Winter's Coming

The title for this post was influenced a little bit by my love for Game of Thrones, which will be starting again soon(!)... But of course it's also because over the last week that I've been working in Lifeskills you can definitely tell that Autumn is coming to an end. For a full three days now we've had overcast and heavy rain and I've found myself putting on socks which my feet have grown very unaccustomed to. At night the temperature drops significantly - Zoe, Kathryn and myself wander about the hostel in two jumpers, a blanket and slippers. It's probably still the same temperature as a Scottish summer, but the sudden change is enough for us to reach for a hot water bottle.

The first week back from the holidays is always a hectic one, the children have to settle back into routine and get used to the structure of school again. This week however, was made a little bit more challenging due to the fact that I was on crutches. Towards the end of the holidays I thought it would be a good idea to kick a basketball with no shoes on and this resulted in the swelling up of a ligament in my foot (go me). I was given anti-inflammatories by the doctor and told to keep weight off it for a few days which meant that I had to use some crutches that the Enrichment Centre kindly provided... Now that the swelling's gone down and it's not sore anymore I've ditched the sticks. It has given me a new respect for the children in the Enrichment Centre who have to use crutches - having to use them is extremely annoying.

One of our new projects in the Lifeskills class is building a vegetable garden. Each child will hopefully have their own patch of soil where they can grow herbs and vegetables that they can then sell to teachers or the kitchen of Mitchell House. By doing this the kids will get an idea of how business works, hopefully giving them a skill set that will help them in later years. I also think that the garden will look beautiful when it's finished and will provide the children with some responsibility which is so important for them - having disabilities often means that they rely on other people a lot for things, so being able to give them this as their own project is fantastic.

On Saturday morning Mitchell House hosted a big sporting event, schools from all over Polokwane came and played football, hockey, cricket and netball. I was put in charge of score keeping for the netball matches - I was given my own desk and everything... It was a lot of fun and the all the teams played very well.

On Monday I'm back in Juniors and I'm very much looking forward to seeing all of them again but it's going to be a tiring week!

Catching up with some sketching - finally!