Winding down

It's getting close to the holidays now, and the atmosphere around the Enrichment Centre is very relaxed. This week in Seniors we slowly took the pressure off work and concentrated more on enjoying the couple of weeks we have left. After Zoe, Kathryn and myself arrive back from the month-long break, we'll only have three weeks left with the children before we fly home and that fact is starting to hit home! 

During my five days in Seniors we celebrated one of the boy's 12th birthday. Birthdays in the Enrichment Centre are always a big occasion and I've been very lucky by somehow managing to land myself in the class with a birthday almost every time... Much to the annoyance of Zoe and Kathryn. On Thursday during cooking we made a delicious pancake stack - basically pancake lasagne because we filled it with mince and white sauce. It was a huge hit with the children and everyone polished it off - I'll definitely be taking that recipe home with me along with bunny chow and marmite and cheese cake.

At Aftercare this week we had to move the children to the more sheltered playground because of the cold. It was actually warmer in Edinburgh than in Polokwane at various points last week! Kathryn and I also played a very funny game with one of the Grade 00 boys, Tchifiwa. He would sneak up behind one of us while we were sitting on the chairs and shout ARRRRGGGGGGG and then lean in close and wait for us to tell him to go and scare the other person. The funniest part was that he'd always run up to the person he was scaring, so you could hear him coming. Then he'd stop, take a huge inhale of air and finally ... ARGGGGGG. Later on we told him to go and scare one of the Grade 00 girls in the sandpit who had her back to him. She turned around when he was still about five meters away and gave him a very unimpressed look. Kathryn and I were almost in tears.

This weekend we also purchased some daisies from the nearby garden centre. We're going to plant them in memory a fellow Project Trust volunteer who tragically passed away in India about a month ago. We'll plant them in the memorial part of the Enrichment Centre garden, so she can be remember along with the children we've lost over the years.