February

February 14^th

Happy belated pancake day everyone!

I spent the day at school, and in the evening Samantha, Rosie and I enjoyed pancakes with our precious sausages and CHEESE, followed by classic lemon and sugar. Samantha enjoyed it so much that we made pancakes for breakfast on Valentine’s Day too, after staying up the night before watching Jackie Chan in his glory days when his hair was glorious.

I’ve been incredibly busy this term, as I have started to run a debate club on Monday, a Karate Club on Tuesday and I am continuing with my computer classes afterschool on Wednesday. The Karate club has been going really well – I have a total of 64 students on my register and regularly get 50 in my class! They all love it, although because of the large class It does get a bit cramped sometimes. I always get good vibes from the students and they are much better behaved that when they are in school! The class is probably 40% girls 60% boys most of the time, so it is pretty even. This weekend I am doing a self-defence workshop for a women’s group of a nearby village called Kato, where there is an American volunteer called Rachel who runs the group. Apparently they are all very excited, so that should be fun!

The weather here is still much warmer than back at home, I am sure, but it has started to get colder and darker with the rainy season. Sometimes there are some quite cold gusts and heavy tropical rains, and the ‘bad’ weather has meant that I have started to get a cold. During the day the sun still gets quite hot most of the time, though sometimes the cloud cover is so thick we don’t really see the sun! The clouds and the cold, wet weather also means that looking at the stars at night is a bit more difficult, so we have started to stay in and wrap ourselves under blankets to watch films.

Last week we enjoyed a visit from our Desk Officer, Chris. He brought us two big packets SWEETS which we devoured as soon as we got them (mini eggs and gummy snakes if you want to send any in the post … hint hint), and he watched us teach a couple of lessons. We had fun staying up and chatting, and playing cards by the light of a candle. The next day he went off to Kato to visit Jordan and Jake, and due to being unable to get a flight we went and joined them for the weekend. I think that all that I am allowed to say on the internet is just that it was a hilarious weekend in which there were many laughs.

Anyway, that’s all for this month… oh, and happy Valentine’s day.

Love

Charlie