Nostro accounts and frustrations

Was an early start again today and a long day. Just finished my marking now. Some of my students are doing well and keeping up and doing their work properly, but I have a few that do their work all over the place in different books, all mixed up and it is honestly a nightmare trying to mark it. They also don't say which past paper they are doing and when they fall behind I don't know what I am marking as some of the papers are multiple choice so I really can't tell.

A muffin from The Plot from one of the other teachers cheered me up.

I went to the bank at lunch time to sort out my account being linked to Ecocash so I can easily transfer funds across and make payments. My mum sat in a petrol queue last week from 7 am to 4.30 pm, only to get to the pump and be told they were only taking Ecocash payments which she didn't have. When I got to the bank I joined the queue on the pavement outside only to discover it was for people making withdrawals from their nostro accounts (yes withdrawals in US dollars). I have money sitting in my nostro account that is being eaten away by bank charges. I went to sort out Ecocash and then came back out and joined the queue for nostro accounts and withdrew my US. Couldn't believe you could actually get dollars in cash. Am afraid some of it got promptly used to pay for petrol :(

After the frustrations with some of my class, it was an absolute pleasure to tutor my new student. He is polite, conscientious, neat and tidy. It was also nice to do some high school level science. On the way home we passed a guy who was posing as a muse, I presume busking, at the traffic intersection. Rather a dangerous place to do it, but it was refreshing to see. You don't really get people doing that sort of thing here in Zim. He was really good.

I got some lovely feedback on the illustrations I did for a story about a little boy and his toy owl. He apparently takes his book to bed with him and keeps looking at the pictures and particularly likes the one below of him making a chocolate cake as a reward for the little girl who found his owl after he kicked it over his wall to see if his owl could fly. (I didn't write the actual story, his clever gran did).

It's been a short week with half term but I am jolly glad tomorrow is Friday. I didn't have my French Chinese students at lunchtime today as it was the Dragon Boat Festival in China today and they were celebrating it. I need to look up what that is in French now so I can ask them about it tomorrow. (Just done so, there's not a direct translation. They have dragon fruit, dragon tree and Komodo dragon but no Dragon Boat Festival).