Shed a tear for Tony*

Ha. There is a gecko next to the keyboard. He's brown, and about three and a half centimetres long. Just thought I'd tell you that. You get lots of little lizards around the place, mainly halfway up walls (whether inside or outside). I like them. Most are natural colours, but there's one type that has a yellow head, and bright blue body. As in BRIGHT blue. (Had to put it in capitals so that you understand exactly how blue it is). I think it's a type of Cnemaspis. But I'm not sure, will find out at some point. Got no idea what the gecko next to me is though, I don't know enough about them to distinguish any more than the most distinct varieties.

I must apologise for being in a grouchy mood yesterday. And you don't actually have to read Stargirl. I just read it yesterday and liked it, but it's a kiddie book. I also read Divine (Karen Kingsbury) which Renee** recommended. I think I scared her a little by finishing it in one night. But once we get home each night, the only options we really have available to us are reading, writing, drawing (in my case), sewing (again in my case), talking (not so much in my case) and sitting there thinking (far too much of).It's amazing how much longer evenings seem, in a good way, when there's no tv or computer or any of that junk. Of course, does dramatically reduce the timeframe for writing up posts. But I'm really enjoying having the space and lack of distractions. Very peaceful.

So, the usual school stuff. I'm not sure how much of these little titbits you guys want to hear about the kids, I'm happy to keep writing it, but a lot of it has no specific reference to being in Africa so I'm not sure how interesting it is for you. Ah they make me smile though.

I spent almost the entire day in the Grade 1 class, because Rachel was taking Ju and Ha for some individual work so I wasn't needed there. Zoe was getting her class to do some drawing first of all, and I have to admit, I was somewhat of a distraction in the room. Every two minutes one of the kids would run up to show me what they'd done so far, which would mean every other kid wanted some praise too and would do the same whether or not they were finished. I have a photo of Phoebe with her drawing of 'dressing the chicken' which I'll put up at some point. Very cute. (They were reading a book about a girl who was told to do a whole lot of chores, ie. 'draw the curtains', and did them all under the wrong meaning).

Later the class did some maths worksheets - having learnt from past experience that her kids have a predilection towards copying off each other, Zoe handed out different sets of problems to all of them, which somewhat solved the issue. Well, no. A lot of the kids were still copying, completely oblivious of the fact that the questions weren't the same. There's a big range in the class - some of the kids are at a relatively normal six year old level, but most of them are quite a way behind. Means that it's actually quite useful for me to be in the room when they're doing particular topics like maths, because many of the kids don't have the concept of addition yet, and if left on their own they just write random numbers. I guess in their eyes that's all everyone else around them is doing, so they don't even realise they're doing it incorrectly.

Tony got eaten by a rat! :-(

So now I can't draw you a picture of him.

*Meg's tortoise
**Librarian