Wednesday was the day of the big decision, we have one digital television recorder in order to record a football match before it can be sent via a heavy footed VW camper van style minibus to the outfield where the inflatable screen is awaiting a cheering crowd. But the decision was, do we record the England match or the Algerian match. Tony, in his BBC fashion, asked various and assorted pedestrians in his quest to find which match should be recorded. The die had been cast.
After lunch the children were finishing off by attaching their CVs to an email and looking through the wondrous virtual corridors of Google on how to become neurosurgeons, news broadcasters and other assorted potential job vacancies. The lure of watching Bongo Flavva through Youtube was becoming more tempting for our new electronic fledgings, another brood of software sparrows were about to fly the nest.
So with the afternoon nearly finished and the recording choice had been made it was up to the set up crew from Moving the Goalposts
Wednesday was the last day for the first group of students that I acted as a classroom assistant, it was quite lovely to see the children’s faces light as they realised their words that thy had written were now on the Internet. It was one of those moments when you can comprehend the wonder of teaching. This profession has good hours and bad months. But more on the teaching later.
To help you learn a bit of KiSwahili, “Jambo” means “Hello”. “Mambo” means “Hi” and “Dumbo” means “Watch out there is a large eared elephant who knows how to fly is behind you”.
Whilst I type this in the bar, courtesy of an Internet dongle supplied by Orange John, Orange because he works for them and not because of his pallour. It could be described as a download-as-much-as-you-want-from-the-Internet-for-seven-days type of dongle. But as I teach them, I have a lovely collection of people from Yorkshire or Lancashire and I know there are very different. But they remind me of the two old ladies that Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough (Sissy and Ada) used to portray as they talked over the garden fence whilst adjusting their bra straps and mouthing words that they shouldn’t speak aloud.. They are now taking about how the locals, bring a cup of hot water and and a tea bag at the side, and what is the use of that since the bag doesn’t have time to brew,so what is the point. They are now talking of exposed nerves within teeth and porcelain teeth.
During lunch time, which is a combination of rice, haricot beans (but not in a tomato sauce like your Heinz variety), a fried sort of rape leaves with pieces of fried onion, if we are really lucky a weak meat stew and then pancakes; but back to the mid lunch banter, it somehow moved to the pop cultural references of turtles. So without mentioning the infamous Ninja Turtles, there is Yertle Turtle; Touche (with an accent) turtle; the old turtle in the film Kung Fu Panda (Oogway); the old turtle in Finding Nemo (Crush) and Squirt. Then the conversation took a turn for the worst, so we then go on to film titles with dodgy turtle connections…Indiana Turtle and the Temple of Doom, Octoturtle, you can see where it goes…
Thursday came and went with a new class, so back to making up stories and introducing the new students to computers. More to come soon, I here you are having hot weather in the UK, don’t burn. Hakuna Matata!
