Happy New Year

Best wishes to all my readers even if here in Ethiopia the fact that the whole world except them has just had a new year didn't seem to register. (New Year in Ethiopia is in September.)

I was at work again like Christmas last week. It was a good day. I painted a piece of wood with red and white stripes to use as a more sturdy counting stick. I observed an English lesson at the second nearest school to the college (about 10 mins walk) which was interesting, and booked in a teacher-training session for next week. Yesterday we observed maths and while I was waiting outside to see the director I heard English chanting going on. The funny thing was - I couldn't understand what they were saying and had to ask someone. Apparently they were saying "where is the cat?", but I only managed to pick up "werez cart". Some Ethiopian's laughed that I couldn't understand what was supposed to be English!!!

I also visited the local school to set up an observation - one teacher is using number fans/cards which I would like to see. A bit of a break-through after the training a while back! I have a grand plan to get number fans/cards in all the cluster schools. It's an easily trainable, quick way of getting teachers to use active teaching methods and instant assessment which hopefully will carry through to other areas. Also the cards are relatively easy to make and only use card, pens and string. I have also advertised for college students to be paid to make them. I have made about 100 sets (10 per hour) over the last few weeks but for one class set of 100 for each of the ten schools we'll need 1000. Then I want to get one set per class...

In the afternoon I was requested to fix two more computers that have gone down. I'm sure it's viruses. Virus writers don't realise how badly they are affecting the developing world where the users cannot afford anti-virus programs or technicians to sort out the problems.

Then I taught my third English lesson to the college students - did body parts with lots of VAK! My other counterpart observed and was impressed by my range of teaching methods!!!

Finally I had a pudding tonight. In one of the boxes mum sent there was a steamed syrup pudding. I was a little stumped at how I was going to steam it for 25mins, but my creative mind (which has helped me with a number of problems since I've been here) figured it out. I put some water in the bottom of a saucepan, put the sieve I have across it, put the pudding in the sieve and put the lid on. It worked. Next the mini-Christmas pud mum also sent!

Finally finally, as the bins were full (both of rubbish and the toilet one) I had another fire like last week. What I didn't have, which was good, was the "two bobs."

So, a pretty good day.