End of days

Been a busy week, haven’t blogged in a while. Humidity’s soaring, and by the end of the day I’m wrecked – and morning’s even worse. Nights are impossible to sleep in, and the mozzies are making a comeback, even if the rain hasn’t.

End of days for our Grade 10s and 12s at the moment – Grade 10 national exams are this week, and the Grade 12 ones are the week after (I think). We had our Graduation Mass on Friday, and this is the last Bomana weekend (boarding weekend) for half our students. They had a big firehouse (dance party) last night to celebrate, and these girls’ moves make Lamana seem lame – they hold nothing back, and every song’s a new challenge to out-dance the others. They had a brief competition, with each dormitory holding the floor for a song, and I have to say I saw a whole new side to some of my supposedly-shy Grade 9 girls! No surprise to see some of them up on the benches, shaking their stuff at the girls on the dance floor, but there were one or two who I think having been playing possum with me all year… they’ll be in for a bit of teasing on Monday!

The Graduation Mass was lovely, with a real mix of PNG and catholic tradition. Again, another reason to lament the loss of the digital camera charger, as I would have loved to post some photos of the Sepik girls in their traditional skirts and billum-tops and shells dancing and singing the Father down in the processional, or the Southern Region girls’ graceful swaying as they led the Bible in several hymns into the service. And the Nth Solomons girls bringing in the cup and the bread.

They finished with the Grade 12 prefects passing lighted candles onto the incoming Grade 11s, and forming a candlelit passage way for the recessional, as the rest of the school sang the hymn ‘Pass It On’ – it only takes a spark to keep the fire going… Lots of tears at this point, and lots of camera flashes – I never knew so many girls had their own cameras! I took some too on my SLR, so hopefully can get them transformed into digital format.

Because Grade 10 and 12 finish up so soon half of the staff will lose their classes, so the class load will get spread around. I’ve already told Sr Antoinette I didn’t want to give up either English class (although I seriously regretted that last Thursday – dragon Riss had to re-emerge when half of each class didn’t do the work I set them in the periods I wasn’t able to be with them, and I was not amused…) so will be handing my Grade 11 Computers class over after next week. I’ll be sorry to lose them – they were a lovely bunch of girls, and it was pure luxury having a class of only 16 (a stroke of luck afforded me due to timetabling of various electives), but I’m not sorry to be giving up trying to teach Excel to myself at the same time as I had to teach it to them. Yeah I’ve got basic understanding of how it works, and I’ve gone through the various teaching chapters ahead of the girls, but it seems really boring compared to word and publisher and power point, and I was having real trouble coming up with ways to make it fun, never having really used it much before.

So, the year moves on, with changes along the way. Really feels like it should be the end of term now, what with all this goodbye stuff, and having just passed Inspection last week – sort of seems like there’s nothing else to be rushing for now, we’re just filling in time. But, another 7 weeks to go…

And counting the days.

PS Just finished reading The Da Vinci Code (hence the title of this blog) - one of the Grade 12 girls lent it to me - and it was a lot of fun reading it - although how these girls followed it I have no idea, considering when I constructed a quiz for Grade 9 ages ago none of them knew who painted the Mona Lisa, or had any idea who Michaelangelo was, and I can bet they'd probably never heard of the Louvre either! Though I am pretty sure they'd have heard of Mary Magdalene... Now I've read it will have to ask them what they thought of it! Love a good conspiracy...