The Christmas Term

Since September so many things have happened, so I will attempt to do a round up!

Early in the first term was extremely busy with sports. We had interhouse, where the pupils of the school were split into James House and Fredericks Houseb and competed against each other over 3 days in track, field and cycling events. It was a great competition, it was nice to work with the younger students as well, and it helped us to learn lots more names! (There's 141 students in the school and I think I know most of their names, hopefully more than half). Sadly James House (Octavia's house) were victorius over Fredericks House (my house), though they both competed fiercely. After interhouse came interschools, where we travelled down to Sawariwau, another village in South Central Rupununi, with our top athletes, to compete against other schools. It was a great week, though tiring, especially as we had to get our students on the field at 5 every morning to train them. I was doing the scoring for our school, to make sure we didn't get cheated out of any points, and I managed to get a terrible sunburn on my legs - there was actually a line where one side it was red and the other white. It was good to keep my brain practicing fast mental maths, especially during the 100m sprints, by the time we had had the athletes presented to us in the order they finished in, the next race was over. In the end, Macushi Primary came 3rd! We also spent time with Tamas and Jack, the 2 PTVs in Sawariwau, and Alex and Sam, who had come with Sand Creek, and it was great to hear how they were getting on.

In October (I think), we went to visit Shirley, and English women who lives at Mountain Point, close to Shulinab Village. We cycled up there, which took a good few hours, and spent the weekend there. We got fed loads by Aunty Rhonda, and also learnt how to make some good food. Shirley has lots of horses, so we helped her feed them and helped out generally around the house. When we woke up on Sunday morning we found Jaguar tracks around the house - sadly I still haven't seen an actual Jaguar (though I don't want to see one too close up!).

In November we spent a weekend in the falls with some friends. we rode horses down to Public Landing, which is a small space next to a creek, where we roast chicken, then put up our hammocks to spent the night. Then on Saturday morning we rode to the falls. The falls are really beautiful, we swam and shot fish to roast with an arrow and a piece of rubber. I actually managed to shoot one fish, though it was pathetically small! Luckily the boys were there, otherwise we may have starved, or just lived off farine. The boys also shot an eel, which tasted really good roasted.

December was very busy with revison, tests and the closing of school. I was very impressed with my students, at their results in their end of term exams, the majority passed (got 45% or higher overall). The last week of school was spent doing christmas activities, looking over test papers and preparing for the closing of school. Also a whole day was spent with the pupils washing their furniture - I can't imagine that happening in an English school. On the last day of school, the students put on a talent show for friends and family, which was very entertaining! I had Grade 9 singing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. We also had a staff party, which was really fun - lots of dancing! It was a great end to a long (15 weeks!) term.

Hopefully I will try and update this blog a bit more, though the internet is tempermental, I guess we'll see! It will probably end up being more round up posts.