Nick’s word to sum up our experiences on the island so far: GREAT! He is having a good time. No huge pressure yet, but he is generating a lot of work for himself with putting some structures into place and finding his feet. I personally think he is doing an excellent job; he is authoritative without being bossy and knows what he wants to do. He is definitely a visionary and not one to plod along in someone else’s wake. Unfortunately there is a lot of driving for him (the church pays for petrol) but a lot of time is wasted, like this morning he left at 8.00 am and returned at almost 12.30. That was to go to the chapel at Sandy Bay and preach there, then to the Head o’Wain chapel and preach there, and drive home. I didn’t go with him, as I will attend church in the evenings in our Jamestown chapel at 19h00. Still debating whether to take the boys and have a distracted church experience, or to put them to bed a few minutes earlier and leave them here on their own. It’s very safe to leave them here. The only con to that is that they wouldn’t ever be exposed to church then, except for the monthly combined meeting. We did have Sunday School this morning, just Caleb and Aaron and I in the diningroom. I found some S/S material for their age in a cupboard here, so for the next 11 or so weeks we will be using that. It was quite a fun experience, though it might be nice if we could expand it a bit and have a proper Sunday School with other kids. Something to pray about.
The homeschooling material I would use is from Sonlight (www.sonlight.com if you want to see more). It’s very largely literature based, so there would be a lot of time spent in me reading aloud to the boys. There is some worksheet stuff, and some hands-on stuff with the science and maths at later levels. I think initially it would take about 20 minutes a day to get through the reading part, then there are workbooks to develop co-ordination and things like that. It is a Christian-based programme, and really sounds exciting and interesting. I brought the whole big catalogue with me, so have photocopied a few pages to send to the education committee.
Outside, the back yard looks like a bit of a dump. We have a patch of grass, about 4mx3m, quite big I suppose, but the grass is not doing too well. Very weedy and thin. We will encourage it and weed it and get it looking good. There is a strip of concrete outside the back door, with a covered porch and coloured light bulbs out there, looks festive at night. The back outside house wall is looking very bad indeed, the paint is half peeled off in places. There are some old stone walls built up which was presumably part of the house at some point, with dead bushes growing in what were gardens. Those dead bushes will be pulled out, and we will see about procuring some lawn from the countryside and transplanting it (no such thing as instant-lawn for sale, you just go dig it up yourself). There is some washline strung under the porch, for rainy day washing, and some more washline over the grassy area for sunny day washing. You can hang up your washing in the open on a rainy day though and it will still dry because the wind whips all the dampness out. The kids enjoy the outside, not so much running on the lawn as digging up weeds, kicking over the bucket which stands under a drainpipe to catch the constantly dripping water, running in said water, and generally doing things that make them dirty. The back door (next to the washing machine) which opens to the back is one of those stable doors, top and bottom halves open separately. However, it being somewhat old or perhaps not too well made, the top half can stay closed while the bottom half can be opened, which is just on a simple latch. So of course both boys can open it by themselves, so they have outside access any time they want it. Nothing wrong with that though, outdoors is good for them. Aaron’s latest trick is to undress himself and come and present his naked body, with much hysterical shrieking and giggling, to you. Very cute but it’s not a good exhibitionist habit to form! His speech is improving all the time, particularly with dipthongs and tripthongs (is that a word?). “String” is a good example – he pronounces it perfectly. Grammar still bad, but vocab improving and pronunciation definitely much better.
The washing machine is working again, it got fixed up yesterday afternoon. Just have to speak to the right people – Vincent came over to look and then popped out to buy another pipe. The church pays, of course. I tried the tumble drier this morning – had to first wire the plug as for some reason it was plugless. Cut myself in the process, but don’t worry, I only lost a little blood. When I switched it on, it hummed for a little while and seemed to warm up, but there was no turning action. Eventually it stopped and there was a burning smell. I turned it off and unloaded the washing and hung it only the sunny-day washing line (optimism). I later discovered that it had tripped all the electricity, but I managed to get it turned back on. Perhaps the reason why it was plugless is because it doesn’t work! Will mention that to Vincent…
I still convert and compare prices, just to get an idea of the value of something until we’re used to spending in pence and pounds. I mean, anything under 1 pound sounds like a good deal until you realize that it’s R7.50 for a tin of tuna! Well, when I shopped on Friday I spent £1.49 on a bag of apples, cheese was £4.50 per kilo, eggs were £1.08 for six, tomato sauce was £1.55 for 750 mls, and I paid £1.89 for a 500g box of Pronutro. All very expensive. I think Spar may be the most expensive place though. I am starting work on a full comparative listing of everything I need. I have my full grocery list on the laptop, so am going to start putting prices next to everything from the different grocery shops. We are probably looking at about £300 for groceries each month. The gas cooker is very easy to use, I am already preferring the gas stove top to electricity – it’s instant heat and instant off and very easy to adjust for simmering and so on. I haven’t tried baking anything yet, so can’t tell you how it’s going to be with using the oven part, but I imagine it should be easy to use as well. I have lit the oven, which involves turning on the gas and sticking your hand with a lit match all the way to the back of the oven and hoping for the best, that you haven’t turned the gas on too far and the whole thing explodes in your face. But don’t worry about it, see!! The boys are quite intrigued by the blue flame when I’m cooking but I keep on sending them out the kitchen.
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