Kariba was a good break. Was dropped at my mum's school on Monday afterwards to be greeted by one of the other teachers telling me my mum had had "an incident"! Well my immediate thought was she had had another bleed at school and I panicked. Am really trying to get my mum to go down to Cape Town soon but she is putting up resistance and being very stubborn about teaching. The school has already said she can go but she feels she needs to still be at school. As my sister bluntly put it, the school can easily replace my mum, but her friends and family cannot. It is hard to reason with my mum though and I have to live with her. Well it wasn't a bleed thankfully, but my next thought was either my mum got held up at gun point again or my dad, who is currently back in the country, had appeared. Eventually my mum's colleague told me that with our gate motor being on the blink the propped back gate had swung against the car and scraped off paint. Well of all the scenarios this was definitely the best, although the other teacher was semi implying that if I had been there it wouldn't have happened.
Had a bit of a relationship bump and I hardly slept a wink on Monday night. Getting back into school routine on Tuesday was good for me though and took my mind off things. Had two whatsapp calls with first a good friend in England and then just now with one in Australia which have helped and whereas in the past I might have reacted to everything with thoughts of self harm, I was able to do an intense gym session yesterday and doing ball slams really was therapeutic. Also pushed myself quite hard and surprised myself that I didn't collapse after ten T rotations. Much less destructive, thanks to Cara and Demi.
Wrote in my one student's book today that his homework was unacceptable - it was very shoddy and he had not listened to what I had asked for, even though I had said it three times and others managed to do it correctly. Well, I got a series of reprimanding messages from the mother this afternoon saying it had greatly upset him (he seemed fine when he left school). Another student yesterday hadn't again come prepared to do their talk on plastic pollution, even though I had given another day and said it had to be done. I am afraid I made him do it any way, there and then. Had him in tears after. Hopefully will get to Friday without any more upsets.
The deputy head did a lovely assembly on the story of the selfish crocodile and used plastic animals as props to tell it. I thought it was super and told her and she said she had forgotten it was her turn and only realised ten minutes before assembly and she had nearly asked me to do it instead - ahaha! I would not have been ready, eeeek. Next week we are having a book week. We will do book reviews for creative writing and then on Friday the students are to come dressed as their favourite character and bring a book to donate to a children's home. Our one little Russian boy put his hand up in assembly and said could the book be in Russian. We said yes but he has to write about it in English, to which he said, but no, in Russian? Eventually his sister leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder and muttered to him in Russian and he said, "But, but, ...", to which she gave him this stern look, and that was the end of his objections.
So in case you're still reading and wondering what "Amazoning" is ... I did climate change with my class today and I asked them what they knew about it. One boy shoots up his hand and says it is to do with the hole in the Amazon and it causes "Amazoning" - I think he meant the ozone layer and global warming. Showed them a video of Greta Thunberg speaking about climate action and told them that she is only 3 years older than some of them. I left out the bit about students in Europe doing stay aways from school in protest - not giving them too many ideas!
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