I find it hard to recall what has actually happened this last week. Time seems to just zip past in a whirl wind of activity. We are now back into the 2nd week of term (although both 4 day weeks- which is lush!) Already school is mega busy with so much going on. We have been having loads of netball practices, as the A,B,C and D teams have matches next week, school discos every week for various years etc.
Last week I met up with Natalia (my best friend from my school days here). I went out for a meal with her and her family and then back to her place for the night. Surprisingly i was back for lessons in time the next morning! She took me out on Friday night to a pub/bar place where all the white Kenyans hang out. I loved being away from school with different people dancing the night away! I got back to bed at 6am, and then up again to head to a baby shower by lunchtime. I have to say i struggled for the rest of the weekend-i am definitely a person who doesn’t function well on little sleep. It was sweet getting the chance to re-meet and hang out with Natalia again- i never thought after 8 years of not seeing her that i would get this chance.
PE lessons so far have been fitness based, with ball skills to get the girls in shape for a competitive netball season. I have been taking part in all these lessons-running their cross country lap at the start of each lesson, and then onto some sort of strength exercise (we have worked on arms and stomach muscles so far) and then onto sprint stuff using a fitness ladder. I tell thee i am gonna be the fit by the end! Ive kept up with swimming my mile everyday (where i can...it normally works out at 4 or 5 times a week) and im going to go to the gym with some of the other girls where i can find time. It feels so re-energising doing exercise, and i would prefer to spend my evenings doing that than sitting in the bar!
By the time i post this i will have taken my 1st proper English lesson by myself! I feel very professional with my lesson plan...teaching a lesson on adverbs to year 8s. The teacher has been great, and is going to leave me to it. This is good! I think i would feel quite uncomfortable with her in the room-we shall see ho w it goes...
Tomorrow i am heading to Lake Naivasha to camp for the long weekend with a bunch of the other teachers. We have divided up the food to bring etc and gonna go chill. Some keen-ies are going to head up Mt Longanot, however i have no intention to climb any mountain...at any time.
I have swapped 2 of my pe lessons this term for some art. I love it. I think i am still a bit of a kid hanging on to the school days. Its great- i get to play sports, make clay masks, sit in English lessons analyzing poems-with no pressure at all to complete any essays or make any grades. Sad? Maybe.
I am writing this on one of the pe teachers laptop in my flat- i am sick of the computers at school freezing every 3rd letters i type-so im multi tasking making cookies for our trip and writing this AND enjoying his collection of 7000 songs on i tunes. Amazing.
Righto- love to all xx
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Easter Holiday fun
Hasn't it been an age since i updated you on my life! Im sure you have all been gutted...
Holidays began with my trip to Sagana with a bunch of year 7&8s. I was very much looking forward to my return after having such a laugh on the previous trip, and as expected-it was good fun. There had been a severe lack of rains which meant that we couldn't do the white water rafting for the first 3 days. The kids were occupied with raft building, swimming, climbing, games and the like. It seemed to be the trip of injuries and sickness as we had one lass sent to hospital with a broken elbow after an intense game of capture the flag in the dark. By the end of the week we had a lot of completely exhausted, and possibly slightly dehydrated kids! I was sleeping in a little tent, placed beautifully by the not so quiet generator! This however was majorly out done in noise by the thunderstorms we had nearly every night we were there. I swear the storm was about a meter above my tent, and flip me did i jump out of my skin when the thunder roared. I was actually scared. Thee loudest thunder ever to thunder. It meant however that we were able to raft the last 2 days of our stay-which was totally tiring but great. There is no way i was to remain in the raft as the kids were determined to get me in as often as possible. They would launch themselves at me to force me out the raft. Don't get me wrong-what a laugh- but seriously frustrating with my apparent lack of upper body strength trying to get back into the raft! I ended up covered in bruises. One section of the river we come to a waterfall, which obviously we paddle to as hard as possible to get underneath. If you are sat on the right of the raft, which inevitably i was, you have the full force of the water landing on your helmet and shoulders. Its actually fairly painful, and several of the kids were blasted out the boat by the force of the water. Ha.
On the 2nd to last day, after watching about 10 people previously, i decided to do a bungee jump over the river.(I will hopefully be able to upload a video when i get hold of it). It is actually part of an old crane that is concreted into the ground-stretching 200ft up. I, and one other teacher climbed up this crane (basically a biiig ladder) to the little box hanging from the top. Stupidly i decided not to wear any shoes-bad move- i had sore feet by the time i reached the top. Strangely i was not nervous at all...until the little gate opened and i had to jump. When you have nothing in front of you apart from air- your brain tells you its not such a wonderful idea to jump off. There was NO way i was backing out with all the kids watching and cheering at the bottom. I had already decided that as soon as the gate opened i would just have to go-don't engage brain!! All i could think of was having to yell 'GO Braeburn' on my way down, as the footage is possibly to be shown in assembly. Anyways i did it- i don't actually remember the point of jumping! What a rush.
The afternoon we got back, i had to sort the flat and head to the shops to get some food in for mums arrival the next day. She is sitting in the departure lounge as i write this- so i have just said goodbye- but it was great to have her come visit my world. Bit of role reversal as she came to my flat, and i was in charge of food and organizing etc.
A few days after she arrived in Kenya we headed down to the Indian ocean. This was a long awaited trip for me- heading back to one of my favorite places in the world! We had booked to fly to Malindi, however the stupid airline decided to put us on a flight to Mombassa instead, telling us they would taxi us to Malindi when we arrived. They didn't help themselves getting back into our good books when they decided to put too much fuel in the plane, and so not able to take our luggage. You can imagine a plane full of peoples faces as we watch out the plane window and see our bags being driven away. All fine in the end as they put the luggage on the next plane and drove it to us that evening.
We were staying in a guest house run by conservationists who work in the local area to promote eco-tourism and the like. My 'big bro' Colin, who used to come stay with us when we lived in Nairobi as a family works there, so it was uber cool to hang with him and his wife Roni. A bunch of us went out one night to a creek to do some bird ringing. They set up nets on the creek, and then would check them every hour or so throughout the night to collect the caught birds and bring them back to our camp for weighing, measuring and to put a tiny ring on. I took role as scribe for the night, noting down numbers and the measurements for each bird. Was a long night out with the mosquitoes, but i really enjoyed it. We caught and rung a total of 105 birds! Can you believe that the 2 gappys working at the guest house and out bird ringing with me came from my year Henley college, where i did my A Levels last yr. Mental.
The guest house where we were staying was about 1/2 hr walk down the beach from a fav hotel of ours. We decided to buy a day pass which meant we got 2 meals, free drinks all day and the use of their pool etc. It was such a treat to go back there. We fell into temptation, and went to ask how much it would be to stay one night. After some negotiation, phone calls, and making sure they realized we were old friends of the hotel, we got a very good deal and took the key to our air conditioned room!! You would not believe how excited we were about the air-con. Both mum and myself were struggling in the humidity and heat, so it was truly amazing to have the pool and cool room. On our last night at the coast we were walking along the beach and came across a massive turtle heading down the beach into the water. I assume it had been up to lay its eggs! Seriously cool!
Back in Nairobi, Mum and I went into the centre of town, cooked, made smoothies with a smoothie maker that a legend sent out to me with ma and generally had a good time. We traveled round to various places which hold a lot of memories from life out here as a child (the elephant orphanage, a few restaurants etc).
I hope you all had a fabulous easter break!? Lots of love xxx
PS: thanks for the song jazz! Beautiful x
Holidays began with my trip to Sagana with a bunch of year 7&8s. I was very much looking forward to my return after having such a laugh on the previous trip, and as expected-it was good fun. There had been a severe lack of rains which meant that we couldn't do the white water rafting for the first 3 days. The kids were occupied with raft building, swimming, climbing, games and the like. It seemed to be the trip of injuries and sickness as we had one lass sent to hospital with a broken elbow after an intense game of capture the flag in the dark. By the end of the week we had a lot of completely exhausted, and possibly slightly dehydrated kids! I was sleeping in a little tent, placed beautifully by the not so quiet generator! This however was majorly out done in noise by the thunderstorms we had nearly every night we were there. I swear the storm was about a meter above my tent, and flip me did i jump out of my skin when the thunder roared. I was actually scared. Thee loudest thunder ever to thunder. It meant however that we were able to raft the last 2 days of our stay-which was totally tiring but great. There is no way i was to remain in the raft as the kids were determined to get me in as often as possible. They would launch themselves at me to force me out the raft. Don't get me wrong-what a laugh- but seriously frustrating with my apparent lack of upper body strength trying to get back into the raft! I ended up covered in bruises. One section of the river we come to a waterfall, which obviously we paddle to as hard as possible to get underneath. If you are sat on the right of the raft, which inevitably i was, you have the full force of the water landing on your helmet and shoulders. Its actually fairly painful, and several of the kids were blasted out the boat by the force of the water. Ha.
On the 2nd to last day, after watching about 10 people previously, i decided to do a bungee jump over the river.(I will hopefully be able to upload a video when i get hold of it). It is actually part of an old crane that is concreted into the ground-stretching 200ft up. I, and one other teacher climbed up this crane (basically a biiig ladder) to the little box hanging from the top. Stupidly i decided not to wear any shoes-bad move- i had sore feet by the time i reached the top. Strangely i was not nervous at all...until the little gate opened and i had to jump. When you have nothing in front of you apart from air- your brain tells you its not such a wonderful idea to jump off. There was NO way i was backing out with all the kids watching and cheering at the bottom. I had already decided that as soon as the gate opened i would just have to go-don't engage brain!! All i could think of was having to yell 'GO Braeburn' on my way down, as the footage is possibly to be shown in assembly. Anyways i did it- i don't actually remember the point of jumping! What a rush.
The afternoon we got back, i had to sort the flat and head to the shops to get some food in for mums arrival the next day. She is sitting in the departure lounge as i write this- so i have just said goodbye- but it was great to have her come visit my world. Bit of role reversal as she came to my flat, and i was in charge of food and organizing etc.
A few days after she arrived in Kenya we headed down to the Indian ocean. This was a long awaited trip for me- heading back to one of my favorite places in the world! We had booked to fly to Malindi, however the stupid airline decided to put us on a flight to Mombassa instead, telling us they would taxi us to Malindi when we arrived. They didn't help themselves getting back into our good books when they decided to put too much fuel in the plane, and so not able to take our luggage. You can imagine a plane full of peoples faces as we watch out the plane window and see our bags being driven away. All fine in the end as they put the luggage on the next plane and drove it to us that evening.
We were staying in a guest house run by conservationists who work in the local area to promote eco-tourism and the like. My 'big bro' Colin, who used to come stay with us when we lived in Nairobi as a family works there, so it was uber cool to hang with him and his wife Roni. A bunch of us went out one night to a creek to do some bird ringing. They set up nets on the creek, and then would check them every hour or so throughout the night to collect the caught birds and bring them back to our camp for weighing, measuring and to put a tiny ring on. I took role as scribe for the night, noting down numbers and the measurements for each bird. Was a long night out with the mosquitoes, but i really enjoyed it. We caught and rung a total of 105 birds! Can you believe that the 2 gappys working at the guest house and out bird ringing with me came from my year Henley college, where i did my A Levels last yr. Mental.
The guest house where we were staying was about 1/2 hr walk down the beach from a fav hotel of ours. We decided to buy a day pass which meant we got 2 meals, free drinks all day and the use of their pool etc. It was such a treat to go back there. We fell into temptation, and went to ask how much it would be to stay one night. After some negotiation, phone calls, and making sure they realized we were old friends of the hotel, we got a very good deal and took the key to our air conditioned room!! You would not believe how excited we were about the air-con. Both mum and myself were struggling in the humidity and heat, so it was truly amazing to have the pool and cool room. On our last night at the coast we were walking along the beach and came across a massive turtle heading down the beach into the water. I assume it had been up to lay its eggs! Seriously cool!
Back in Nairobi, Mum and I went into the centre of town, cooked, made smoothies with a smoothie maker that a legend sent out to me with ma and generally had a good time. We traveled round to various places which hold a lot of memories from life out here as a child (the elephant orphanage, a few restaurants etc).
I hope you all had a fabulous easter break!? Lots of love xxx
PS: thanks for the song jazz! Beautiful x
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