The start of term 1

As I've probably mentioned before, the academic year in Namibia runs from January to January. Which means that this term is the beginning of a new academic year. This also means that it brought a whole load of new problems.

1.) Timetable: nobody had thought to organised the school timetable before the term actually began (something Daisy and I found very annoying. One of those things that I simply cannot understand. Surely even in the most disorganised of places you would realise that this is a logical thing to do!) It meant that for the first two weeks of school Daisy and I had absolutely no idea where we were meant to be, or when! Finally a timetable began to slowly emerge, although this was still being organised on a day to day basis. And of course if there was a change made that affected us, nobody thought to tell us!

2.) Work books: we had no writing books for the first three weeks. Apparently school had actually attempted to be organised about this and had put in an order, but there were simply  no books in the whole region. They had to wait for books to be brought down from the Capital.







3.) Teachers: one of the teachers was in the process of trying to get a job at a new school. Which meant that half the time he didn't bother coming in to teach his lesson's. We had no idea whether or not he was actually going to be leaving Nowak, and so were being continually asked to 'supervise' his lessons for the whole time.

4.) Illness: Daisy and I were both ill. Daisy was still having stomach problems and most days couldn't get out of bed so I was teaching on my own. But I also had a virus an a bacterial infection. Unlike Daisy I was actually able to go to the doctors and get medicine which worked, but it wasn't the best way to start a term. Especially when Cooper told Sachi that he was able to hear me coughing at night from his house!
5.) Arguments: All of this added up to frustration and annoyance. I was struggling to adapt to teaching all my lessons on my own, whilst still trying to recover from being ill myself. And at the same time I was being expected to cover every single one of another teachers lessons for an unknown amount of time. unsurprisingly this caused some arguments with our host, who said that I was just complaining and that she was going to send an email off to my supervisor to complain about my behaviour - delightful.

But oh well, there were still good things going on. It was lovely to be back home, surrounded by all the secondary children once again. It's amazing how much we both missed them when we were on our holiday. Tses is simply... home. And it was so lovely being back, watching the amazing sunsets.  It was lovely teaching my kids again, I'd missed that loads as well. And surprisingly enough, even though it took three weeks for books to arrive, the teaching was actually going pretty well! And even better? I HAD CHRISTMAS POST :D SO MUCH POST!!!!!!