Saturday in a nut shell....

Our alarm went off at 6am – giving time for the water to heat up and us to get ready before the breakfast bell rang at 6.45am. After a quick breakfast of porridge, toast & chai, I headed off to help out with the laundry. The bijali (electricity) went off 10mins before being finished, so the generator had to be started to finish it off. I then found Brad in the office typing out the entire year 10 computing book (2 months into the year, and only 1 student out of 18 has received their book). I took over the typing at that point.

At 10am, everyone stops for morning tea. After a cup of chai, we were told that the bijali would be off for most of the day as some long overdue workmen had arrived to do some much needed work on the lines. This was quite frustrating as we have Yr 6, 7 & 8^th computing lessons back to back from 10.30am to 12.20pm on a Saturday. Unlike Australia, here the kids have school 6 days a week, with one Saturday off per month. So we piled an old computer that Brad has pulled apart and labelled onto a desk & carried it outside under a shady tree for our lessons. Then Brad pretty much repeated the same lesson to all 3 classes, as all these grades are at the same level, and have really only started to have hands on experience with computers since we’ve been here.

We then borrowed a motorbike and headed into Banbassa for a quick trip to collect clothing from some tailors and get some laminating done. We went to the first tailor to pick up a top I’d put in for alterations, to find they had not fixed it yet – we said we’d come back in 5mins. We then went to the next tailor to pick up some pants Brad had put in for alterations, they had fixed the pants, but couldn’t find them – so we said we’d come back in 5mins. So we tried the 3^rd tailor, they didn’t appear to have even started on their job, so we went to get the laminating done – they said it’d be ready in 10 mins. So we went back to the 1^st tailor who had by now finished my alterations, collected my top and headed to the 2^nd tailor, who had by then found the pants. We then went to the 3^rd tailor, who was still working on the school uniform we were trying to pick up. So we went back to the laminator, and collected the finished job. Then headed to the 3^rd tailor hoping that the job would be done, it was.

Lunch (at 1pm) had already commenced when we got back. So we sat down to potato curry, rice, and a banana. I then went off to relax for half an hour – while Brad took one of the students struggling with maths for tutoring, before we took the Yr 10 girls tutoring between 2-3pm (which turned into 3.30pm). We then has a quick cup of tea at 4pm (afternoon tea time), then headed into the computer room to set up for our 4.20pm Yr 10 Computing lesson, only to find that the bijali had gone off again. So we decided to skip computing lesson (as all the boys were working on the harvest anyway), and did 1 ½ more hours of tutorials with the Yr 10 girls. I then came back to find that supper prep/cooking was already well under control, so I replied to a couple of emails, almost fell asleep on the laptop until supper time (not sure what Brad did during this hour). We ate supper, which was a beautiful potato dish with chapattis, then went to bed around 7.30/8pm. I managed to be lulled to sleep by the thumping night club style music coming from somewhere nearby. Brad said the music went for hours, so I expect he didn’t find it as soothing....