Wedgie is a star.

Some years ago, whilst at Haringey I did a great staff training event with my colleagues. We all made puppets. My puppet just had so much character. I kept him. He is called Wedgie as he wears a bag that contained potato wedges. And when I had to think what to bring to Kyrgyzstan I decided to bring him with me.  Both as company! And as a resource.  Several weeks ago, much to their delight,  I introduced the students to help them understand a dialogue, "Hello, how are you?"  " I am fine" etc.  I also showed him to my head and she immediately said that she thought it would be nice to do something with puppets with the kids.  So today that is what happened.   I have never tried this before, but  Wedgie reappeared before the kids, who to my surprise, remembered his name and then they used him as a model to make the characters they need to create the characters for the story The Turnip. I thought someone would object to having to make a Turnip but no all of them just really enjoyed today's session and as soon as their puppets started to have character they started to make conversations in English between the characters. Wonderful

At this point the girls behind were waiting to get a bottle to enable them to start their puppet. 

As you can see they were a lot happier once it arrived. 

A mouse being made.

Wedgie and friend, the puppet that started all this.


I grabbed something to eat after the last after school class.  The cook makes this yummy thing with a sort of suet dough layered and in between a vegetable layer and then all boiled in broth.  So I was eating some before heading home to a cold and empty Ashu (actually three people are staying but I did not know that.) when I was handed a Tupperware box with some more in to have for dinner tonight. This is a tiny village miles from the UK, but at times the welcome and acceptance has been lovely.