Youth Week

Monday was the beginning of Youth Week which involved a combination of fun and work. Monday the school sorted out all the old chairs and tables which were broken and gave them to village volunteers to mend, whilst the librarian sorted out all the books in the school, ones to keep, ones to repair, ones to throw and use for something else. We then went about sorting out new books from the latest shipment to put back in the school this took us until the end of Tuesday to complete as we had to label and inventory them all as well.

Tuesday night was meant to be camp fire night however the rain soon put a stop to that.

Wednesday was Independence Day so school and the library were shut, the day was kind of quite with people spending time with their families but in the evening there was music and local drink for sale. I spent the night at a friends house with a few other people and just talked into the night which was fun.

Thursday the school had the children planting and digging flower beds outside the school to make it look prettier, in the library we played a few games with them.

Friday school continued as normal in the morning but in the afternoon there was a small parade followed by a school concert where each class performed a song or a little play, we also had one of Yupukari's satellite village, Quatata, also attend the concert. There was lots of whole school singing as well which was fun. After school I did a craft station in the library showing the children Origami, we made animals out of paper the animals included Butterflies, Tigers, Elephants and Giraffe's the children enjoyed it very much and seemed excited to go home and show their parents.

Saturday was the last day of celebration, we had sports games in the village where Quatata came and another satellite village called Kaicumbay also came, Yupukari played them both at football and volley ball winning all of the games!! Whilst the games were going on people were selling drinks and food in the market square, in the evening most people gathered at the far end of the village where there is a shop and benab which plays music and sells drinks it was here where people partied on into the early hours of the morning.

Back in Yupukari

I have now been back in Yupukari for a week, after spending a week in town sorting out some paper work. There is lots going on in the village, Caimen house has been under reconstruction and now has a new front to it which acts as a reception hammock room and is very inviting. The teachers quarter is nearly finished now just the inside construction to go and then it should be complete by end of June, where my neighbour Miss Lucy is hoping to move in. The library is next to under go a revamp, an extension is being added onto the side to increase the amount of space on the bottom floor. It will allow for more room to display the books and to have more sofas for a story corner, we have one already but it is only big enough for a few children to sit down at once, we are also hoping once the extension is built we can set the computers up and leave them up rather than having to get them out and put them away all the time.

My room mate has been away for a week too visiting friends in Region 1, so I have been looking after the library in her absence. I have also been going to nursery most mornings helping Miss Lucy with her class. We have been learning new words as well as trying to improve their reading, we have started to teach them about whole, halves, quarters and thirds. Over the weekend we baked 2 cakes to try and help them visualise whole, halves, quarters and thirds I think it was fairly successful and they definitely enjoyed eating them afterwards. Lorrie and I have been taking Grade 2 everyday for the past week to help improve their reading skills, we have picked a select amount of dolch words (words they should know by their age) and going over them each day and designing different activities to complete with them.

For the past two days some teachers have been absent due to workshops in Lethem they have to attend so the librarians have also been filling in school lesson too, I had forgotten how hard some of the teachers have it, some are teaching several grades at once and so it is difficult finding work appropriate for the different ages.

Next week is Youth week and Independence Day on the 26th, the school have organised lots of different events such as games, a rally, and a concert, I hope to organise some fun activities in the library too. Independence Day is a public holiday so I expect a lot of people from the village will gather in the square and participate in games as well as selling food and drink to celebrate.