Half-term Begins

Well I had wanted to write this much earlier, however I have time now…so now it is!

Last Wednesday I finished off the parent teacher consultations. They went amazingly well. The biggest problem was the scheduling and timing. I said that the ten minute conference makes life much easier…however it also makes life much harder. I am not the sort of person to kick people out, and often I wanted to hear what the parents had to say much more than I wanted to keep time. I know, I’m American I should love to keep time, but alas Africa must have had its’ effect on me. Overall though I heard a lot of great things from parents and had some interesting conferences. There were no irate parents. Most of them were very happy and grateful for what I do as a teacher. It is always refreshing to get that kind of feedback.

Then on Friday was the swimming gala!! Okay so those of you not up to date on the Rainbow School news…there are four “houses” at Rainbow: Rwenzori, Impala, Ssese, & Kyoga (RISK). Every student and staff member is assigned a house and the houses compete throughout the year to win the end of year trophy. Well this was the first Primary sporting inter-house event. Let me tell you…it was incredibly fun! It was also absolutely chaotic, though not as bad as I had thought it would be. The students all divided into their houses, and us staff went to our respective houses. Then we spent the day at the pool having various races and competitions, including a cheerleading competition. Now I love Kyoga. Its’ color is blue and Lake Kyoga is where my husband is from…so it is a great house for me to be in. However, I was sorry at the end of the day for us Kyogans. We were absolutely last. It was quite sad. We were missing about 5 students, our best swimmer got sick, and all sorts of other mishaps happened. Overall, we had a good time, even though we lost miserably. (Apparently we rarely win the swimming gala…we don’t have the good swimmers I guess). I left the swimming gala excited for the half-term and proud of my Impala students (who barely won over Rwenzori).

Besides these exciting events at school life is going well. It is now half-term for me, which means that I have been teaching for 8 weeks now! It also means that I have a week to relax and refresh myself for 7 more weeks. The next half term is going to be fantastic and probably hectic as well. We will have one field trip and we are also responsible for the school production for this term. We are doing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which makes me exceptionally happy!! Another teacher and I will be in charge of putting together the play portion. It should be quite fun, I am sure. This year’s students are very dramatic and will do a fantastic job.


Now for the non-school news:

Today was a beautiful day! It was slightly breezy with the puffy clouds. I was hanging clothes on the line to dry and realized how perfect the day was for laundry. It has been absolutely beautiful the last few days. I think we are getting a small break from the rain, (which is also incredible). The 70 degree weather does trick my mind though and I feel like I am still in August. I really realize it is October when I hear about my friends and family bundling up for the cold and picking pumpkins to carve for Halloween. I miss the fall, but I am not going to complain about this fabulous weather. In fact, it is so beautiful today that after I finish this I am going to sit on the balcony and read a book in the sunshine. Aaahhh...life is fantastic!