Old Year's Night
on Kate in Guyana (Guyana), 31/Dec/2009 14:24, 34 days ago
In Guyana tonight is Old Year's Night, rather than New Year's Eve.We are still "enjoying" Christmas events connected to work. Yesterday we had two Christmas meals. The first was at lunchtime for the Curriculum Unit at work - it was quite nice because before the meal everyone took turns to make a few comments about the past year - although the emphasis was on being very positive and thanking people. There is little room to be anything except positive as being otherwise is just seen as criticism and undermining the status quo.The second was a Ministry of Education bash at the cricket club - free bar, free meal and extremely loud music making it difficult to talk to anyone. My flatmate and I dressed up (elegant casual) and turned up to find that the only person we knew was the minister of education. We had a little greeting chat to him. Later my local colleague showed up and introduced me to a few other big wigs. The meal was nice though - rice with bits in, chicken, turkey, duck, fish, potato salad, green salad, then ice cream to follow.This week has been a bit frenetic as my house purchase in Hereford completed yesterday. Emails have been flying around in great numbers. The estate agent will hopefully be able to rent it out, pending my return in summer 2010.This week at work we have been asked to make a list of all work visits, training and activities for the next four months. This is on top of the costs list for setting the budget. So that has given us a focus for reviewing and discussing what we are planning to do. It has been helpful to have that impetus.On Wednesday we are going to be interviewed on the media, newspaper and audio, about our work in special needs. I am preparing to talk generally about inclusion: all children are different, all children can learn, all children have a right to learn - then how teachers can either teach in an inclusive way (for example doing practical activities) that different children can take part in different ways, then how teachers can have different expectations of different children and how to keep track of progress for individuals. My colleagues will talk about remedial reading, and about coordinating action across Guyana. Sounds OK??Happy New Year - we have fireworks at midnight down the road - I have a good friend coming round and staying over, so maybe I'll stay up that late.At the weekend another friend and I hope to make a visit to Bartica which is a minibus and hour speedboat ride away, up the Essequibo. We are staying with a very interesting older couple of VSOs, so there should be lots of interesting discussions. That's the best bit!