Honey Bees and Teenage Girls

It's only ten to eleven, but I thought I'd write a quick little paragraph about the behaviour of the girls I'm working with tonight. Last night I was with the same girls and it was insanity. They wouldn't go to bed, they started swearing at us in Afrikaans and English, then throwing empty cans and bottles at us. They were smoking in their bedroom, and we think they were also taking drugs. Some of them didn't sleep all night, but thankfully they calmed down enough that they were just chatting quietly in their room and sometimes playing music. Tonight, we were expecting the same as last night, only worse, due to the fact that it is Christmas day tomorrow and what kid doesn't get excited for Christmas? So I was a little apprehensive all day. I didn't want to have to battle against the kids, for so little. But I get to work and find that two of the girls have absconded. The two girls that had been causing most of the trouble last night. The girls that are home are all well behaved, the atmosphere is calm and fairly peaceful. At one point, they even want to paint my nails (I held out and my nails are still their natural colour!). There was such a difference in the house because just these two girls weren't there.

And it got me thinking, this is going to tangent, but I promise it gets there: In England, my parents keep honey bees, and a few months before I came here, my dad was asked to take a hive of bees that the owner couldn't keep because they were so aggressive. The bees would follow people and try and attack them or dive-bomb them. Having them live in our garage made life interesting. The thing with honey bees is that if the queen bee is aggressive, bad tempered and violent, all the other bees take on those characteristics and also behave aggressively and violently. If you change the queen and replace the angry queen with a calm queen, the bees will change their personalities to fit the new queen and they will also behave with a calm manner.

The girls here are so much like the bees in their behaviours. Calm and fairly respectful girls will become disrespectful, moody and bad tempered if the older or stronger (personality wise) girls are around. It's quite bizarre!

It's now 10 past midnight, and as much as I envisioned myself live blogging (without internet connection) all night, I've come to the conclusion that it is going to be a night like any other, although I might have to let Santa in through the front door later as the houses don't have fire places and therefore no chimneys. The thing I think I'm most excited about isn't actually x-mas day and presents and what-not (I opened all my presents already cause I thought it would be mean of me to be opening presents on x-mas day in front of other volunteers who didn't have any). But I'm massively excited about the surprise I have planned for Sarah! For her birthday in November, I bought her a massive mug because all the mugs in Back Kitchen are quite small, but she dropped it within the week and it broke. So for Christmas, I bought her another mug, but this time I bought a plain white one and decorated it with orange nail polish and I got her some pens-she's always complaining about having only 1 pen, and some coffee. I persuaded one of her room-mates to give me a key to her room and as soon as I finish my night-shift, I plan to sneak into her room and put the coffee and pens wrapped up on the end of her bed as if Santa's been! If she wakes up, I'm in trouble, but I'm seriously considering just saying I'm so tired I forgot which is my room and hope she doesn't question how I got a room key! I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

Just let Father Christmas in through the main gate. He said he likes homes with lots of kids cause it saves him time. 40 kids in one place means he doesn't have to do 40 different chimneys, he's getting old and his knees aren't what they used to be. Also he says to tell folk that all the mince pies and full fat milk aren't good for his diet, could people please leave out a nice salad next year?

So it's the end of Christmas and it's been possibly one of my best Christmases ever! But that might be down to the fact that whenever you have a lot of people or a massive plan for the day, it's so much easier to get disappointed. If you have no plan for the day except to have a picnic with friends, you can't go wrong! I also went swimming in the pool at Home, weirdest thing to be swimming outside or wearing shorts and a t-shirt and burning my feet on the floor in December.

Sarah loved her gifts, she didn't know who the stocking was from and she thought the mug was awesome. And she got me a silver voucher worth R100 to spend on food at the Neighbourgoods market...I like her style! It also means we have to go back to the market!

So that was my x-mas, I hope all of your x-mas' were equally awesome.

Also, I got an email from my Dad and a letter from my Mum both saying that they know people who are following my blog, like properly following. My Dad said he was on tour with someone who knew when I'd posted before he did, so if you know me or my family or you just like my blog (maybe there are people out there!?) please do write me a comment, or if you want to email me (plumthing101@hotmail.co.uk) cause it's always a nice surprise. You don't even have to have a google account to write a comment, and you can do it anonymously-but that's boring!