Photos on a wall! Yay!

Hey everyone,

I hope you’re all well and enjoying the Autumnal weather at home – could do with a bit of it here – so hot! You know when you’re so hot that you can actually feel the sweat running down your back – uh huh… welcome to my world! (Sorry that was a bit grim, but hey, I thought you might like some of the gory details.)

So, another week has passed – we’ve been here for almost 7 weeks now. Where has the time gone? I’m really not sure. College is good – still learning a huge amount and making a heap load of mistakes as I go, but hey that’s fine, I’ll get there. Teaching at the JSS is proving really useful – the class I took today I had 50, 13-19 year olds (all in the same year group because they have to pass before they can move up) squashed into a small classroom on furniture too small for them after a PE lesson, boy was it HOT… Trying to move around the classroom to assess their progress was a NIGHTMARE… However, it’s good because it makes me realise what my students are going to have to contend with once they’re out on teaching practise which therefore helps me to plan better.

Speaking of teaching my students I had a great lesson the week before last (***WARNING WARNING – Teacher talk alert – WARNING WARNING***) – I was teaching the unit on ‘Instructional methods’ (i.e. different ways to teach science) and I was doing the ‘activity method’, so I got the students to create a physical representation of the parts/functions of a flower using drama. So I had two people baring their fists to be the sepals protecting the flower, two cool looking guys to attract the insects to them, then the stamen and carpel… (blah blah blah) and it was one of those moments where I knew I’d inspired them – felt great. Makes up for the other lessons where it… hmmm how shall I put this? It doesn’t quite go to plan! I’m learning.

I have one more normal week at college before we have ‘call back’ for VSO training and then MOTORCYCLE training – cannot wait! Had a look at one of the bikes VSO give us that a friend has and they’re awesome! (Don’t worry – the moment I get a picture I’ll be posting it straight away.) However, before we get them we have 4 days of training in the local area. I’ve already learnt how to ride whilst I was in England (London in fact) but we’ve now got training to get used to the ‘interesting’ terrain the roads consist of. Actually, that makes it sound worse than it is – all the main roads are properly made, it’s just the side roads that are sand or the road to Sandema where my friend lives – it’s tarmac-ed out of Navrongo and into Sandema but there’s a very interesting stretch in the middle where it just goes to sand and well – it’s a wee bit bumpy!

Ooh, something very exciting! I finally got round to painting the wall in my bedroom which had a yucky water stain thing from a leak, so I’ve now been able to plaster all my photographs of everyone all over my room and it looks GREAT! My room is looking so cosy now, especially with my lovely fairy lights. I keep dragging people in to look at my photos and introduce them to my world in England!

Hmm, what else? A strange fact for you; whilst out and about, you don’t buy bottles of water – no – you buy little sealed plastic bags of water! Still can’t quite get used to it… (2 ½ p a go)

Right, I’ve obviously exhausted all topics of conversation for now so I’ll let you get on! If there is anything you’d like me to write about that I’ve not told you so far just let me know.

Take care, Sam x