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The last time that I wrote a blog, the new 12 week term had just begun - the first of a new year for the school and the second out of three for me whilst here in Uganda. Now, over 12 weeks later, here I am writing an End of Term blog not knowing what on Earth to say and wondering where the hell the last twelve weeks have gone?!
In this last school term, Roberta and I moved away from the nursery and focused solely on teaching in the primary school. After a few days of working out who we were going to teach and setting up a timetable that worked, we finally had our two classes: ten students from P5 and eight students from P6, both to teach English to. We had just small sized classes as we were teaching what they call the "slow learners" so we thought it would be best to keep the communication close and we also wanted to gain a good and knowing relationship with our students. I enjoyed teaching primary school much more than I ever thought I would, although we did have some issues when the children were playing up, it was all worth it because over the twelve weeks we really noticed a difference in our pupils. And so did the other teachers! Not trying to sound too big headed but... "we are very grateful", "the parents are thankful and so are we" and "SHE CAN READ!" are all phrases we begun to hear quite often, which felt very rewarding. We even came up with a reward chart system, giving out points for good behaviour, and deducting points when they were misbehaving, it worked wonderfully! When the term returns, we have small goody bags filled with sweets, balloons, other treats and a certificate to give out to the top two children in each class, which I am very excited to do, they will be over the moon!
Other highlights of the term include when we organised a water balloon fight during one games time where the children turned into absolute animals and being able to play with the nursery children over lunch when they come and stalk us at our house, which happens pretty often.
But not only has it been twelve weeks of teaching, on March 17th I had a visit from home, my sister! It was the most surreal thing seeing her here, but excellent all the same. We went to Jinja to sunbathe, Entebbe to look at Wildlife and Bukinda to visit my project so she could get a taste of my home here (which involved her having a 10 second shower coming out shivering with shampoo still in her hair saying "how do you do that?!".. I do not know). In the last 12 weeks we also got our flight date home, the 9th of August. I've already told my parents that the first thing I want to do on the way home from the airport is go to Sainsbury's. It may seem strange to you but I dream about that place, that magical world full of every single thing I have missed and earned for over the past 8 months. I'm going to be in heaven.
Now we have three weeks off until school resumes on Monday the 19th May. Last school holiday, Roberta and I spent time redecorating one of the two nursery classes. Now that is finished, the second looks even worse. Therefore we thought it would be best to spend our time this break decorating Top Class nursery, which has already involved us chasing a rat out of the room and cleaning up a ridiculous amount of its excrement (I've done that too much here) as well as getting covered in cob webs. But I'm sure it will be worth it because when we told Teacher Emily that we wanted to redecorate her class, her face lit up with happiness so I am very excited for her to see the final result!
It is very, VERY strange to think that we will have left the project before the next term finishes. People said that time would fly by, but this is absolutely insane. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed teaching to Primary school children, I did miss the nursery, therefore next term we are going to do a bit of nursery for a day or two each week and then primary school on the others, the best of both worlds!
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