Finals

The GCE exams are finally finished. We only have the CAPIEMP exams for the TTC next week, then the school year is complete. I spent 3 hours today invigilating the last exam of the GCE. Sitting in a room for 3 hours watching students write an exam is tedious... even worse than writing the exam itself. You can't do anything, no reading, no talking on the phone, no nothing. The most you can do is step outside the door for a minute or two, where you can still see inside. But it's done now.

I still have work to do in the office. I finished the transcripts for the current batch of graduating students. But I just learned today that the transcripts from two years ago were not completed and those students that were in Form Five then are now completing high school and are requesting their Form Five transcripts, so I have to complete those transcripts for them. Plus I'm working on the end of year reports (statistical summaries of the exams, etc). I should have that all done in a few days.

Tomorrow we have our end of year staff meeting and, from what the principal said, a bit of a send off for those teachers who will be leaving (including me). I'm planning to take the weekend off and go to Kumbo for a bit of a break and to do some shopping. Next week will be busy again.

One problem with living on campus and being the school secretary is that the principal has no qualms about asking me to come into the office in the evening to print something for him. Well, it's not like I have anything else I'm doing in the evenings anyways... just relaxing in the house.

Since I haven't written in a while, I have some old events to report on. Palm Sunday weekend I spent in Ako (parish in the northern part of the diocese) for the Diocesan Youth Day. Ako is at a much lower elevation and therefore quite hot. Had to drink lots of water and ended up staying inside as much as possible. Got some mosquito bites, but no malaria (yeah!). Even the youths from other parts of the diocese had problems with the heat. While there, we made a trip to a nearby village to go to their market, but in order to get to that village you have to cross a river by canoe. There are boys who run the canoes back and forth all day. The river was low enough that the boys could push/pull the canoe most of the way, they only had to actually swim maybe 3-4 feet at one point where the river was deeper. We were told that during the height of the rainy season the river gets very high, and we were shown trees that are completely underwater that time of year. I learned that Fr. Paul and many other people from this part of the country can't swim and are afraid of that much water. I wouldn't have wanted to go into the river either, because the water was brown and I'm afraid of diseases that might be in the water. However, our trip across the river and back was uneventful. The weekend was good and the youths seemed to get a lot out of it.

I haven't done much else out of the ordinary. I supervised the computer science practicals again. This time I was back in GBHS Kumbo for three days, so I stayed in SAC and got to visit with the Hornes. Also, I went to Djottin parish for the celebration of their 75th anniversary as a parish. Bishop Agapitus (the auxiliary bishop of Bamenda) is from Djottin, his family home is right next to the parish church, so he was the celebrant at the mass. I had a chance to talk to him briefly before the mass. We mostly spoke about the Lay Mission-Helpers working in Bamenda Diocese. It was a nice celebration.

That's about it. Mostly just keeping busy in the office at school.