Sunday 31 March 2013

Happy Easter!

 For Easter I had a Kinder Egg. Words cannot describe the awesomeness of this overpriced import.



Have you had a Kinder Egg as an adult? What did you do with the toy?

Saturday 30 March 2013

Holiday!

We've finished school for a three week holiday before the third term. Woo hoo! Jouni and I are going down to the coast. We have a favourite place to stay there called 'The Beach Crab'.  Here's some photos from the last time we were there:







We hope to run into our friends Rob and Allison whilst we are down there. The only part I'm not looking forward to is the long, sweaty, and potentially deadly coach ride down to the coach. Say a little prayer for us!

Friday 29 March 2013

Swallow's Nest

Two West Africa Swallows have built their super-interesting nest in our porch using mud. I've never seen anything like it! It took them a couple of weeks to build and now if you try and sit on the porch they swoop at you.
I don't know much about birds but I am so excited for when the babies come out of the nest!

Thursday 28 March 2013

Air Dry Clay

Remember these?  I've been wanting to have a go at making charms like this for a while and I finally came across some air dry clay in a supermarket here:

 It was pretty easy to mold into different shapes without any tools.
 Since the clay was green I painted them all white once they were dry, using acrylic paint:
Next comes the fun part: painting the pretty colours and handsome faces!

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Teaching and Learning in my Classroom


A potential employer asked me to put together a PowerPoint on the topic of 'Teaching and Learning in my classroom'. I took some photos of us doing the usual stuff we do day to day and I thought that you might also be interested to see some of the activities we often do.






After I'd taken the photos my husband told me that PowerPoint presentations don't usually have many pictures in them. Who knew! I honestly haven't made a PowerPoint presentation since I was in school and I have never actually presented one to somebody.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Once Upon A Problem

 We did two performances: one for the older children and for other schools, and one for the parents. They both went really well and everyone had so much fun singing and dancing!




Monday 25 March 2013

T-Shirt Rug: Week One!

 Living in Tanzania, I'm always on the lookout for crafts I can do with easily available resources. After seeing a tutorial for making t-shirt yarn, I thought it would be fun to make a rug from said yarn.
Turns out I wasn't the only one with that idea: I found some great, inspiring rugs at Sew Liberated and Do Small Things With Love. I was a bit scared to cut the t-shirts: I would've felt so bad if I messed it up! But it turned out fine. I then started to plait yellow and white for the centre of the rug (or BRAID if you are American).


Right now you can see that the rug is very tiny! About 4 inches, or the size of a pen. I'm going to post a picture of my progress every Monday: stay tuned to see how it turns out!

Sunday 24 March 2013

Set Design

Here at Braeburn we've been busy preparing for our KS1 performance of 'Once Upon a Problem'.
I did set design, in addition to other things like choreography and coaching actors. I wanted to paint the back boards with chalk so they would look whimsical. I thought it would take 100 years, until I enlisted some helpful Year Four students who did a great job!

Saturday 23 March 2013

Sorry for the lack of posts!

There has been no internet with one of the main providers here in Tanzania for most of the week, because of the long rains. It's back now and I'm hoping to squeeze in a few posts before the next heavy rainfall!

Monday 18 March 2013

The Ole Job Hunt: Where I'm At

Job hunting is boring and time consuming, and I've been doing it for a couple of months now. Some of you might be curious about how that's going, so this is an update.

I've been applying to roughly one job a week, which may not sound like a lot, but when you consider that some of them require an eight page application form and an essay on why you want to work for their company, perhaps you can see why I can't do more than that and also do my job and try to HAVE A LIFE.

Most of the jobs I applied to I haven't heard from yet but I did get OFFERED a job in Singapore. It was for a cool English school and I liked them but I turned it down because of the working hours: it was evenings and all day on Saturdays and Sundays. They gave a weekend during the week instead, but I declined because I thought I'd really never see my husband, ever, and what are the chances of making cool friends who also have a Wednesday-Thursday weekend?

I applied for a job in South Korea and they made me write a letter about why I wanted to work for them on THURSDAY NIGHT to get onto a short list for interview. I made it onto the short list and have an interview coming up later in the week (Friday I think). The school seems cool but I'm not sure how I'd do going from eighteen weeks holiday a year to four, like most people!

Basically all this job hunting is exhausting and I hope I get a cool job soon so that we aren't homeless next year.

Sunday 17 March 2013

Monkey Business

In Arusha, wherever there's food and trees, there's monkeys. Here's a few I've seen around. They have such long tails!


Saturday 16 March 2013

ISM International Day

 A few pictures from a fun event that happened recently. ISM, a school just down the road from ours, have an annual international day. They always have great food and music, with parents from different countries selling food and playing games from their culture.








Friday 15 March 2013

Felt Cake Animation

On Saturday our beading club came together to do something other than beading: making an animation of my felt cakes! We went to Shanga and borrowed a cake stand from them. The idea of the animation was that the cakes start out in a bowl and make their way onto the stand, jumping around and stuff. It was really funny to make and didn't take as long as I thought. Now we need to edit it. Here's some pictures of the process!