Friday, November 09, 2007

Bookings, school fun and preparations

I was up at 4 am yesterday (that’s Wednesday), because before nearly making a flight booking for our return journey, we received an e-mail from Kulula advertising a special, whereby if we booked any flight between Joburg and Cape Town on 7 November, it would be R299. The booking had to be done yesterday, and the sale started at 6 am SAST. Not wanting to take any chances on the tickets being snapped up, I set the alarm, and by 4.05 or so had bought our tickets. Yippee!!! Our flight leaves Lanseria at 6 am on the 3rd January. I am thrilled at the timing, as I hadn’t been waiting for anything specific before making the booking, and could well have made it weeks or days ago, thereby missing the special – I see God’s hand at work here!

This morning, despite a mild sprinkling of precipitation, we went walking, but saw no whales. School was pretty good. We had some fun in maths – you really had to be there to appreciate the moment, because I tried to explain to Nick afterwards and he just didn’t get it. It had to do with the filling in of the worksheet, and Caleb writing an answer in the wrong place and then getting it confused again, and then still writing another wrong answer in the box – it was just so funny the way it happened though, where Aaron and I could see what Caleb was doing wrong, so we just looked at each other and started laughing, and then laughed and laughed. Aaron’s laugh was so funny – not a silly one, or even a giggle, just a pure laugh of absolute mirth. I laughed until my eyes were streaming. When we finally managed to explain to Caleb what on earth was going on, he thought it was funny too.

I had the craft class at 2 pm. It was a very simple craft, making finger puppets with felt, which just involved stitching the sides together and drawing faces on them. Boy, did they struggle! They couldn’t thread their needles, didn’t know how to make a double stitch to start and end, and some couldn’t even do the simple running stitch! A couple of kids got on just fine, and made three or four, but some struggled with just one. Often though it’s the attitude which is the problem, more than the actual ability. They were somewhat hyper today, so I had to keep quietening them, and even sent one boy out the class for a while. He was only a half a degree subdued when I allowed him back in. All in all it was a good hour. I made puppets for the boys when I got back, and Caleb tried to do one of his own later – he actually managed better than some of the boys in my class! He didn’t finish it though as he was battling to get the needle through the felt, but at least he got the hang of the in and out of the stitching.

There is much activity on the island in anticipation of the Governor Designate’s arrival on Sunday. He will be inaugurated on Sunday at 9 am, and immediately following will be the Remembrance Day service. A lot of the government buildings have been either washed or painted – I noticed scaffolding up at Plantation House the other day when I was there. A platform has been built on the courtroom stairs, and bunting has been strung up along the waterfront. It looks pretty good, really.

No comments: