Mush, gush, and slush.

For the last three days I have been able to walk to work almost normally. The snow is still on the ground, but the temperature is now sufficiently high to melt it most days and it is not so slippery.  There are a few clouds about so more snow could come now it is warmer, but more animals are out and about, if not in the field, out of their pens and having freer access to the hay stacks in the yard and you can tell everyone feels a little more free.

I have had to come over to the restaurant to access the internet and have forgotten my camera, but hopefully the internet may function later in my room so I can put up some pics as it has been another nice teaching day. I finally got to do my food project. In my meeting with my head last week she agreed so today the cook made more bread, my cheese had disappeared so I had to buy more and I bought two sausages too yesterday ready for today.Then today at lunch I joined the group I had taught food words to yesterday and they remembered the word soup so that was a good sign and my head came in with me for the class. She got them all silent!  I then went over the words from yesterday, sad, happy, thirsty, hungry and then showed them the huge bread, the cheese, the sausages and butter.  I realised we needed knives, but here they do not really use just ordinary knives (they use spoons to butter the bread quite often) just sharp knives for the meat, so that meant we needed more help, so in came the cook and the actual class teacher, that way we could each have a group, help them cut up the bread and make cheese and sausage sandwiches. I also had some tinned sardines from the UK which I shared with some of them, one of them did not like the chilli in it at all,but they all enjoyed the activity and it is great for language, how many sausages, (which they understood more than the year 2 did for a long time) cut, bread, cheese, fish and loved eating their sandwiches.  I only got one piece of cheese it was all woofed down so quickly and no sausage at all. I just cut my quarter of bread into four big bits, but the teacher serving 6 children with the same amount of bread managed a sandwich for them all and bread left over to go with the fish.   The nice thing is that I think all the staff enjoyed it too, I did not get as many pictures as I would like, but I will print them out to help the children remember.

The next activity was more risky. I asked my head to come and watch the year 0 perform their Christmas play, but they have not rehearsed it so it was about what they could remember. As it happened trying to film them,  steer them and support them I forgot key chunks and the scart, but hopefully you can see when I have sorted it out and uploaded it that they remembered quite a bit and then they were able to sit down and watch the original  again on their big TV.  The only downside was it cut across the activity I had started with them showing them clothes for clothes word, which they were really enjoying.   We have four new children in this class, but have lost one too, one of the boys who was the lead in The Snowman, so it was good that I cast two of them.  They seem to have fitted in quickly, and enjoyed the lesson.

I hope to also upload me pretending to be Joyce Grenfell as I read the story to the children that we did together, you might be able to spot the panic as I speed up and forget stuff.   They are quite a bigclass and my colleague was filming and their actual teacher rarely actively helps so I am at times worried things will fall apart before I get to the end, but now it has been filmed they will be able to watch it and start to learn the words more. See if you can hear the one little boy who does a great imitation of me. He is reticent to speak English to me directly but is a great mimic.

For the few days I have had the internet again I have been listening to the Last Asylum, very interesting. When I was having therapy I often thought of writing about the process as a book,  as I found it so intriguing. This writer sort of does do some of this and I recognise some of her emotions about it, and then some of her responses are completely new. I also lived near the last Asylum and it was famous in the area at the time and my grandmother was admitted to its smaller sister hospital for a time where I visited her. Not the most joyful experience, but I know when they were closing such hospitals I really was not sure that care in the community would work not because it was not a good idea, but because the support did not really seem to be there.  As someone who has struggled with mental health quite a bit it is a relief to realise I have never been as "ill" as the writer and it is interesting to hear her ideas about the history of therapy and mental health and have them contextualized.

I got a goody bag from my colleague when she left, it has a number of old newspapers in it, so I am happily ploughing through accounts of Nelson Mandela and what was on over Christmas.  Having been very good for months, I immediately scoffed the Russian chocolate she bought me and the nibbles she left me.    We are due to have a party at school on Friday and apparently there will be a wedding party all this weekend at the Ashu, so I think all the weight I have lost will shortly have been regained.