Our new home

We are back in Windhoek for a week's orientation. My principal and the staff at RHS have been so anxious to make us feel welcome. We were planning to get a shared taxi back to Windhoek but he wouldn't hear of it and arranged for a couple of the teachers to give us lifts. Ruth and the children were caught in one of the dust storms we had this week. Just at that moment Mr Titus, the principal drove past, did a rapid U-turn and directed them to get in his car so that he could take them home! The following day I was called to his office and he told me he had arranged for his wife to pick Ruth and the children up from school at 12:50pm each day this week.

We had the deputy director of education visit the school on Tuesday and Wednesday this week and as a result school finished early on Friday. I guess it is a bit like the head boy or girl asking for an afternoon off at speech day! The assembly on Wednesday morning lasted for an hour - the learners stood in rows (mostly in silence) outside in the cool of the morning. That morning the temperature had dropped to 5C and even though I was wearing a fleece I eventually had to move in to sunshine to warm up. The strange thing was that even though the timetable has 10 minutes allocated for the assembly we still had 8 periods that day - it seems as though the only bell you can rely on being the same time each day is home time. The joke here is that all the others are on African time but the end of the day is by the clock.

We had a bit of a disaster with the computers this week when the main server started to play up. I've spent hours trying to get to the bottom of it - it hasn't helped that the virus definitions haven't been updated since June and many of the PC's have viruses. Teaching has been going well - it is such a joy to have learners that listen and do as they are asked straight away. I ran a revision session for Grade 10 (Year 11) on Thursday afternoon and although there was an atmosphere of resentment amongst some of the learners that they had to do this compulsory extra class, once I got started and they realised that they were going to be taught this changed so that by the end, when they were supposed to have a break before the next session, a group wanted to carry on during their break!

I will try to get permission to take some photographs of my classroom with the learners especially the Grade 9 class with 39 learners!

We are gradually getting things sorted in our flat. We now have a fridge with shelves, a cooker that is wired in to the proper 60A socket rather than the 15A ordinary plug socket, a hoover and curtains in all the rooms apart from the kitchen! We are still trying to find the bits we need for the shower and the school have promised to put the rail up for the shower curtain. Ruth and I have still got two single beds pushed together but we were offered a double bed by someone here in Windhoek; we just need to work out how to get it back to Rehoboth. In our garage we have a large ride on lawnmower (for the only grass in Rehoboth - the rugby field) Mr Titus did suggest we could use that to take the girls to and from school!

The photographs below are rather flattering, one day we'll photograph the hole in the side of the bath etc...

One end of the kitchen:


View of the living are from the front door which opens directly on to this space:


The bathroom, I think Courtney may have a future as an estate agent as she has managed to take a photograph that leaves out the less desirable parts of the bathroom!


Courtney's room - the sunlight through the curtains gives the room a pink glow!