November
In Nov I went on a little trip to Sumatra. A guy from work who is VERY good at organizing holidays sorted it all! So a bu
nch of us from work set out (11 of us altogether) straight from school – we had some sort of a holiday – and landed in Medan, where we stayed for one night in a lovely hotel. The rest of Medan is NOT nice. The next morning we were driven to a place called Bukit Lawang, a small village on a river next to an orangutan sanctuary. The place was amazing and so picturesque! We went for a jungle trek, taking in the flora and fauna, seeing orangutans SERIOUSLY close up and ending it all with a ‘tube’ (basically giant rubber rings all tied together) back down the river to our accommodation. The next day saw us heading to Lake Toba, this huge lake formed in the crater of a volcano, with an island the size of Singapore in the centre! It was a long and arduous journey but we got there in time to get the ferry to our new lodgings and relaxed for the evening. We arranged a boat trip to a beautiful waterfall for the following day, with a visit to a local village (with gorgeous kiddies) and their tiered farming fields – very nice! There is sooooo much more I could say about this amazing trip but it would take forever. Look at the photos instead. I had such a fantastic time and can’t wait to explore the rest of Indonesia!
Other events in Nov:
The Taylor’s Annual Ball!! Well, our school is part of an education group and November saw the time for their annual ball, with an ‘Around the World’ theme. Some of us teachers had already learned a Banghra Dance for our Deepavali assembly, and I thought it would be a fun idea to perform it at the Ball, in front of 2000 odd people!! I didn’t really expect any of the other teachers to be up for it but, they called my bluff and we found ourselves opening the show!! If I find out how I will put the video up here. We were terrified but it was a fantastic experience and definitely got our school noticed as being a fun-loving, close-knit team – I loved it!
I found myself given the exciting and not-at-all-stressful job of coordinating the Christmas Assembly and celebrations at school as well (I know it's still Nov but preps start early as we break up on 9th Dec!!). Luckily for me, the PTA are extremely active and they basically did all the work, and I just told everyone what was happening and stressed a lot, particularly on the day! It was a success (although did run over by 15 minutes, making everyone late at the end of the day!!). I enjoyed working with the PTA and, something I never thought I’d like, working with some of the kids from Secondary! They were fantastic and so helpful! With our school being so small still, Secondary and Primary often do things like celebration assemblies together. It can work well but makes pitching the tone of assemblies relatively difficult, with 3 year olds and 15 year olds all together!
Will write a ‘December’ entry VERY soon I promise!
