30th August

Dinner last night was eventful. After leaving the house in the morning and witnessing the cook walking round the back of the house with a live chicken and a knife, Nat worried the whole day about which meal it was going to be served. It turned up in a casserole; wings, legs and all. This spurred on a lengthy discussion on the slaughter of animals. Collins proudly explained how he'd killed a cow and his friend Austin continued after him with the eternal line "a cow is easy but a goat...". He seemed to take great pleasure in disgusting Nat with the fact that you need 3 people and the technicalities of the event. Frankly we found it quite interesting and more amusing than gross.

Today we held The Walk Centre Mini Olympics. We split the school into age-defined groups who were dubbed teams and they chose animal names; Elephants (baby class), Giraffes (lower middle), Lions (upper middle) and Zebras (top class). The day started with an opening ceremony in which the 4 teams paraded around the yard mimicking their team animal. Hannah organised the 200m race and Grace organised the long jump. Nat did the shot put and Ariel, due to the lack of doable events, held a dance aerobics session for the team not doing an event. The day was a massive success, we had so much fun and the teachers kept telling us all day how happy the children were as the pupils kept informing them.
Just before lunch we held a prizegiving ceremony. Each team had a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for each event. 3rd place won some stickers, 2nd won some balloons and 1st won a couple of pencils.

Today was also the day we gave them bananas with their lunch as a leaving present as well as a goody bag each to take home after lunch. As before, with Penny, Helen and Chris, it was heartwarming to see the children so excited and grateful for their simple gifts, but this time it was all the more enjoyable knowing that we had provided these gifts with our own money.

The children sang for Nat as she leaves tomorrow, but it really hit home that tomorrow it will be us.