Rainy season at last!

It is now only two months until I leave Tanzania.  When it starts to get this close, it's hard to not do a countdown, even if I'd prefer to not think about it!  The weather has changed a lot, and it's now the rainy season.  This means a crazy amount of rain, which turns all the dust to sticky mud.  I love how heavy the rain gets though - it really is a beautiful time of year.  

The rain pouring down at school

With the colder weather comes the flying termites!  Our classroom had a recent invasion over the weekend.  I don't really get how their life-cycle works, but they flap around like crazy, then drop their wings and crawl away/die.  It's a bit gross really!

We finally got fans in our classroom which was good for the last few weeks of hot weather before the rainy season began.  This last quarter has been quite hard for the class, with very few days off.  Also, they are teenagers so most often they come to school looking like it's killing them to be out of bed!  That is one big difference I've noticed between teaching younger kids and teaching high school - with younger kids it's trying to calm down their crazy energy whereas with this group at least it's a constant battle to inject some energy and keep them motivated!  Food seem to be a good motivator:

Phases of the moon with Oreo biscuits

Building models of atomic isotopes with M&Ms and Tic Tacs

 Here are some other pictures of the class, because I can never take enough!

Our pom-pom catapult competition

A spare 15 mins, and they have made a golf club
and are playing mini-golf.  I love their creativity!

Beautiful Faatimah with her book buddies

The students are so used to cultural diversity they don't even get how special this picture is!

This photo is from a while ago but still special - running
the 5km with these two beautiful girls

We have been on holidays for 10 days now, and go back to school tomorrow.  It's then only 8 weeks until school is done for the year.  Balancing school and study has meant that holidays are for assignment writing and not much else!  This break has been particularly stressful, with one assignment due 3 days into the holidays, and another due 2 days after that.  It was honestly crazy - 4500 words in 4 days.  I hardly knew what to do with myself once I finished!  Mogli was not much help:

Soon after this pic, he was lying across my computer in a desperate attempt to get attention!  That's all for now - time to get my things organised for school tomorrow.

God's blessings on your week!