160911, Friday, after a busy week

Some scenes at the pension day market in Coffee Bay

 Not sure what kind of beans these are, but I got about half a big tin full for R10...

The scavenger dogs love pension day...

Well, the week’s not over yet.  Tomorrow I have the grade 10 and 11s, my little bit of troublesome classes and extra challenge for the week.  I’m letting them write a test tomorrow, to find out just about where exactly they all are in their knowledge of English.  Cause I must confess, at this stage I don’t feel like I’m helping them very much, they are  on such multiple levels of English, ranging from almost Pre-Beginners to about Intermediate I’d say.  Now try having that in one class of unruly teenagers who really care more about socializing in their own language than English…  I really hope we can sort this out somehow…

Otherwise, successfully finished my first week at the Christian school and steadily falling in love with the kids there.  There are some real characters!  And I’m really enjoying the grade 8-9 class.  All 7 of them.  Their English is quite advanced and we’re able to have all sorts of interesting conversations and laugh a lot. 

There is one particular girl who is quite special and I pray that her life will be one big glorification to her Creator. Liza-Lisa.  A girl with dreams.  She’s quite a big girl with squintish eyes and wears glasses if she can find them.  Also they fit slightly skew over her nose.  She’s quite the comic character and seems to be the only one who has seen a little bit of the world outside Coffee bay to Umthatha region.  She’s even been to Cape Town and Century city and has knowledge of a range of different foods (that we take for granted- like hamburgers, hot dogs, pizzas, whatever) and other subjects.  She also enjoys amusing people and wants to go to Queenstown next year to some or other art/drama school.  I reckon she’ll do pretty well.  I’ll be sad for sure when she goes, but very happy for her.

Today, I had some questions for them in class, one being:  What is your inherent gift?  (I left it to see how many would know the word ‘inherent’, because I’d think they don’t know it, but they tend to surprise me). 

Anyway, so Liza Lisa was the first to answer and said: “My grandfather left me a gun.”  And she went on about this gun and how she uses it to shoot some birds, but doesn’t eat them, she gives them to her dog, or something like that.  Anyway, that got the class into a fit of laughter and I’m not sure if she actually knew what inherent meant and was just playing with us or what, but she sure was funny and everyone enjoyed it including herself. 

On the way home (I finish early on a Friday!)  I saw that it was pension day and went around to hand out some photographs that I took 2 months ago.  I bought some beans, a russian sausage and a new Xhosa skirt that I can't really afford...

Later, Buyana and little brother Aphiwe came over and we were covering the basics of I am, you are, he is etc.   This is going to take a while…  If I’m understanding Buyana correctly, he’s only been going to school for 5 years.  He’s 15 now and in grade 3.  That’s quite far behind.  His reading and writing is really bad.  As is his brother’s.  I don’t know what they’re learning in school every day.  Wish I could focus on them full time.