Term 2 Week 1

I survived the first week back of term 2. It was a busy one.

Monday morning started with a teachers meeting at 9am followed by coffee and lots of notices with all the staff together. After that it was time to do all the last minute jobs I'd not yet done before the kids and parents arrived in the afternoon.

It was a little strange for me when the kids arrived back. I had been looking forward to it for the previous few days as I started to realise how much I loved and missed the kids in my dorm. On the other hand, the kids are saying goodbye to their parents for the next month and a half or longer. There's a very complex mix of emotions on these occasions here. For me there was joy and excitement at the return of the children. For parents there is the sadness and pain of saying goodbye to their young children for so long. For the children there are all of those emotions jumbled up. Sadness at leaving their parents, excitement at coming back to school and friends, joy at being reunited with the larger school community.

Tuesday is still a busy day for me in the classroom this term. It was good to be back teaching although, despite my preparation, I had lost track in places of where some classes had got to in work. My first lessons back had a feeling of settling back into the role but by Wednesday everything was vback to normal. I think in some ways it was good to have a break because I can now readjust some of my classroom relationships which were getting too informal or causing repeated disruption for other students.

We have three new kids in the dorm, a Nigerian family. So far they are settling in fairly well although it's early days. It's nice to have two more boys in the dorm; we now have two rooms to put to bed at night. Joshua and Jahaziel are pleasant boys although they still seem a little unsure of how to fit into the school culture. It has been good for Immanuella and Josephine to have some other Nigerians around, particularly as the eldest, Deborah, is Imma's age and she had been struggling last term having no particulr close friend to talk to.

We also have two new day students, Ada and Iza (Brazilian), who are of Eagle age. Although their English is still fairly poor they seem to be enjoying being at the school and are making friends. Florence, our other Brazilian girl is not back from her holidays yet. It will be interesting to see how her English is after a month without using it.

The weekend was a fun one. On Saturday I played football and went running with some of the dorm kids and in the evening I was in charge of setting up a big screen movie in the chapel. We watched 'Over The Hedge' which was great fun. On Sunday I had to get up very early as a group of us were going to Lac Rose, near Dakar to see the final stage of the Lisboa-Dakar rally (formerly Paris-Dakar). There were more staff than children on the trip as we had surprisingly little interest (absolutely no girls apart from staff) but it was a really fun day, although very tiring. The cars (and bikes and trucks) raced along the beach and we sat there, along with thousands of other spectators, watching them zoom past us in front of the crashing waves. I took lots of photos so I'll try and send a CD home soon so you can see them on Flickr.

Now it's Monday and my day off again, I'm sat in the treehouse with my laptop and I'm planning to sign up with a few online recruitment agencies when I finish writing this. It's time to start seriously job hunting (a year and a bit later than I should have), I wrote my CV last week and Tracey's checking it over for me in the school office. It's coming to the time of year here when everyone's talking about whether or not they'll stay for the next year, my housemate Adam was the first to announce that he'll be coming back. I'd love to stay but I feel the need to at least explore other options and hence the need to start moving on the job hunting issue.

Term Starts Tomorrow

Over a week since the last post, unusual now that I'm writing on the laptop. It's been a long week.

Field conference was good. I didn't experience as much if it as I would have liked as I spent half the week in bed with a fever and occasional headaches. I still don't know what it was but I suspect the cause was partly exhaustion; perhaps my body enforcing some decent length of rest
before the onslaught of term two.

The sessions I made most were the morning sessions where we sang together and heard from our main speaker. I got to play bass all week (when I was well enough) which was great. This year's speaker was from WEC Brazil where he's been working in the missionary training college for a lomg time. He said some good stuff but I found it hard to follow at times as his preaching style is quite different from that which I'm used to and appreciate most. It was great to meet missionaries from all over Senegal and also to see and hear contributions from representatives of the Senegalese church.

Today we had another 'British Breakfast' to polish off the bacon and sausages we didn't eat on Christmas day and afterwards I led a short Sunday service in the school chapel. I've spent most of the rest of the day making spring rolls (a skill I learnt one night during conference) which we ate tonight with a few guests. It's so time consuming! Yesterday I made the filling which took at least an hour (lots of chopping and then frying) which had to be both cool and dry before being put into rolls. Today I spent two hours in the afternoon and two hours this evening making wrappers using left over batter from our lesson the other night and then rolled them up with the help of one of those waiting to sample them and deep fried them. I think I must have made about 60 in the end. There are a load in the freezer which'll keep me going snackwise for a while (when I can be bothered to heat the oil).

The kids come back tomorrow and then it's all GO for the next 9 weeks. It'll be good to have them back. I've enjoyed the holidays but after a while you start to miss the kids and you get anxious to get back to work. We had a planning meeting last night for all the dorm activities and I'm very excited about the program for the coming term, it's going to be a lot of fun.

I have a teachers meeting at 9am so I should really go to sleep, it's 11:37.

Good night!

Field Conference Begins

Today is the first day of the WEC 2007 Senegal Field Conference. Actually, the first day has just finished.
Today reminded me of the holiday times when I was at uni in York, when a place you were familiar with in one way suddenly took on another life. In York it was the contrast between the University of York and York Conference Park (the university's non-term-time alter ego). Here at BCS it's similar, with the flooding of the school by conference delegates and rooms your used to seeing as chapels or assembly halls being turned into a conference seminar venue. Unfortunately here I don't get paid to set up the data projector...
My last few days have been mainly concentrated on lesson prep for the coming term (or such was my intention at least). I'm teaching a unit on making web pages to the yr8s which I've been enjoying preparing for (writing worksheets and exploring software I've not used before). I also spent a morning inside the school's electric piano, replacing speakers and adding a makeshift auxilliary output; and then an afternoon behind a video camera, filming and editing the story of Esther for use in the kids work during conference.
I'm quite tired at the moment, probably due to watching the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy over the past three evenings and another film trilogy the preceding days. Despite tiredness I don't feel in need of a siesta these days, a snooze in the middle of the day would probably wipe me out for the rest of the afternoon and I like to get back to my work if its been going well.
I'm playing in the band for conference and tonight I played bass. It was great to play bass in an ensemble again. I'm nominally leading the group but I find it hard to keep up with both words and music without my glasses (which are now en route). I am getting better at playing bass and singing simultaneously though, but it's more fun on the bass when I can give it my full attention. Some of the songs are in French to make things more difficult and they're marked with French chords: Do, Re, Mi etc.
I ought to sleep now as breakfast is at 7:30, a shock to the system after being in self catering holiday mode for the past three weeks.
Good night.

New Year

It's New Year's day which means that last night was New Year's Eve which means I won't get much work done today.

My main achievement in the last week was to repair two extensions in our internal phone system and two add a new extension for some new staff accomodation recently completed. It was a great learning experience and very satisfying to get the job done and see the difference it makes to those who now have working telephones.

Last night we had a bonfire and fireworks early in the evening for the families where we made stick-bread (ask a German what it is!) and then later we had a sort of party for the adults where we played some great party games and had some good food.

Ruth, who was organising the festivities, asked me in the morning to prepare a short time of sung worship to see in the new year and I'm really glad she did. It was great to end a year and start a new one by looking back at God's goodness, provision and grace towards us over the past year and to reaffirm our collective and individual commitments to follow Him and live for His glory in the coming year.

After we counted down to midnight we were invited outside to share Tristan's Christmas present (one of the Coordinators' kids), some fireworks launched from the school sandpit. The guard dog was going crazy!Ours were the only fireworks in the sky over Kinniabour and the surrounding villages last night.

The Senegalese don't really celebrate New Year, at least not in the rural parts (which is basically everywhere apart from Dakar and Thies and maybe a couple of other larger towns). Instead the locals were celebrating Tabaski last night, the largest feast of the Senegalese calendar. As far as I understand it's something to do with atonement, probably like passover for Jews. Everyone buys a ram and kills it and cooks a big feast for their family. It's a very expensive time for the Senegalese and around Tabaski your much more likely to be stopped by traffic police wanting money and such like.The Muslim feasts always make me more aware of the differences between our school community and the surrounding villages but especially the differences between Christianity and Islam. How great it is to have my sins forgiven because of the atoning blood of Jesus on the cross!

After the fireworks all the young singles (there aren't many of us around at the moment) came back to our house and we watched a movie; a very late night indeed!