Hooray for four day weeks!

It's Africa Day on Friday, one school day down today, three to go. My class numbers are dropping like flies though, as a whole lot were off sick today and of those left, three wanted to go home before break time today. A friend told me about the vampire sneeze/cough and I introduced it. I do feel myself edging away from students with colds when they are reading to me in the morning. Need to eat lots of naartjies and keep my vitamins up. My one student this morning said to me, "Miss Lannas, I think you can't be that old as you do know what dubbing is right?" I hope that what he is referring to is what I thought it was, as have just looked it up and there are two options. I was trying to explain about building up suspense in a story for their creative writing and asked them to think about tv series they watch that do this. One of my boys said Game of Thrones and found myself saying weren't they a bit young to be watching that. One of my more innocent younger students said Peter Rabbit.

Missy, the tortoiseshell cat I am looking after is definitely my saving grace at the moment in getting me out of bed. Right on queue at 5.45 she starts tapping me and if I don't surface she becomes more and more persistent. She came in just now meowing while I was teaching my Chinese 5 year old online and I told him about her and showed him Simon's Cat. He thought this hilarious. I was trying to explain to him what a library is and he called it a "book hotel". His mum thought he was trying to say that you book to stay at a hotel but he was adamant that a library is a hotel for books where they go stay on the shelf. Showed him a video of a new library in China in Tianjin.

I have been given permission to do an assembly with an environmental theme, so am going to put something together on plastic and recycling. There's a competition being run by the Italian Embassy here to use plastic in collage to raise awareness but unfortunately I've just seen the competition closes today - bummer! May see if our students can still do something with the theme. Possibly see if as a school we can do more recycling too.

Did you know? WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY ON 5 JUNE 2018 will have as its theme Beat Plastic Pollution and to coincide with this the Italian Embassy has decided to use its annual "AMBIENTE" - Art and the Environment - project to raise awareness of this vitally important issue, especially amongst children. This awareness and educational campaign will highlight the effects of micro and , the food chain and human health. initiatives begun in 2014 by His Excellency Enrico De Agostini, Ambassador of Italy to Zimbabwe, to raise awareness about the protection of the environment through art. Previous themes have included the protection of Zimbabwe's wetlands ("Matoro Anoyera" - 2014), the importance of recycling ("Waste no Waste, Trash is Treasure" - 2015), the protection of birds' habitats ("Your Nest is My Nest" - 2016) and sustainable water management ("Wet-Land-Dry" - 2017). 

•  Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times?! 
• There is more micro plastic in the ocean than there are stars in the milky way?! 
• More than one million plastic bags are used every minute of every day?! 
• All the plastic that has ever been made in the world still exists in one way or another?! 
•  Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the previous century?!

Italian Ambassador Enrico De Agostini who is spearheading the Death By Plastic campaign

Yesterday morning I went to see one of my best friends and spent a lovely morning with she, her husband and little girl. It was really sweet that her little girl wanted me to read to her and I got lots of hugs. Definitely a good way to end the weekend.

Teaching my French student at 5 and then I have an online board meeting at 7.30 for my friend Xenoula's dance project XenArts that does therapy through dance in the UK and then in developing countries. In Zimbabwe Xenoula has worked with Oasis and women who have been abused. She also has worked with school children. In the UK she has done workshops using movement and art and also twinned up old people with children which had great outcomes.

Right, I better do some marking and lesson prep before I head out again.