This post is a short one sadly as not much to say due as i did a mid week post.
The only other thing i can remember from the week was being the scorer for the friendly U19 basketball game against another school on Wednesday. Little confusing at times considering I didn't always understand what hand signals the umpires were doing...
So the previous weekend I went with the U19 Boys, a U19 B Boys team (which was actually our U16 team) and Girls basketball team to ISSA, a school in Mafikeng South Africa. It was another tournament but unlike last time we left Saturday morning at 6. The tournament started on the Saturday and was the pool stages. I spent most of the time with the boys as Bruce wanted me to do a stats sheet for each player i..e how many baskets they made, how many they missed-things like that. Our U16 team lost all their games but put up a good fight considering some of them were only 14, the Girls lost 2 out of the their games they played on Saturday and the U19 Boys won all theirs coming top in their pool. That evening we went out to the Mall to get dinner-many of the Senior boys buying three main meals (and they ate them all that evening!) The next day it was the semi finals for the boys whilst the girls and the junior team played their position play off. The senior boys sadly lost the semi final-they were all very angry with themselves after and so was Bruce! Nevertheless it was a fun weekend but unfortunately I did come away with rather bad sunburn on my back-although it isn't painful which is a good thing!
Today I was also scorer for the U14 basketball games after school which are actually hilarious to watch because they are so bad (sounds harsh but very true!). At one point the other team attempted a shot at the wrong basket!
This week is only 4 days due to Easter (they dont have creme eggs here!!!!) and this weekend I'm going to Moremi Gorge with the Parkers and some of the other families which will be fun.
Hope you all have a good Easter! xx
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Makgassa Reading
So today was the last Makgassa Reading so i took my camera only to get some pictures. I cant remember whether I have previously mentioned but we do two things at the school. We read with the students and teach them basic computer skills as well. Today there were a lot of primary school kids and some even younger. They were very curious with a. the books and b. my camera so what started off with reading slowly progressed into a photoshoot with them holding up their books! When we left i couldnt get on the bus as there were about 5 kids actually hugging me around the waist and on the shoulders, I dont know whether this was an attempt to see the pictures/take more pictures or just stop me from leaving but it was very funny. Chaba and Milton also told me after that they were all saying "white girl, white girl" in Setswana. Imagine if in the UK a load of white primary school children starting saying "black girl, black girl" to someone-that would probably make the news!
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| Chaba and Milton teaching some of the Makagassa students about Excell |
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| Some of the Makgassa Students (they are holding their lunch in their hands-chicken) |
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Botsalano Pictures
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| South African Sunset |
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| Waterbuck (recognisable by the white ring on its bum!) |
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| Giraffes! |
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| RHINO |
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| Wilderbeast |
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| Kudu (recognisable by distinct large ears) |
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| Friday morning sunrise |
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| We went out for a meal Friday evening to Primi Piatti. For some reason in this photo my cheek looks really swollen but its just sunburn and the flash-not a good combo! |
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| Adjoa was in a tennis tournament Friday afternoon we went to go watch. She came 4th in singles and 1st in doubles! |
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| View from our campsite |
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| View #2 |
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| Camp |
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| the toliet-an experience! |
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| view from toliet (just to clarify i didnt take this whilst i was on the toliet!) |
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| Samantha, Clara, Safiya and me! |
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| Cooking our breakfast on the fire |
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| yum! |
Botsalano Game Reserve + a Busy School Week!
Wow wee another week gone. Mon to Fri was very busy. I hardly went to any lessons this week as we had a lot of prep to do for the ISSSA Athletics tournament which was held at the University of Botswana's athletics stadium on Friday and Saturday. ISSSA stands for Independent Secondary Schools Association and organises a lot of tournaments such as swimming and athletics and MaP is one of the schools that takes part. Bruce is part of the organising committee so i was helping him with admin school jobs and ISSSA prep. For the latter it consisted of going through all the schools final team list to check they had the right ages in certain age catergories and that they were not cheating by having someone too old, i checked by cross referencing with the whole schools list which had the date of birth on. A long task but i did find a few schools which were guilty of it (i guess this shows just how badly people want to win this tournament-it is a big thing here!) I also had to help get the athletics kits ready for the MaP students. They also all got a small sports bag which has the MaP logo on it with a water, energy drink, banana and energy sweets. There are 60 people in the athletics team so that meant there were 60 bags i had to fill but as most of you know i like organising stuff so i actually found it quite an enjoyable task (better than photocopying!)
Friday was the day of the first athletics and so Shambs and Bruce had to go with the team so i stayed behind and ran the PE lessons with the cover teachers. I was with the girls and we did football which consisted of a lot of screaming with a few girls actually kicking the ball rather than running away from it! After my lessons Bruce had arranged for the school transport to come pick me up at 12 and take me to the athletics so i could help out there but as you can guess this was 12 African time so it turned out to be more like 1!! It never fails to amaze me how relaxed everyone is here! I arrived just in time to see the best event-the relays.Now the student dont just cheer a bit every now and then like in England - here it is full on screaming, chanting, singing shouting, stamping. So much better than in the UK! There were 12 schools competing so the relays were done on time not position (as there were two heats for each age category). I can proudly say MaP won half of the relays and the ones they didnt win we came second or third! Now i dont know how we did overall in the tournament as it occured on Saturday but i was away (i will come onto that) fingers crossed we won!
The Weekend:
This weekend i went to Botsalano Game Reserve with Virginia, Clara (her daughter), Sally (a teacher and friend of Virginia, Denise (another teacher and friend of Virginia), Safiya (Denise's daughter) and Samantha (Safiya's friend) . So a girls weekend! Botsalano is a reserve just over the SA border and is not that well known as they purposely do not publicise it much to try and reduce poachers as there is a high numbers of rhino. So you just turn up, get a campsite to yourself (its that empty) and then drive round the park in your own cars (although you do need 4x4!) Just driving to our campsite we saw a lot of wildlife. The first time it was further away but we had another drive that early evening and then one the next morning and in total we saw, (are you ready?), wilderbeast, warthog, impala (which we saw pronking, when they jump vertically in the air), springbock, waterbuck, kudu, RHINO!! (these were very close to the car-between 10-20meters) and about a pack-10-15 (thats probably not the correct terminology) of giraffes which were always chilling about 2 minutes drive from our camp and we got as close as 10 meters to some of them! We could hear a lot of jackal at night and you could hear the giraffes at night as well walking around.
It was a really fun, chilled weekend and i am really grateful to Virginia for organising it as otherwise i wouldnt have been able to go visit it! Right i will upload the wildlife pictures now-there is a problem with wifi so pictures of the camp may be up early this week (we managed to persuade Dean to let us take one of the school cameras with the long lenses!)
hope you all have a good week!
J xx
Friday was the day of the first athletics and so Shambs and Bruce had to go with the team so i stayed behind and ran the PE lessons with the cover teachers. I was with the girls and we did football which consisted of a lot of screaming with a few girls actually kicking the ball rather than running away from it! After my lessons Bruce had arranged for the school transport to come pick me up at 12 and take me to the athletics so i could help out there but as you can guess this was 12 African time so it turned out to be more like 1!! It never fails to amaze me how relaxed everyone is here! I arrived just in time to see the best event-the relays.Now the student dont just cheer a bit every now and then like in England - here it is full on screaming, chanting, singing shouting, stamping. So much better than in the UK! There were 12 schools competing so the relays were done on time not position (as there were two heats for each age category). I can proudly say MaP won half of the relays and the ones they didnt win we came second or third! Now i dont know how we did overall in the tournament as it occured on Saturday but i was away (i will come onto that) fingers crossed we won!
The Weekend:
This weekend i went to Botsalano Game Reserve with Virginia, Clara (her daughter), Sally (a teacher and friend of Virginia, Denise (another teacher and friend of Virginia), Safiya (Denise's daughter) and Samantha (Safiya's friend) . So a girls weekend! Botsalano is a reserve just over the SA border and is not that well known as they purposely do not publicise it much to try and reduce poachers as there is a high numbers of rhino. So you just turn up, get a campsite to yourself (its that empty) and then drive round the park in your own cars (although you do need 4x4!) Just driving to our campsite we saw a lot of wildlife. The first time it was further away but we had another drive that early evening and then one the next morning and in total we saw, (are you ready?), wilderbeast, warthog, impala (which we saw pronking, when they jump vertically in the air), springbock, waterbuck, kudu, RHINO!! (these were very close to the car-between 10-20meters) and about a pack-10-15 (thats probably not the correct terminology) of giraffes which were always chilling about 2 minutes drive from our camp and we got as close as 10 meters to some of them! We could hear a lot of jackal at night and you could hear the giraffes at night as well walking around.
It was a really fun, chilled weekend and i am really grateful to Virginia for organising it as otherwise i wouldnt have been able to go visit it! Right i will upload the wildlife pictures now-there is a problem with wifi so pictures of the camp may be up early this week (we managed to persuade Dean to let us take one of the school cameras with the long lenses!)
hope you all have a good week!
J xx
Monday, 11 March 2013
Camp Konka Pics!
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| Tamara on the Zip Line |
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| climbing part of the assault couse |
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| we made it! |
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| ZEBRAS!! |
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| Tamara on the drums! |
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| Õn the 4x4 ride up the VERY steep hill |
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| getting excited about the bath |
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| Breakfast time! |
Sunday, 10 March 2013
51 days till my birthday (yay) 50 days till I leave (oh)
This week was all off campus so made a nice change and a good way to mark my halfway week. From Monday to Friday I was on the year 7 trip to Camp Konka (although you don't actually camp you stay in dorms). This was just outside Rustenburg in South Africa and was an activities week. Sort of like PGL in the UK. We left bright and early at 6.30am with 104 children, four teachers and two TAs (Tamara and I.)
Now normally there is always one bit of drama on these trips and for this trip we had it 20minutes in at the border! Every child that needed a visa had been told in November (and then reminded every month after that) for one Chinese kid, for some reason, did not get a visa and failed to mention this to any of the teachers until we got to the South African immigration. The immigration officer, already very annoyed at having so much work to do so early on a Monday, decided to threaten the bus driver with prison because he, the officer claims, was trafficking a child into SA. Clearly ridiculous! By the way while this was going on Tamara and I were trying to get the kids through as quickly as possible and all we kept hearing was the word prison and were very confused! The immigration officer then changed the drivers punishment to 2000 rand fee. The bus driver started arguing so he then raised it to 10,000 rand! Anyway it ended up with the kid getting the fine and he got sent back so couldn't come on the trip!
So on we went through South Africa, we stopped at a mall for lunch and I tasted one of Mugg and Bean's legendary muffins. (If you are ever in South Africa you must try one!) We arrived at camp konka early afternoon. Tamara and I had our own room, it was similar to the dorms the girls were staying in (sort of 6 small buildings in a circle each with 8 beds and a bathroom in them) but sadly (hahah not so sadly for us) we had to leave our room and move to the poshest ones they have on sight, as one of the girls rooms had a cockroach in so they had to take ours! We even got a bath!!
So everyday we had breakfast at 8, then the students would have activities until lunch. After lunch they opened the tuck shop where the kids spent an obscene amount of money everyday on sweets and fizzy drinks and ice cream. On the last day there it would seem it was the end of the world with the amount they were buying! After lunch there were more activities until 5 and then supper at 6. The activities ranged from team games to zip lining, to rock climbing to paintballing. On the last afternoon they all did the obstacle course which included crawling through muddy water and jumping into a pool of muddy stagnent water which actually smelt. But they all loved it! The teachers and Tamara and I would often go and watch them do the activities, often get involved (I did zip lining) or just chill, read our books and enjoy the biscuits Mrs Kaan brought with her at 10am and 4pm aka cup of tea and biscuit time! So all in all we didn't do that much! In the evenings the students had another activity like drumming or night hike. On Wednesday eveningthey had a disco which we had to oversee, at one point we went to have a look at the dancing as they had all formed a circle around one kid that was dancing but then they turned around and started chanting teachers, teachers, teachers and so all Tamara and I could do was dance, although we escaped quickly!! Serves us for being nosy I guess!
One of the best things was the change from Maru a Pula food! We had chicken korma one night (actual chicken with no bones!!!). The teachers and TAs and our own table inside with special desserts each night, it was great! They also took us on a 4x4 drive which consisted of a hill so steep it seemed vertical! I also saw my first zebra on this drive which was fab!
On Friday we left in the morning and I waited with the cricketers at Wimpy in Zeerust for the other cricketers in the other years to leave MaP and come pick us up and go onto ISSA (International School South Africa) where they had a tournament at the weekend. Because of the delay they had at the border we were in Wimpy for four hours!! But I explained the situation to the waitress and they didn't mind luckily! When we got to ISSA the boys went for practise and I went and had a look round the school which is really pretty and has lots of greenery but I got stung by a wasp ouchy :( . There was also an athletics and swimming tournament happening so more MaP students arrived by bus later on. Athletics was that evening which gave a nice atmosphere under floodlight and then swimming was the next day. I travelled home with the athletes and swimmers Saturday afternoon and have had a nice leisurely day today! So a very busy week all in all but very very fun!
Now normally there is always one bit of drama on these trips and for this trip we had it 20minutes in at the border! Every child that needed a visa had been told in November (and then reminded every month after that) for one Chinese kid, for some reason, did not get a visa and failed to mention this to any of the teachers until we got to the South African immigration. The immigration officer, already very annoyed at having so much work to do so early on a Monday, decided to threaten the bus driver with prison because he, the officer claims, was trafficking a child into SA. Clearly ridiculous! By the way while this was going on Tamara and I were trying to get the kids through as quickly as possible and all we kept hearing was the word prison and were very confused! The immigration officer then changed the drivers punishment to 2000 rand fee. The bus driver started arguing so he then raised it to 10,000 rand! Anyway it ended up with the kid getting the fine and he got sent back so couldn't come on the trip!
So on we went through South Africa, we stopped at a mall for lunch and I tasted one of Mugg and Bean's legendary muffins. (If you are ever in South Africa you must try one!) We arrived at camp konka early afternoon. Tamara and I had our own room, it was similar to the dorms the girls were staying in (sort of 6 small buildings in a circle each with 8 beds and a bathroom in them) but sadly (hahah not so sadly for us) we had to leave our room and move to the poshest ones they have on sight, as one of the girls rooms had a cockroach in so they had to take ours! We even got a bath!!
So everyday we had breakfast at 8, then the students would have activities until lunch. After lunch they opened the tuck shop where the kids spent an obscene amount of money everyday on sweets and fizzy drinks and ice cream. On the last day there it would seem it was the end of the world with the amount they were buying! After lunch there were more activities until 5 and then supper at 6. The activities ranged from team games to zip lining, to rock climbing to paintballing. On the last afternoon they all did the obstacle course which included crawling through muddy water and jumping into a pool of muddy stagnent water which actually smelt. But they all loved it! The teachers and Tamara and I would often go and watch them do the activities, often get involved (I did zip lining) or just chill, read our books and enjoy the biscuits Mrs Kaan brought with her at 10am and 4pm aka cup of tea and biscuit time! So all in all we didn't do that much! In the evenings the students had another activity like drumming or night hike. On Wednesday eveningthey had a disco which we had to oversee, at one point we went to have a look at the dancing as they had all formed a circle around one kid that was dancing but then they turned around and started chanting teachers, teachers, teachers and so all Tamara and I could do was dance, although we escaped quickly!! Serves us for being nosy I guess!
One of the best things was the change from Maru a Pula food! We had chicken korma one night (actual chicken with no bones!!!). The teachers and TAs and our own table inside with special desserts each night, it was great! They also took us on a 4x4 drive which consisted of a hill so steep it seemed vertical! I also saw my first zebra on this drive which was fab!
On Friday we left in the morning and I waited with the cricketers at Wimpy in Zeerust for the other cricketers in the other years to leave MaP and come pick us up and go onto ISSA (International School South Africa) where they had a tournament at the weekend. Because of the delay they had at the border we were in Wimpy for four hours!! But I explained the situation to the waitress and they didn't mind luckily! When we got to ISSA the boys went for practise and I went and had a look round the school which is really pretty and has lots of greenery but I got stung by a wasp ouchy :( . There was also an athletics and swimming tournament happening so more MaP students arrived by bus later on. Athletics was that evening which gave a nice atmosphere under floodlight and then swimming was the next day. I travelled home with the athletes and swimmers Saturday afternoon and have had a nice leisurely day today! So a very busy week all in all but very very fun!
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| prefects seem to rule the school at ISSA- extreme rule! |
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| main school area with cricket field in background |
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| One courtyard of ISSA |
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Weekend pics...
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| Made a friend at the museum! |
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| Look I saw some lions!! |
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| Tall girl problems when you're in certain combis... |
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| Naledi Feeding. Lady on my left is one of the women we give food to. The food in front of us is for four women not just her. |
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| Ice cream for P6 aka 60p!!!! |
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| Add caption |
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