Bunk Beds

So I'm going to wager that most people have slept in a bunk bed at some time in their lives, be it when they were a kid with their younger sibling, on a school trip or maybe a summer camp. I'm spending this year sleeping on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed and there are down sides and upsides. One downside is that you can't sit up in bed because the bed above is so low. But on the upside, the slats of the bed above are really useful!

Uses I've found so far:

1. Attaching ID sized pictures of family, friends and chickens (thank you dad!) so you can see them when you go to sleep and when you wake up.
2. Hanging a bag full of loose change. A Rand is worth so little, the cents you get as change just wigh you down but I'm saving them for changing into R2 pieces for pool games!
3. Tying spare plastic bags out of the way and they don't rustle.
4. Drying you towel off the side gives you privacy as well as a dry towel!
5.  If you have lots of spare coat hangers, you can hang them off the slats and put your clean-but-still-wet-from-washing clothes if you don't want to hang them outside (like undies!) 

 That's all I've found for now, but I've got 9.5 months left!!!

A week of horrors!

This week has been so long! Nearly all of the children had concerts at school every night for a week and a half. They started Wednesday the week before and the last one was Thursday just gone so because they were all going to bed later than usual they were all knackered (it also doesn't seem to be common knowledge here that kids probably shouldn't eat fizzy sweets and chocolate just before bed so they don't get a burst of energy!). We also had to tell them all some bad news last Friday (I'm not going to say what the news was on the blog, but don't worry, no-one's died or anything that serious). We have been told a lot about 'stressful incident leads to observable behaviours' so I definitely saw that this week. Children who were usually fairly well behaved were acting out and the children that often misbehaved were on a new scale. The children who are the ones you rely on to be fairly independent and just get on with their own stuff became really needy and wanted you to be with them the whole time. It was so stressful.

On top of this, all the Child Care Workers-CCW (Tannie's one per house and paid version of the volunteers but they're here full time-basically the person who tells me what to do when in the house) on shift went for a teambuilding day thing. But it meant there were no CCWs on shift at all. I haven't worked in other houses so I don't know what the situation is like there, but the house where I work, the kids don't listen to what any of the volunteers say. Ever. It's really frustrating. So if there's no CCWs for 2 hours then the volunteers have 2 hours of trying to stop 12 kids from going too wild. All this considered, I think we did quite well! I mean, one child flicked a fork-full of food at another child's head and 3 boys climbed onto a small 1st story roof. But other than that! And all 12 kids were alive and in the house when the CCW got back! Only we have to do it again next week when the other shift goes for their teambuilding. YAY.

But I think next week will be better! :) 

New Happenings

Not a lot has been happening here of late. It's mainly been lovely weather (yesterday was miserable). It's a child's birthday next week so there's a party for them today which should be fun!

And I've been speaking to some people trying to get some things organised that have to potential to be very exciting but I'm not going to say what or who or when until it's been approved by all the necessary people and gets the go-ahead...but I'm very excited!

Suddenly it's Summer

The last couple of days here have been really nice! All of a sudden it's gotten really really sunny and today the cool breeze has gone (the last few days have been really sunny but the wind has been very cold) so I think we might finally be in Summer! This does however mean I won't be bored inside, I'll be bored outside so I won't be using my computer as much to type up blog posts-or emails! So from here on, the frequency of my updating may decrease until we get back into Winter! Just so no one thinks I've forgotten them :)

Oh, and it seems that putting up x-mas decorations far too early is a phenomenon on a global scale. Yesterday, the shopping centre where the gym is was nice and normal...today there were baubles and ribbons everywhere, what is this?!

More Hand Washing Injuries...

The title says it all really! I did the exact same thing as last time! I basically suck at washing my clothes by hand. Although I've now found out that I'm not the only one injuring myself in hygeine's sake, one of the other British volunteers did almost the same as me yesterday as well! But not one of the Project Trust volunteers...I think they're being lazy and taking it to the laundrette!
Bah

Holiday Times

Because it's the holidays here, a lot of the children have gone to stay with family or friends, but there are still about 40-50 kids still here so there is a holiday programme so they don't get bored. And today was the volunteer day. So the volunteers had to prepare 2 hours of activities for the kids to do then get the kids to do said activities!

It was all very fun! I'm gonna be honest, I had no idea it was happening until half an hour before becasue someone borrowed the holiday plan from the area where I live and the notice about what was happening was put up in one of the other living areas so most people hadn't a clue, but once it got going it was really fun! I got to look after one of the younger kids who wasn't really allowed to join in for some reason so I took her round all the different activities and when the other kids had gone I let her play: things like appple bobbing and 3 legged races! Then at the end we had a 'food festival' thing. Basically it was just bags of paint powder (you add water then it becomes paint-only we didn't add water) and on the count of 3 all the kids threw the powder in the air...and at each other...and at us :) I think it was supposed to be like in India when they have a food festival and throw colouored flour. So it was all very fun...and now I look like I have a wierd skin condition because I had yellow paint powder on my hands and it stained my skin slightly so my hands look jaundiced!