Notes on English Babysitting.

Tonight is the first night I've babysat for a family in England since I left for SA. I've done quite a lot of child-care work but it was either with very young kids or one child on their own. This evening, the older child called the younger child to come upstairs, stating that the younger had to go immediately but wouldn't say why. I had to stop myself from either calling the older child downstairs, or stopping the younger one from going up. It was a very weird sensation. In the house, I would have found out the reason for one child calling another upstairs before allowing it, not to be controlling, but to make sure that either they weren't going to be messing around and therefore getting in trouble with the CCW, but also, on a very extreme-I didn't expect this to happen but it's something you have to be prepared for and aware of-making sure there were no shenanigans going on.

So it was very odd to have that reaction for 2 totally healthy, non-abused, 'normal' children.



In more sane news, you can tell I've been doing a lot of cycling recently because all the freckles on the backs of my hands have made a sudden appearance!

Blackberrying.

We went blackberrying today on the Fallowfield loop. The Fallowfield loop is an old train track that has been covered over and made into a brilliant cycle route. It's about 6 or 7 miles long and you can go from Debdale to Chorlton and if you can find it again, you can go straight into Manchester and only having to navigate the smallest sections of road. When Mum cycled into Chorlton the other day she noticed loads of blackberries ripe for picking and seeing as we both weren't working today, I cycled down and Mum drove Granny and we picked as many as we could. Unfortunately a lot of people had got there before us on other days and there wasn't much to get where we could reach, but I thought if we had a ladder we could rest it on the brambles and reach the plentiful supply higher up. So mum drove back to the house to fetch the ladder! We got at least 3 yogurt pots full, maybe a little more and I only got stung by nettles 5 or 6 times and the brambles only ripped my legs a few times (for some reason, I seemed to think that shorts were a good idea for shimmying up ladders set in bramble patches). There was one slightly terrifying moment where I thought I was going to fall straight through the bush: The ladder was resting on the knotted bramble branches and the actual ground was at least a meter below what the rungs were resting on and all of a sudden without me moving things began cracking and splintering, so I tried my very hardest not to fall down to the bottom of the ladder in my haste to get off!

But needless to say we got a good haul, my hands were good and stained and several people commented on our idea of bringing a ladder!

UPDATE: There's quite a lot of graffiti on the bridges and such on the loop, but all of what we saw was greatly child-friendly! "Only people who are ---------- don't put their dogs on leads" was seen (the ---- was where someone had spray-painted over a swearword) along with "so and so is a muppet" no word of a lie! We were wondering if people deliberately tried to keep it child friendly or whether someone had gone along and edited it. I love the idea of a sinister, threatening looking teenager walking down with a can of paint "oh no, that's not right that. You can't be putting swear words on the wall in front of the little kids" and painting over them. Or maybe a parent sneaking down to protect their kid, making sure there's nothing that might ruin their innocence!

Trying very hard not to fall!

Proud...either of the ladder or the berries...

Lovely juicy fingers!

MASSIVE NEWS!

I have some really big news I can finally release!

As you probably know, I will be going back to the children's home in February. When I said goodbye to my children's social worker I asked about a crazy idea that had been forming in my head for a while. I asked on the wild hope that it would be allowed, but I wasn't expecting anything to come of it. I definitely didn't think she would say yes. It was beyond my wildest dreams that the director of the home would also agree and I would have permission to go ahead with my mad plans. But that all happened and here we are!

I will be bringing 6 children back to England with me!

I originally wanted to bring all 14 that are currently in the house back, but obviously it just isn't possible, instead we have picked 3 boys and 3 girls some of whom aren't currently in Stepping Stones, but probably will be by 2015. I can't give their names out and the children themselves don't even know yet so I have to stress: If you are currently at the home, or if you are going to the home, please do not talk about this to any of the children or child-care workers. I am doing everything in my power to raise enough money to bring the kids here, but it is a lot especially on top of what I have to raise to get myself back out and I don't want the children to hear about it from ANYONE until it is guaranteed that they will be coming. Otherwise it could just become another empty promise, and I won't let that happen.

I have emailed several newspapers and TV/Radio places to see if they can run a story because I think what I really need is publicity. I also plan on writing to as many airlines as I can to see if I can get any sort of discount or sponsorship from them, as the flights will be the most expensive thing. I might see if I can get a scheme running where people can sponsor a child, so you might be able to pay for the petrol for a child to go to Chester Zoo or something similar. Something like Kickstarter or RocketHub. Rewards may include meeting the kids (although I think that's a fairly long shot) or seeing video's-maybe video chat with them? Not sure, that's just a base idea at the moment.

For now though, I'm just focused entirely on getting the money for them to come back. If you would be interested in helping in any way, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

Up in the Air.

Currently I have 3 things floating about that I hope are going to be major money makers:

1. Selling my soul: I have offered to sell my soul to a family that I do a lot of child care work for so my hope is that they'll say yes and guarantee me £5000 and in return I will provide child care, cleaning, cooking, all sorts!
2. I also have an interview at Marks and Spencer for a job in one of their cafe's. It's mainly late nights which is fine, but it might put a blight on some of my babysitting although it would be a regular, fixed, paid job which is really what I need right now, so I hope I get it!
3. I dropped my C.V off at the local dry cleaners who are looking for weekend help. Mum heard from someone that the pay is fantastic there, but it would only be Saturdays and Sundays so quite limited in that sense.

URGENT MESSAGE!

Hi, This is the only way I can think of to be able to contact someone from the home so lets home it works!

Amanda, pretty please can you email me? My laptop died and I lost a load of photo's and I was hoping you could take some for me!

If any of the volunteers see this and they can contact her, please tell her to email me!

Baie dankie!

Taking a break from life.

I'm trying to sort my room out, throwing away clothes I don't/won't wear any more and taking pretty much everything off the walls. When I first got back it didn't feel like my room, not that the room had changed but that I had. I've out-grown my room! So I'm taking everything off the walls and shelves and making it more to suit me. But naturally, I've reached the point where I've pulled everything out of the drawers, spread it about a bit and now I've lost all momentum and I'm bored. I'm hoping if I type a post, by the time I've finished I'll have a bit more self will!

I've been seeing a few people every day, trying to keep the number per day as small as possible. I feel much better than I did on my first day back, but I frequently get bombarded with memories from the house or Home which floor me a bit sometimes if I'm not expecting them. I've found a lot of people seem to expect quite a lot from me very quickly. My next door neighbours sent a paper airplane over the hedge on Friday to ask if I would like to childmind for 3 hours the next day, so I sent one back saying yes please! But then when I was childminding for them another neighbour came round to tell me how dissapointed he was that he didn't have my number because he REALLY needed me to look after his 3 that day, and seeing as I wasn't working next week I would be spending the whole time childminding for them. I kindly told him I would give him my number as soon as I had one but that I don't think I'm free next week (all lies, I hope he doesn't read this!).

Another family I went to visit today wanted me to stay for an extra 2 or 3 hours so I could help with homework and piano practise and made sure they'd booked me for most of September. One one hand, I really like this family so I didn't mind so much, but I'm not sure I want to do child care work for this 6 months. I almost certainly will be because it's where all my connections are and it's what I know, but part of me just wants a break from kids. Mum suggested me selling my soul to a family though. A deal that the guaruntee me £5000 which is what I need to go back, and in return, I will be at their beck and call. I will babysit and childmind for them whenever they need it as well as cleaning, laundry etc. Hopefully they'll agree, because that would make me so happy!

Reverse Culture Shock.

OK. So I am back in England. After something like 30 hours of flying where Project Trust or someone else messed up on almost every stage of the journey. But I'm back.

Everything is very stange at the moment, I feel like a visitor or a guest in my house and it almost seems like the whole of the last year was a dream. Everybody seems to be really excited to see me or meet up or whatever and it all seems a little overwhelming, I'm trying to limit myself to only a few reunions a day otherwise I think I might go insane!

Seeing my little brothers again was a HUGE shock. Seth, the youngest one has grown an awful amount and his voice has dropped which is just terrifying. I have to keep telling him to shut up because my brain can't cope with this amount of change. The other brother, Nathan hasn't changed that much but he's grown a bit and he's going to a music festival soon. Yoh, it's crazy.

I still feel quite shell shocked at the moment and don't really feel like writing, but I'll try and put up lots of small things more often instead of fewer big posts.

England

I am back in England, I arrived yesterday. I'll try and do a proper post in the next few days when everything has settled down.

It was epic...but it fizzled out in my brain.

Sarah and I took her little girls to the aquarium today which was lovely! We had 6 kids under the age of 5 so it was a bit hectic at times but they had fun and we had fun so a great day was had by all.

So much has changed since I first arrived, I can hardly remember a time when I felt like I didn't know what to do or feel totally at home here. I can remember when I first started working in my house and whenever the CCW left for her break and I was all alone with the kids I couldn't handle it, there was too much chaos. However the other day I was alone in the house with 7 kids and I had nothing to do! All their homework was finished and some of them were playing quietly in one room and the rest were colouring or reading in another-I had everything under control, even when more kids came home from school I just had to ask them to go upstairs and get changed, wash their socks then come back down to eat and they did it!

And as for Afrikaans learning, I had 2 goals at the beginning of my year:

1. Understand what the kids pray for every Monday when the Church Tannie comes: COMPLETE!
2. Memorise their prayer before food: COMPLETE! 

Op my soeltjie sit ek nou, Met my handjies saam gevou, Liewe Jesus hoor my dank, Vir my voedsel en my drank. Amen.

And now for some pictures:

Most of the kids and all the volunteers got a pair of toms (as in the free pair that get donated to a needy child in a 3rd world country) and because they have to be suitable for use as school shoes they're plain black and look like the pumps we had to wear for P.E. So I made a few modifications.

How we get them.

A pair I decorated.

Mine and the kids toms all complete.