End of Nanowrimo, my time at Japari and new plans

Nanowrimo 2010 - Temerity
As you can see on my word-counter I reached the 50,000+ mark on my story. What's even better though is... for the first time ever I've completed a story! While The Obsidian Shifters is still incomplete Temerity is (as far as first drafts go) complete! It desperately needs a rewrite, though. I'm planning on making it into a short story (my best guess at the moment is that it might go down to about 35-40k words, but it might end up being slightly more or less than that estimate) for now.

I reached the magical fifty thousand during Sunday's write in. To be honest it didn't even feel so great... I'm just happy it's over! Even though the emotional part seems to be missing I'm still pretty proud of my achievement.

Japari
Monday I went to work at Japari for the last time ever. (Although I'm still going to the staff lunch Friday next week) I had hoped for an exciting day but in the end I just sat around in the staffroom for most of the day - they didn't need my help at all. Oh well, we had a nice brunch made by the team of therapists which included anything from pancakes, sausages to crackers + cheese and hummus to strawberries and samoosas. Pretty good! I wasn't very emotional, not as I had expected to be, but it's a strange idea that my Japari days are now officially over!


The staff room


The Japari magazine - it was lot of fun (and a challenge) to get the whole school into the picture and everyone looking cheery ;)


Because I'm not allowed to show pictures of random students without permission I could only take pictures of my cousin - so lucky he goes to school at Japari!



New plans
With less than 20 days to go before I fly back home I need to start making some plans! My diary is filled with 'words+10' 'blog post' 'work on religion assignment' and other such notes. I'm trying hard to complete my portfolios before going back home (mainly because I'm actually really lazy and like to relax during test weeks and whenever it's possible... although 'relax' means 'being busy with my own projects' more often than not). But other than that I'm already thinking of new projects for next year!

I love writing, somehow I manage to forget that in between events such as Julnowrimo and Nanowrimo. So for 2011 I want to do things differently. Instead of aiming for huge projects I'm going to do what I call my 'short story challenge'. 12 months in the year... so let's write 12 short stories (5,000 - 15,000 words each). My rules? The stories have to be written during the actual month - so if I end up writing two stories in March, it won't count for April. This means that no matter how much I do, I still have to write something every month of the year.
Why five thousand as my minimum? Well, in two days of writing I can easily get to the 5k if I need/want to. So even during a really busy month I can manage to get to my goal - without neglecting other responsibilities. It also means I can safely try to do Julno and Nano, too (finish in 20~25 days and there's enough time in the month left to write a short story).

I want this challenge to be as much fun as possible so I'm leaving the themes and other 'rules' open for now. Mostly.

Of the 12 stories:
- 1 has to be in Dutch
- 1 has to be sci-fi/fantasy/horror so that I can submit it to a contest (in October) (sadly, also needs to be in Dutch)
- one will be written using code-switching whenever it feels natural (English/Dutch). (I guess that counts as experimental writing, hm?)
- 1 will be a fanfic
- 1 needs to be realistic fiction

If I end up writing realistic fiction in Dutch that counts for two of my goals, though...

I'm already looking forward to January! I might attempt my code-switching short story first, it sounds like a challenge but also like a lot of fun! (Finally I'll be 'allowed' to write freely mixing languages as I do in my thoughts and in conversations with family/friends :))
(I love code-switching now, although I used to hate it when I was younger...)

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!

August 18 work-related

This week I worked at Japari school on Monday and Wednesday.

Monday wasn't very busy, miss Bozzoli only had 3 lessons (English – covering direct and indirect speech with the grade sevens). After those lessons (I just observed) I did some photo copying and typed up some answer sheets for the excercises.

Wednesday was more exciting, we had the year sevens and sixes again. For the (in)direct speech assignments I helped out by checking the learners' work when they finished four sentences. I explained a few things here and there and helped them along. The next lessons was even better; miss Bozzoli needed to make some photocopies so I was to get the year sixes to come in, sit down and colour a bit in their social sciences workbooks. They didn't feel like colouring, at all. So I decided to allow them to ask me some questions – I'm the interesting foreigner here, after all. We chatted a bit about what's different about the Netherlands compared to South Africa, and when one learner asked me whether Holland was a rich country I had my link to our topic -> sustainable development. So I went on to ask them 'What did you talk about last lesson?' and 'Can anyone tell me what sustainable development means?'. After a few more questions miss Bozzoli returned. She liked the discussion that was happening so she let me go on for about another 15 minutes, in which the learners asked questions about how the Netherlands work, how we came to be a rich country etc. We even talked about global warming and the fact that part of the country is below sea level. :) It was a fun lesson and I actually got to do some teaching, so that was exciting.

It's interesting to see that it truly is so much easier to teach here than it is at home. The teachers here are complaining there's not enough respect.... But compared to teaching a random group in the Netherlands? Japari is a remedial school (primary, I should say that, I suppose. But the grade six and sevens are 12~14 years old so that's the same as the first few years in secondary school at home.) but the learners are so well behaved and respectful compared to what I've seen of the learners at home, so far! It really makes me doubt teaching in the Netherlands. To pass my TP and get my degree? Sure, but I don't think I'll actually want to get a job there!

This is the last week of term 3, we'll have two weeks off now and after that we'll start term 4. I'll be helping out/teaching at Japari for the whole term. (They already asked me to take over some lessons – if I feel comfortable doing so – when a teacher is absent. I'm convinced I'll be able to do that, when I get to know the school and the learners a bit more. Their lessons are 30 minutes each and the groups are small. But being remedial, there are a few learners with impaired hearing, autism and AD(H)D. Still – they're much easier to work with than your average group back home.

As for the next two weeks, we might go camping at Shiba mountain (sp?). I'm working on a website for my uncle's company, too.

This Monday evening I went to a shiur together with my aunt – it's sort of like a bible study/talk but in a Jewish setting. This one was about marriage and why people don't believe in getting married anymore. It was quite interesting, and the rabbi who gave the talk has a wonderful sense of humor. Next week we'll probably go again; no matter what it is, I just need to get out of the house a few times a week (other than working) because my life is rather boring otherwise. I'm mostly around older (30+) adults and children, so I don't have much of a social life (yet).

Note to self: About time to make a voice recording, need to keep track of how (if at all) my accent is changing.

Until the next update!