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Hello Everyone!
Sorry it has taken me so long to get round to updating this thing. I have been here about 6 weeks now which has just flown by and I cannot believe we have only 4 weeks left of teaching before the Easter Holidays. Once school finishes we are all allowed to go on Free Travel around parts of Africa with the friends we have made out here. I'm hoping to travel across Zambia on a 5 day train to the Victoria Falls and spend a bit of time there and then head back to Malawi and fly to Zanzibar which is apparently beautiful and spend some time there aswell relaxing after a busy term!
As far as teaching goes I teach at a school called Matiti Primary school just outside Zomba which has over a thousand pupils, and starts at Standard 1 and goes up to Standard 8. I teach Standard 6 which is meant to be year 6 (10-11) year olds as far as I can work out but the age range in the class goes from 11-16. It is quite challenging teaching Maths to 72 children all at once, particularly when they all know the answer to one of the questions and they go crazy shouting at me and clicking their fingers so I pick them to answer! Marking 72 books is also very tiresom especially the children who get all the homework consistantly wrong!
I also teach Life Skills which is kind of life PSHE all about Health and Hygiene, which is rather difficult as their English is not that great and they cannot understand my accent!
On the sporting side I have 2 Netball teams, a school one and then a Ladies Netball team for the next door army base and a football team which I share with one of the boys I live with. Unfortunately the Netball team lost at our latest match against another school but I've got to keep training them!! Their fitness is shocking!
I live with 3 boys which is fine. Our house is quite big actually as we have 3 bedrooms but we have no electricity, running water, sink, tap, shower, loo which did prove difficult at the beginning!! The Long-drop in particular, I wont go into details but the insects that come out of that are truly horrific!!
The weather is definately something to write about! We are currently coming to the end of rainy season. It is sunny 75% of the time and the sun is so intense, you can burn at about 7 am if your not careful! But then suddenly within about 15 minutes it completely pours with rain. Naturally we all run back to the shelter of our house but because our house has a tin roof we cant even hear eachother talk...complete farce really!!
The weekends are also good fun. There are 50 English volunteer teachers also on their gap years in Malawi with me so every weekend we try and meet up with most of them. A few weekends ago we went up to the Lake which is so so huge that it looks like the sea just unbelievable!! Absolute mission to get there but we made it in the end! We're all heading back there next weekend as we have a bank holiday on the Monday!!
Last weekend we all headed up to the top of Zomba Plateau and we went to a Valentine's day ball at a hotel up there which was such good fun! My school and our neighbouring one which has 2 girls (one from Gresham's and one from Prior Park in Bath) and 2 boys (one from Winchester and one from somewhere near Portsmouth) rented a wooden lodge which was really ncie and it had a veranda with a view just like the one in the photo...we sat out there for hours!!
I hope all is well in England apparently it is quite cold?
Lots of love
Olivia xxxx
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