Day 60

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blog posts this month. With school finishing at 1 then maths study, library duty and computer classes, the rest of the evening is spent cooking (at which we are becoming quite the chefs), playing with the learners outside and planning lessons. That means that what little time we have left is spent on pastimes such as reading, planning holidays and mosquito hunting.
Teaching remains a challenge - keeping control of a class is hard at the best of times, let alone when there are 40 of them. However we haven't even been here for two months yet so we are still getting to know the classes, and we are learning some tricks to make things easier. And as I was told before, you just have to take the small victories to heart and over time it will come naturally
We have been doing quite a bit of travelling around Namibia with our weekends. Three weekends ago we went to Otjiwarongo to visit two Project Trust volunteers who are at another rural school. The highlight of the weekend was probably holding a baby crocodile at the nearby crocodile ranch. Either that or the crocodile fajita I had shortly afterwards.
The weekend after that we spent at Gqaina. We went into town at half past 7 on Saturday morning to get our food shopping, thinking that we would be home by lunch. But, as per African time, we arrived back at 5 in the evening. It's useless even trying to be punctual. Us and all of our shopping were in the back of an open-topped pick-up truck (or bakkie, as they're called here), so the cheese and chocolate were pretty much liquid by the time we got back.
Last weekend we went to Windhoek to see another volunteer as unfortunately her partner went home a couple of weeks ago. We met quite a few American Peace Corps volunteers who have been in Namibia for over 2 years already, and they showed us a bit of the city. We also visited the craft stalls and, despite our bartering, were almost certainly ripped off for bracelets.
On Friday we were invited to the farm of one of the teachers here, and we stayed there for a night. The two of us, along with the teacher's daughter, spent quite a lot of yesterday smoothing out the sand roads. That consisted of one person sitting on a tyre tied to the back of a truck and one of the others driving as fast as they liked. We also went on a mini safari around the farm, and we saw meerkats, oryx, kudu, zebra, and even a giraffe from far off. Apparently there are 8 giraffes so hopefully we will see more when we visit again.
Today is day 60 since leaving home. African time is usually slower than usual but the weeks are starting to fly by - it will be Christmas before we know it!
Ps there have been no photos on this blog because I seem to have misplaced my external hard drive. I'll make it up next time