End of Sukkot, Simchat Torah and more

I'm really glad the holidays are finally over! We had our last '3-day-break' without electricity etc. Thursday last week was the final day of Sukkot, we had our last meal in the Sukkah and just relaxed. Friday was Simchat Torah (when you get chocolate at the synagogue - or the kids do, at least - and they dance with the Torah. A really special day.

This week (finally a normal week again) I did some research at Japari (I really started with my assignments now). I made a questionnaire for the learners about languages (covering everything from "What is your home language" to "Which language classes do you enjoy most") and another one for the teachers ("Should all children be raised (at least) bilingually?" and about the difficulties of teaching children with a different native language than English.) I also worked on parts of the general report I could already write about and caught up with my weekly journals. And I did some more teaching, I took the grade 4's for Life Orientation again (about emotions and how to deal with them, we did an 'affirmation booklet' this time (an activity I used to do in London with the groups) and they really liked it. One of the kids even talked to me after school, saying "Miss? Thank you for the fun lesson!" (It was so cute!)

Oh, and we celebrated teachers' day! A bit late, but instead of Tuesday we had cake and sausage rolls and cookies on Wednesday! (Lucky for me, because I don't work on Tuesdays...) It was lovely.

Other than work things I decided to take my aunt and two of my cousins to China Town for lunch. We had lovely noodles, spring rolls and a fortune cookie. This weekend we might be going back to Magaliesberg for another hike... I really hope we will.

Summer is on its way and it seems like the rains might be with us soon. (It doesn't rain here in winter, during summer it rains every day in the afternoon.)

As for language progress... Some of the learners at Japari have asked me "Are you Scottish?" and I've noticed I'm starting to differentiate between 'just now' and 'now now' in the South African way (finally! I used to say "We're going just now" when I wanted to say "We're going RIGHT NOW" but right now is "now now", haha) as well as using 'Ag man' (which is, technically, Afrikaans and not English... but still).

On to yet another week... 9 1/2 left here!