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