Happy late New Year and I hope you all had a good christmas. Well heres the much requested 11th blogg in the series of our adventures. The reason I have not posted a blogg for a very long time is because of the amount of work I have had to do since getting back from out christmas holidays. I have had to stay home every weekend marking and right now I feel like I am just keeping my head above water. To top things off, my laptop crashed today so I lost the blogg I wrote yesterday so I am now writing a new (and hopefully improved version.) I had to buy a new harddrive today which cost me 25,000 Guyanese dollars – the equivalent of about 80 GBP or half a months wages to put it in perspective.
Over the christmas holidays, six of us spent one week in Barbados before we met up with 13 other volunteers for two weeks in Tobago. Spending christmas in the Caribbean was, needless to say amazing. When I wasnt out surfing (with sea turtles and pelicans!), I was relaxing on the beach with the other volunteers or out enjoying the Caribbean nightlife. On christmas day all 19 of us went on a glass bottom boat tour to an island where we had a buffet barbeque, open bar, music and limbo competion (which Jolene and I skillfully won!). To end an awesome christmas day, Jolene and I managed to get ourselves free jet ski rides home  Everyone had a great time and all the ‘merry making’ took our minds off the fact that we werent with out families for christmas. On New Years (or old years as they call it) we were all served free food and drink at local bar as it is traditional to serve free food and drink on New Years Eve. We saw the British New Year at the bar before we headed to a beach party for the Caribbean New Year. Suprisingly enough, it rained but we didnt let that stop us dancing barefoot on the beach all night. Three weeks in the Caribbean was definetly what I needed after, what was at times a very difficult and stressful term. I wont go on about it anymore as I wouldnt want to make you chilly English folk too jealous 
Coming back to Guyana was abit of a shock – it brought us all pretty quickly back down to earth. It had rained all christmas so when we arrived in Georgetown the streets were flooded with the water from the waste water ditches. As you can imagine, the smell was not particularly pleasant. All the rain has caused food prices to almost double and fears of a flood like 2006 where there was an outbreak of leptospirosis. It seems like the rain is coming to an end though despite the fact that it rained all day yesterday. The temperature dropped to about 20C which left us all complaining about the cold weather and wearing jumpers.
Back at school, as usual I have been overloaded with work as six of the fiftth form have two years worth of SBAs to do in a month. I have started doing extra lessons with them after school every week but am wondering whether this will be enough. The rest of the 5th form still have 16 SBAs to do which I am currently trying to organise. As for the 4th and 1st form they are mostly still a pleasure to teach as well as alot of hard work. Some of the firtst form are however getting a little too outspoken which has led to the punishment rate increaing. On Thursday I will have a first former reciting a quote by Nelson Mandela about the importance of education. Both the rest of the class and I are waiting with much anticipation. The punishment already seems to be working as I saw him boasting to his class saying ‘I is the only gangsta round here’. He then turned around to see me standing there and immediately appologised saying ‘sorry miss im not really a gangsta’. I had to try my best to look dissapproving despite finding the hole situation hilarious.
Living on the school compound has so far been very enjoyable despite it feeling more like a farm than a school. I came out of the staff room the other day to find a full grown pig with its front legs on the top of the bin (a large oil drum), gorging itself on the contents. This pig has also been causing us trouble as it comes into a garden early in the morning and makes a whole in our fence. There are also several piglets roaming the school who very much enjoy wallowing in the students plant beds and of course the rubbish bins. The stray dogs have also become more corageous (or desperate) and have taken to climbing on the canteen table to eat any left over food. Then there is the cows who appear in our garden and we have no idea how they get in or out. We have one pig sized hole in our fence and as far as i know full grown cows are not flexible enough to squeeze through a hole the size of a pig. It turns out the cows do belong to someone as i saw a small boy herding them out of the school yesterday afternoon whilst teaching my students in the canteen. I have now found a way of using the stray donkeys, horses, cows, dogs, pigs, goats and sheep in the school to my advantages. I took my first form students out into the yard in our science lesson to note down all the structural features of the plants and animals in the school compound. Needless to say this took plenty of time.
We also had our visit from Doug and Ingrid, our Project Trust co-ordinators. As far as i know it went well and everyone enjoyed themselves, especially the meal they treated us too (although that could just have been a way to get out of tasting our interesting cooking..). They seemed impressed with our new house which was of course in a normal state of cleanliness and tidiness...
Then of course there was Barack Obamas inaugaration which everyone was very passionate about. We woke up to our neighbours blazing the Presidential mix ’08 which has been a massive hit in Guyana. There were also TVs in the gym, home economics department and office set up especially to watch it. Unfortunately I still had to teach so didnt get to watch any of it.
Well Im gonna finish off and save the rest for another time. The volunteers from St Cuthberts and Dora should be coming down this weekend so things could get interesting. Im just praying they leave our water pipes intact...