School
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The girls are enjoying being back at Woodford International School. Last Friday during assembly, Sarah's class sang a song about hats. Since returning to the school this year, there is a new 'no hats, no play, no fun for you today' policy. The kids are required to wear the school hats during recess and when playing outdoors for PE class. Many Australian schools have this policy since skin cancer is such a problem there. (Emily and Sarah are NOT impressed with having to wear hats!) As you can see, there is a school uniform as well.
The school is made up of children from many different nationalitites. In this photo of Sarah and her class, you can see Sarah, her Australian friend, Ela, a Korean classmate and a Solomon Islander.
Labels: Woodford International School
posted by Martha @ 9:24 AM
Routine - a Tuesday in Honiara
Our daily lives are starting to develop a bit of a pattern. We wake up about 6:00 am. The girls are pretty independent in getting ready for school, which is great. They sometimes need help making their school lunches as it is much more challenging here to find things that are quick and easy to throw together for lunch. I've been making bread in my bread machine, but the girls aren't real impressed with my attempts at making a healthy whole wheat bread. The recipe isn't quite right and the bread is pretty dense! Lunch meat is very expensive here so it's usually tuna, cheese or PB&J on the bread.
Tim faithfully makes me a cup of coffee to get me started. While that is going on, I check my email and Skype.
Emily feeds the dogs and Sarah, the cat. Emily is responsible for preparing the food for our pets. As dog food is expensive here, Emily cooks a big pot of rice in the evening. Tim mixes a small amount of rice with a little canned dog food which Sarah feeds to Slinky in the evening and the morning. The rest of the rice is mixed with part of a can of dog food and Emily gives it to the dogs in the morning.
Tim and the girls leave for school about 7:15 with a stop on the way to pick up the Solomon Star, (www.solomonstarnews.com) the local newspaper. They arrive at school about 7:30, which gets Emily there in time for the morning exercise routine in which the kids in her class are expected to participate. Motivation is high to arrive on time because if the kids don't complete the exercise before school begins, they have to do it during their morning break time when it is much hotter.
After dropping off the girls, Tim heads to our office to attend the morning prayer session with our collegues. After that, Tim will meet with our director and another colleague to discuss our upcoming group conference at the end of the month. During our group conference, all our teams in the Solomons will get together for a week of spiritual feeding and group business.
In between meetings, Tim will be working on email and making plans to meet with one of our national literacy collegues, Francis who happens to be in town this week from the village.
Another house project he is working on is to put in additional power outlets. Since we have had a number of walls removed due to the termite damage, we are taking advantage of the open framework and adding the outlets. Most of the rooms in our house only had one outlet and that doesn't provide enough for clocks and other appliances. Imported Australian Power outlets a cost almost $25 USD each unless we are willing to put in cheaper ones that are made in Asia.
I'm continuing to work on cleaning the house. The curtains all need washing and some of the bed linens as well. I haven't tackled washing the walls and ceilings which also needs doing to remove mildew stains. (See photo at right.)
This afternoon I am hosting the expat* ladies Bible Study. The group hasn't met since late last year, so this is a chance to get together and catch up with each other. We'll also be discussing what we would like to do in terms of a Bible study this year. (*expat - short for 'expatriate', a person who lives outside their native land. Our group is made up of members of the diplomatic, business and missions communities around the capital city.)
At the moment, I am waiting for the guys with the termite baits to arrive. We can't hear the termites in the floor anymore. We aren't sure what that means - probably that they have moved on to some other spot in the house. We hope that we can find a place where they are active to place a bait. We have spotted termites outside the house which we will also target today.
This evening the girls' school is having 'Meet the Teacher' night so Tim and I will attend that. Most nights we are home and enjoy playing games and reading which has been nice.
Labels: Daily Life, Woodford International School
posted by Martha @ 8:01 AM
A Trip to Town
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Yesterday we ventured into town to do some shopping. Honiara has a population of about 40,000 people so it is not a very big place.
First stop was Woodford International School where the girls begin the new school year on Monday. There were lots of familiar faces to welcome us and give us hugs. We found out who the girls will have as teachers. Sarah is thrilled to know that her best buddy, Ela, is in her class. Ela is Australian and her parents are part of the business community here.
Our next stop was to Ela's house so Sarah could spend the day with her. They had a wonderful time reconnecting and playing together. Lucky for Sarah, Ela has a nice pool to swim in and she was able to cool off there.
Tim, Emily and I spent the rest of the day shopping and stopping at various stores to take care of business. In Honiara there is no one-stop shopping. Getting the basics takes visits to numerous places. It was very hot and sticky in town. The air condtioning in the car would just start to feel cool when we would park the car at the next stop.
Everywhere we went, we ran into people we knew. We even managed to have lunch with friends and got our first taste of fish and chips - a family favorite.
One of our stops was to the business that has been treating our house for termites. Unfortunately they need to come up on Monday to spray again as we have found a new trail starting up one of the cement posts under the house. They cartainly are determined to eat us out of house and home! Now that we are back we can deligently watch for any more trails and we should be able to keep them at bay.
Labels: Daily Life, Honiara, Woodford International School
posted by Martha @ 7:33 AM
