Meetings and Public Holidays

This month has been the month of Public Holidays (bank holidays) which makes me very happy to be working in the office as it means I get them off. On the downside, I have to work in the office! We just put out the new shift plan for the whole of May. Last time I did it, a whole bucket full of people complained and made a fuss. This time...nothing! If anything people seemed to be happy with where I put them and when someone thanked me for placing them where they wanted I felt a need to try and make myself seem less nice! Meh.

What else has happened recently? Jazz' Mum has come to visit her so I've been living very expensively and unhealthily (but I've made Jasmine hide my card and only give it back to me if I get tonsillitis, need to top up my phone or when Sarah comes!) but we visited the lion park in Drakenstein which was lovely, I'll try and put some pictures up when she gets back from Cape Town on Monday.

I spoke to my parents about America and they did the wonderful thing of making me think properly about it and came up with the cons that I was having difficulty thinking of, so now I can spend the next months thinking about it properly and come up with a proper idea of what I want to do.

Yay.

Who wants to go to America?

I am truly sorry for the distinct lack of posts lately. It is the Internet's fault! Whenever I try to write a new post, it won't let me but I've also kind of got out of the habit because it doesn't work more than it does. However we can now use Boingo which is the unlimited service which means no more pay as you go...YAYYY.

 So not a lot has been happening lately, a volunteer who was planning to leave in June has been asked to leave within the next 2 weeks and she was working in the house I spent all of last year in which means I will definitely be back in my house by June!

My room-mate Jasmine is planning a year au pairing in America after S.Africa and she's managed to persuade me so I'm seriously thinking about spending a year or 2 as an au pair hopefully in San Francisco! But I have the next 15/16 months to think it through and begin the process. You have to have a face to face interview to get selected but I could have that in Cape Town if I wanted to get the process under way. And the benefits of this programme include payment! Because I'll have 2 years of proper childcare work under my belt, I'll be able to apply for the 'higher tier' more advanced programme which ultimately pays more. Funnily enough, I don't actually want to work with kids as a long term life plan, but what draws me to this project is that you have to do a minimum of 3 hours of studying per week and your host family pays $500 of the cost, so it seems like the perfect opportunity to study either plumbing or computer coding/programming to see if I like it. I can then use the money I earn to pay for my continuing study in the UK. Plus, it's almost a guaranteed job for when I get back...I mean the questions you have to answer had me and Jasmine in hysterics! For example (this was a tick the boxes affair):

Have you ever looked after any of the following?

• a child under 2 years.
• a child over 2 years
• an older child (I presume it means a teenager)
• 2 or more children at the same time.
• a disabled child.

We happily ticked yes to all of the above! I've looked at some blogs of people already there and it seems like a fair few of them had to consciously go out and find work so they could complete the minimum 200 hours experience with kids you need, so I don't see why me and Jazz whould have difficulty! But everything's still in the process. I haven't even spoken to my parents about it properly yet!

THE INTERNET WORKS AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so it's about 2.30am on the 22^nd of March, I'm on the first of 3 nightshifts and desperately trying to stay awake. The first segment I wrote at the end of February but we haven't had proper internet since then so I haven't been able to post so hopefully this bumper blog will make up for it! And I hope nobody thought my tonsillitis was so bad I died!

Oooft...OK, right where to start?!

As I put up on Saturday(?) (Several months ago!)I felt like I had the beginnings of tonsillitis now this would have made it the 6th time I think I've had it in about a year. On Sunday it was horrific, this time it just leapt on me! In the past it's taken a few days to develop but on Saturday I had a sore throat and on Sunday my tonsillis were beyond huge and they had nasty white blobs on them. So I went to the medi-clinic. R530 for the doctor now but hey, the exchange rate is better this time so it's cheaper than before I think. Anyway...I went into the doctors office, he says yes I do have tonsillitis here is a prescription, but wait, how many times have I had it in the last year? I told him I was pretty sure this was the 6th time so straight off the bat he told me I need to take them out, gave me the number for a throat specialist and told me to call him on Monday.

When I was in England I did go to my GP and ask to have them removed, especially as I'd never had tonsillitis before I came to Cape Town. They told me I have to have it a minimum of 7 times in a year or 5 times a year for 5 years before they'll apply to have them taken out (even then you have to apply). And now I was on the 6th bout and the doctor here wants me to have them taken out nou nou.

I skyped my parents to see what they thought about the whole deal and whether I should have the surgery, they think no for now but see what happens. On Monday I was still feeling like rubbish but I had to go the office to tell my manager I was sick which nearly resulted in me bursting into tears (we've also had a heatwave over the weekend so the insane overnight heat of around 26oC and the intense pain from my throat and noisy room-mates meant I hadn't had an awful amount of sleep and I was EXHAUSTED!).

On Tuesday my tonsils didn't seem to be better, if anything slightly worse! I was taking antibiotics (remember the massive ones from my last stay...same ones!) and painkillers that weren't working at all. One of the old Project Trust volunteers from several years ago is back for just over a month and she's a nurse in London so she took a look at the beasts in my throat and told me to go straight back to the medi-clinic. My tonsils were just as big if not bigger than before and now at least half white. I kinda wish I had taken a picture because it was truly disgusting!

I go back, they don't charge me for the visit (YAY) and they prescribe different anti-biotics and REALLY STRONG painkillers :) The kind that make you sleep! Plus an antiseptic throat spray and thankfully the combination of all of them seems to be doing the job. I still have a little but of pain whenever I swallow but I think it will have gone in the next few days and everything else seems fine.

I'm skyping with my parents again this weekend I hope to talk things over again but I don't think I'll have the surgery now. Maybe think about it if I get tonsillitis a lot more. If I'm honest, I'm expecting to qualify to have them out in England by the end of this 18 months!

Right so that was illnesses and penguins covered. What else has happened while the interwebs has been down? Well I got to go on a 'fun day'! The apostrophes make it seem like it wasn't fun. It was, but it was quite hectic. One of the little girls ran into one of the other kids or the wall or something (I'm still not clear on what happened) and bashed her front teeth so she was quite weepy all day (she ended up having her two front top teeth removed at the dentist cause they were almost entirely fallen out). But back to the fun day! It was near Simon's Town I think and there were several other children's homes there. *Side story: one of the boys got off the mini bus and ran straight over to a boy from a different home, we noticed they looked very similar but thought maybe it was just a coincidence or at most they were cousins because we figured otherwise they'd be in the same home, but later the child from our home came over all: “Auntie, Auntie, look this is my brother!” So hey, what do you know! They were brothers after all!* Baaaack to the fun day again...They had the fire service there who taught all the kids the emergency number if there's a fire (here there isn't just one emergency number like in the UK (999) they have one for each service, so police is 10111 and fire is 107 and the ambulance is 10177 I think) and they turned on their fire hose and sprayed all the kids. The older ones loved it...the little ones burst into tears. The nature reserve people were also their with their snakes so some of the kids go to hold snakes! Oh and because I thought it was going to rain, I didn't put any sun-cream on and I got so burnt you could see the line where my necklace was. Which meant a lecture from my boss (I will admit I was pretty stupid-especially with my wonderfully white and freckly skin!) who was highly amused especially as last year I had to give the talk on safety in the sun!

The there was the sports day. It was the smaller one and I think it was only supposed to be us and one other home, but they cancelled so the kids raced against themselves! I was attempting to keep track of the scores of all the running events with one of the 'new' project trust girls. I don't think it went too badly! It was absolute chaos though obviously! I hardly ever knew which event was running until they got close enough for me to gauge the age group and work out where they were starting and finishing so I could know the distance! But it was fun.

What else? Yoh! A lot has been happening! Oh, 3 volunteers, the assistant volunteer manager and myself went on a camp thing with a whole bunch of school kids! Our assistant manager was helping run the camp so the other volunteers and I were with to help run some of the activities so we could replicate them for no volunteer day (I don't know if I've explained this before so here's a quite run down: It's basically a day when none of the volunteers work in the day and instead we have team building activities and the like for them. There's also often cleaning involved...yay!). I was assisting/helping/minding the team called “Christ Conformers” because it was a religious camp/school. I also learnt how to say “God works in us to give us the strength and desire to do what pleases Him” in sign language! When the kids first arrived they were told 3 things: 1) Don't ask what's next. 2) Don't say I can't do it. 3) I can't remember what this one was so it probably wasn't important. Don't swear or something like that.

Number 1 was explained something like this: If you keep asking what's next instead of enjoying what's now, you'll end up at death and here's how (for a school child). You go back to school, you learn some more, you finish school, you get a job, you earn a load of money, you retire, you spend all your money, you die unhappy because you were always waiting for what's next.

Number 2 went like this: There's a lot of things you can't do. Yet. You can't fly a plane because you're in grade 5. You can't drive a car because you're too short. Maybe you can't climb that tree because at the moment it's too scary. Or you can't do that activity because at the moment it's too hard. But there will be a time when you CAN do the activity/climb the tree/drive a car/fly a plane if you want to!

So on Thursday we replicated some of the activities for the volunteers!

OH OH OH OH OH! And we accidentally hatched 6 chicks! On the no volunteer day, our assistant manager was walking past the chicken garden and sees something weird so goes to investigate and discovers the broody hen had been hoarding all the eggs and sitting on them and 6 of the 10 hatched! So we had to re-build the chicken coop so the chicks were covered and protected from other birds like crows and the like who might try and eat them. It was a total surprise though. We knew the hen was broody, I'd gone as far as to ask my dad what to do to make her not broody but we hadn't got round to doing it yet (thankfully!). So a week after we had to take 5 of the hens back to the farm because we had too many, we accidentally hatched 6 more. I'll try and add pictures because they're really sweet! They look exactly like Easter chicks...just in time!

I think that's all for tonight but I don't know when the internet will get fixed so this could end up being a monster post of several months long (I hope not!) But I'll try my best to add pictures from each event!

2.30am again! This time it's the 6^th of April...I think 2.30am is my boredom wall, then by 3.30/4.30 I'm at the tiredness wall.

Right-oh! First off: there will be no pictures of the chicks, sorry! I had to look after them last weekend and the weather has been very odd lately, raining harder and louder than I've ever heard it one day, then the next it's hot hot hot and everything's parched. So I was looking after them last weekend as I said, and I checked on them Saturday morning and the Mum was sat in the corner so I presumed she was sat on the chicks so I just gave food and clean water and left them in peace. When I went back in the afternoon the Mum was walking about and there was no sign of the chicks. Very disappointing and I feel horribly guilty, but I don't think there was much I could have done unfortunately.

In happier news: SARAH'S COMING BACK! WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! She's booked her tickets so she spending 7 weeks 2 days here from the middle of July to the beginning of September. Not that I'm counting but if my calculations are correct...it's 98 days from now!

Erm, what else? I have approval for the pen pals thing-linking the house I work in to my old primary school, so as soon as the kids are back from the holidays (next week) I'll get that started and get some letters sent off! And for the England trip, I've typed up a proposal with the kids' social worker and hopefully we'll be having a meeting with the director of the Home very soon so we can get all this fund-raising on the road. Once it's up and running I'll see what I can do if anyone wants to donate anything. We're looking to raise around £7000 but from this side we have to raise it in Rand which is about R126000 and that number makes me want to cry!

I just had the week off which was nice...kind of! Actually, I say I had a week off, that's a lie. I was supposed to have a week off with the exception of Monday when I was working for the social worker for all my kids. Then I had Tuesday off which was FANTASTIC! On Wednesday I had to pop into the office to sort out the shift plans for all of April. I didn't think this would be an issue, I thought it would just be typing up the long week/short week plans for 4 weeks in advance. What I didn't know was that almost an entire nightshift AND an entire dayshift had been given leave at the same time. It took me 3 days but I managed to figure it out by reducing shifts where possible and pulling EVERYONE possible into work (god I hate office work). Friday (after I'd finished all the April planning) I was happily relaxing, treated myself to a steak, everything was good. At 9pm I get a phone call from my manager saying there's only 4 people on nightshift. I didn't entirely see why that was a problem as there are only 4 houses open for the holidays and you only need one person per house. But I went to the nightshift leader to check. There wasn't a problem that night, but she would only have 2 people on shift the next night (tonight) so she needed 2 extra, total of 4 on shift. And for Sunday, she needed 6 people on shift as all the kids are back so all 6 houses are open. So for Sunday (tomorrow) I had to find 4 people willing to do nightshift. Gahh it was madness. I'm fairly sure it's all sorted now!

I remember those happy days when I worked with children in the house and my biggest crisis was when a child peed their pants, pooed their pants or threw up on the stairs (of which all 3 happened to me in one day...I almost miss it!).

If the internet stays down much longer I might as well just publish a book!

And now for some well deserved pictures!

My 2nd lot of pain killers...I fell in love with these beauties if only for their ability to help me sleep!

The collection of Pain meds, anti-biotics and anti-bacterial what ever it was that I had to take.

Not only did I get Tonsillitis but I also got this "Children's Home Tattoo"! I called this beauty of a ringworm Fred.

Penguins at Muizenberg!

Sleepy little fellow!

Even when it's cloudy one must use sun cream or this monstrosity occurs. As happened to me on the fun day!

I'm hoping the internet is back for good...but I apologise if it isn't and I don't get to post!

(And to complete the circle...I think I might have tonsillitis again!)