As expected, third term has been very busy. The
secondary school is almost finished, already completed the promotional
exams (just have to finish marking them). As for the TTC, the student
teachers had two weeks of teaching practice before evaluation and then one
week of final evaluation which we just finished up. I still have to give
the oral exams for Music for which the questions are provided by the board so
I had to write them (enough for all 115
students to get unique questions - 125 total).
The computer lab at the school has been approved
for use in the GCE exams (kind of like SATs) and I've been asked to help
supervise those which, I think, start at the end
of this month.
A few weeks ago, one of the teachers in the
school celebrated a traditional marriage and I got to go. There was a lot
of waiting around beforehand, but the actual ceremony was very brief --
the family heads make speeches, the wife pours palm wine from a calabash
(gourd) for the husband to drink and he does the same for her, and then it's shared with some of the guests.
On a different note, the diocesan youth center
in Kumbo is offering music classes and I had the chance to sit in on one
last time I was down there. The class is for youths from the diocese, but
there were also several religious sisters there. It was helpful to see how
someone else goes about teaching music. The youth center has recently
acquired several music instruments including a drum set, a keyboard,
and some electric as well as acoustic guitars. After the theory part of
the class, the students were given lessons on playing the instrument of
their choice. I was only planning on stopping by briefly to watch, but I
ended up spending the whole day there and had to spend the night in Kumbo
and got a ride back to Tatum early the next
morning with Fr. Edwin (bishop's chancellor).
The long holiday (summer vacation) will be quite
a change from the hectic school year but I'm
looking forward to it -- especially since James is coming to visit!
