of new and exciting things to write about. The last week was a pretty normal one (as normal as you can get when working with the Junior class), but as always there were little things that happened throughout the week that made working with the children enjoyable - or in some cases - exciting.

I've explained before that the Junior class is the most tiring and testing class in the school, and some points this week really proved that. 'The Runners' of the class seemed to be extra hyperactive which resulted in more biting, scratching and dashes for the classroom door... When I was playing with one of the other children on the carpet, I was jumped on from behind and tackled to the floor. I now have a very fetching bite mark on my shoulder! Of course it's not their fault that they can sometimes be aggressive, and it's usually because they're frustrated at not being able to ask for what they want.

Because both of the boys are non-verbal they own a file that contains a variety of symbols for 'water', 'food', 'trampoline' and so on. During class time I'd frequently be led to the trampoline by one of the boys where he'd present me with a leaf to stroke his face with. It might sound like a strange thing to do, but they react very well to sensation and it calms them down very effectively.

My highlight of the week however, was when we took the Junior class swimming. Helping to teach each child how to swim was definitely one of the most rewarding things I did last week, and to see the utter joy on their faces at experiencing something so different was amazing. The swimming sequence consisted of two lengths front-crawl, two length back crawl, blowing bubbles and jumping in from the side and getting out again. We put the wheel-chair bound children in rubber rings which they seemed to love - one of the girls couldn't stop laughing the whole time she was in the water. It must have felt so good for them being able to move without the restrictions of a chair.

In other news: we'll be starting work on the library bookcases soon, painting a dragon on one of them and a fairy tale castle on the other - hopefully the outcome will be a success. We've also found various activities to do on the way to Cape Town including quad biking and the highest bungee jump in the world at Bloukrans Bridge in Plettenburg... It's a total of 216 meters high. The less thrill seeking activities include a visit to 'Hole In The Wall' - a huge coastal arch at Coffee Bay that looks beautiful - and a couple of coastal walks around Port Elizabeth. That should get me a couple of brownie points when I start my geography degree next year!

Pizza to celebrate Halloween

Bloukrans Bridge