In art this morning we were inspired by the work by Georgia O'Keeffe and had a go trying to do spathodeas in her style using bold colour and shape. I had a go in oils. Not sure if it's finished. Will keep looking at it. My car now smells of turps. Have been lent the book "Born a Crime & Other Stories" by Trevor Noah by one of the ladies at art.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Have just finished preparing my lessons for tomorrow. Will be my last teaching day at school for this term. Can't believe it's Easter already next weekend. Our friends from Australia arrive the following week and another friend back from England. Need to get to bed just now as it is an early start. A friend has suggested I have vitamin B jabs for next term. I am not looking forward to winter and waking up early.
Had a fun quiz last night with a friend being quiz master at the Mustard Seed.
Mondays! Today was a long one. Went to school in the morning and helped and took notes before heading to HIS to do another library shift, followed by two sets of tutoring. This week's book in the library was "The Night I followed the Dog" by Nina Laden and it is all about how the family dog actually lives a secret life at night and goes out. I started by asking the class to imagine what their pets might get up to at night. Well, one little boy in grade one immediately piped up that he knew exactly what his rabbits do - they make more babies and they are getting a bit tired of it. Wasn't quite expecting that one, I won't lie.
The end of term is in sight. My new school closes next Tuesday with the sports day as the final event. I am going to have a lot of preparation work to do over the holidays. Need to start putting together my schemes of work and lesson plans - a little daunting. I will probably also be helping my form four with his literature and have my French student.
Just waiting for my Chinese student to come online for our second lesson this weekend. I am thinking I may have to just teach him at weekends - during the week is a bit problematic. I did a lesson on disabilities but how people have overcome them with him yesterday. Turns out Andrea Bocelli is one of his mum's favourite singers. He was quite taken with Stephen Hawking and that he worked on black holes.
Managed to do an early morning lesson yesterday so that I could then go pick up the wedding cake and some other things for my friends' wedding out at Darwendale. Was quite a responsibility trying to make sure the icing didn't come off on the drive out over the bumpy roads but it made it. We had a gecko holding on for dear life on our windscreen at one point. It was a fairly big gecko (about 15 cm long) and was using the suction pads on its feet to great effect. We stopped and released it to the wild, so there was a happy ending.
The wedding celebration was lovely and chilled and in a super setting. There were games and later on people played volleyball. Went out onto the water at sunset which was special and the light on the water was pretty. Some of us stayed the night and we introduced visitors from Germany to mopane worms (I'll be honest I didn't try one) and chibuku (I had a sip), round the campfire.
Managed most of the drive back this morning without directions but from memory, however, at one point I was unsure and it was lucky I asked someone on the roadside as I would have otherwise gone in completely the wrong direction. There were a couple of police blocks but they seemed to be only after the big trucks and let me through without any hassle - what a joy!
So my five year old has just sent a voice message to say they are stuck in a traffic jam. It is getting late for him in China so will see if we have a lesson today or not. Going with people to Coimbra for dinner tonight. Feel recharged for the week and ready to tackle it.
It has been an interesting day. Went to the school I teach at first thing for more handover notes from the current teacher. I then got a crash course on how the library operates at the International School and took over for half the day. Thank goodness for knowing the Dewey Decimal System from Convent and being familiar with the library's lay out from before. It was quite fun though. Had two classes and their book of the week was Pigcasso and Mootisse. I then had to find books for the kindergarden teachers which related to different materials e.g. glass, plastic, wood etc., so Cinderella's glass slipper, a book called Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Julia Donaldson's "Stick Man"and others.
Afterwards I had my form four student, and we analysed the poem "Miracle on St David's Day" by Gillian Clarke, which is really beautiful - although my student really struggled to tell what the miracle was. From there I had my Chinese ten year old and he had to learn the song Chante which is sung by Kids United. I got him to translate the song to English with me and he got stuck on la Bastille - as a wild guess he asked if it was a type of baguette! We had to do a tiny history lesson. Perhaps I will elaborate on this a bit more next lesson.
Just put together a lesson for my Chinese five year old to do over Zoom at 7.30 tomorrow morning. Am going to tell him about Stephen Hawking as my student is into black holes. Have found a bit on disabilities but how people have overcome them in amazing ways, Stephen Hawking being one of these people. I then head out to Darwendale for the wedding celebration of two friends.
Here's the poem by Gillian Clarke for anyone interested.
Miracle On St David’s Day
All you need to know about this poem is that it is a true story. It happened in the ’70s, and it took me years to find a way to write the poem.
‘They flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude’ (from ‘The Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth)
An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed with daffodils. The sun treads the path among cedars and enormous oaks. It might be a country house, guests strolling, the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.
I am reading poetry to the insane. An old woman, interrupting, offers as many buckets of coal as I need. A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic
on a good day, they tell me later. In a cage of first March sun a woman sits not listening, not feeling. In her neat clothes the woman is absent. A big, mild man is tenderly led
to his chair. He has never spoken. His labourer’s hands on his knees, he rocks gently to the rhythms of the poems. I read to their presences, absences, to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.
He is suddenly standing, silently, huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow movement of spring water or the first bird of the year in the breaking darkness, the labourer’s voice recites ‘The Daffodils’.
The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect. Outside the daffodils are still as wax, a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables unspoken, their creams and yellows still.
Forty years ago, in a Valleys school, the class recited poetry by rote. Since the dumbness of misery fell he has remembered there was a music of speech and that once he had something to say.
When he’s done, before the applause, we observe the flowers’ silence. A thrush sings and the daffodils are flame.
I have only taught three full mornings this week but I feel pretty pooped, I won't lie. I am definitely going to have to build up stamina for 5 days straight next term and for all the marking and preparation. Need to put worksheets together these holidays me thinks but I also have to do my lesson plans for the whole term and schemes. Teachers need school holidays!! No joke. Think what was most tiring today was trying to stop some of the boys constantly bickering and the one boy from some how migrating continuously to the other side of the classroom from his desk. There are thirteen boys and only two girls in the class, and some of the boys are a real handful. Individually they are sweet but when they gang up it's not good.
It looks like I will be filling in for the afternoon librarian at my mum's school tomorrow and some afternoons next week. I need to slow down a little though. Am not quite sure how I am going to fit in my Chinese five year old during the week as access to internet at lunchtime is a problem and trying to squeeze him in with the time difference is a challenge. I really need to weigh up what I feasibly can manage next term so I don't burn out. My personal trainer pointed out that tutoring til 6pm means I have a 12 hour day.
Speaking of personal training, the last two sessions have been brutal. Today I used the kilo ball and had to throw it doing crunches (I nearly lost teeth by not catching at one point), balance on it doing mountain climbers and do strenuous things with the kettlebell. I got through this to have my trainer announce we were going out of the garden to do sprints. I did wonder why we were going out the gate. Well we walked to the corner and turned onto the next street - ah! A lovely hill slope greeted me. Hadn't packed gym stuff when I moved to house sit yesterday so asked my mum to bring something this morning. Well the leggings she brought need new elastic. I could possibly have sprinted faster but I had visions of my leggings being round my ankles with the whole neighborhood watching :P
My trainer had bought her fiance a fish tank this morning and in the time that I spent training he had set it up with pond weed and water and happily announced he was off to catch bass to put in it. I did ask whether bass can grow rather big - in my mind I pictured one fish taking up the whole tank. He laughed and said he would stunt their growth with limiting how much he fed them as he had done with his miniature staffie!
Had a great intro back to art today with Sarah. She got us to do portraits of each other but doing it all in blind contour (not looking at the page just following the lines on the face without lifting your drawing implement off the paper). The drawing implement in this case was white wax so you couldn't see what you had drawn anyway. There were moments of panic when people went completely off the page or forgot where they were. I actually accidentally did three eyes on my drawing. We then did a wash of black ink over the wax for resist. Sarah showed us a book of work by Marlene Dumas from South Africa. I found some of her portraits a little disturbing, truth be told but I guess they were arresting. Apparently some of her portraits were from the morgue and otherwise of criminals. Was hard to tell which some of these were. We then were to use her technique of applying colour, to work into our portraits - I think I went a bit more abstract but I had fun. As one person at art said, art and playing marimbas are two of the most cathartic things you can do.
Marlene Dumas
Before art I went to the garden nursery in Arundel Village and I happened to see the lady in the shop was reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. I commented on this and she said she had decided to read it again as Stephen Hawking died yesterday. I haven't looked at the news so this was the first I heard of it. We had quite a long conversation about it. I will miss not only being able to go to art next term but also having time to chat and wander about at leisure, but a full time job will be good in other ways. I will just need to build up my stamina to have energy for an entire week of back to back teaching. Something stronger that coffee might be needed, perhaps espressos :P
I am back house sitting now. The person I am doing it for left me a surprise present from her last trip to Bahrain. Wasn't sure what it was initially but on tasting it, it reminded me of halva from Israel. It's called rahash cutting in Bahrain and is made from the same stuff as halva - sesame flour and possibly this has some pistachio in it. Have been snacking on it as I prepare lessons for tomorrow. OK I must get to bed as need to be up at 5.
Did another full day of teaching today. It was a little bit of a rush to get marking done during the course of the morning so the students had their books for homework. A few students came late too which meant they didn't do their morning reading before class. For some of the more dyslexic students reading is a major thing each day. We had a sports day practice again after break. One little Russian boy was on his own mission though and it was fun and games getting him to do what the others were doing. Part of it is a language barrier, but part is also that he is very strong willed. When all the kids in their teams did pull together it was great to see though as they helped each other out and looked out for the ones who struggled. For some it really was a struggle - makes you realise the things you do without thinking and take for granted that you are able to do.
Been getting my paint brushes out in readiness for my art class tomorrow morning. I reckon I am going to have to warm up a bit as I haven't painted since last year. Really looking forward to some chill time while I can still get to the art class. I then move to house sit again from tomorrow to the house with the dachshunds. From there I will be house sitting for another person on Colston Hill, across the other side of Monavale Vlei from us. Will have to make time to pop home and see my dogs as they are going to feel a bit abandoned and I will miss them.
Went to see the friend who is not doing so well with depression at the hospital she is in again. It brings back memories of when I was in hospital and how rotten you can feel when your medication is being adjusted. You are on an emotional roller coaster and feel so raw. You have to just somehow hold out and cling to the hope that your medication will be adjusted to a level where you can try again at life and feel more in control of who you are. It is such a scary place to be in and it is a reminder of how much medication affects you and for severe depression is your main lifeline.
Busy helping put things together to help with the wedding celebration of two friends this weekend out at the Hideaway at Darwendale. Looking forward to it and getting out of Harare.
