Reading
Tuesday morning I headed back to the classroom where I'd done the reading the day before. The kids were singing 10,000 reasons as they'd done the day before and I tried to wait by the door but everyone was looking at me, so I went in. The regular teacher who I'd been trying to catch up with wasn't in there, the teacher who teaches French was in there instead. And then once the kids had finished singing and prayer, the French teacher thought, well this lady can handle it from here - and left the room. Hmmm...
I answered a question or two that the kids asked me, and then I said I'd go and find their teacher and basically ran outside. Fortunately the principal was just outside on the phone, so I waited for him to finish up and went over and basically reminded him that I'm not a teacher. He said, but you could read a story to the kids - I said yeah I could do that - and I went in to choose a book. Having no idea what would be good I found one book with a dreamtime story in it, and one Dr Suess. I went to the classroom - the principal mentioned that the kids were about to have their French exam but would listen to me read first - I tried to back out at this point but nup - no backing out now - headed in. I give the kids a choice - Dr Suess wins. Rhyme. I can do this!
And I begin to read The Cat in the Hat Rides Again (?) - the stupid cat has a whole alphabet of extra little helpers in his hats. FAR OUT. LONGEST BOOK EVER!
A few of the kids stopped paying attention after a while but they didn't get too loud. I heard a few laughs. After the story ends, I thank the kids and basically bolt for the door.
Went ok - but not planning on walking into that room any time soon.
Painting
While my reading debacle was happening, the team was prepping the church for painting. We had a slightly yellower colour of paint- I think the earlier colour might have been a bit more of a creamy colour? It went extremely well actually. We had about 6 or 7 local young men/boys helping us and between the lot of us we got it done between about 8am and 2pm. You can see a video I posted on Facebook which shows a timelapse of some of this - there is still some touching up to do tomorrow - but we went to the church tonight and it looks pretty darn good actually!
Driving
Graham had the idea to hire a car and I immediately thought - that's something I'd like to have a go at! People drive on the right hand side of the road here. The plan was to hire the car on Tuesday and keep it for a few days. Graham went to get the car but they didn't have any Automatic cars, so he got a manual for the first day. Now I've driven in the US, but that was all auto. Fortunately the first time I drive it's raining a bit, so the fact I keep confusing the indicator and the windscreen washers doesn't cause too many stares. For dinner we went to a place a bit further away so I volunteered to drive rather than have us take the bus - was very glad I had driven around during the day!
Today, Graham, John & I drove around the island of Efate - which took about 3 hours of driving. We changed to an automatic car, so driving became pretty easy again. Still had to pay quite a bit of attention - there was a dog that stopped for a poo in the middle of the road and just stayed there - we had to drive around it. In general it went really well. Graham and I shared the driving. We went to Blue Lagoon first - which was lovely to have a swim at. We then went north and then west around the island. We had an awesome lunch at Francesca's - excellent home made pasta and a lovely view.
We then went to Mele Cascades and joined the rest of the group having a swim underneath the waterfall. After some recent rain the waterfall seemed to be so strong! It was pretty beautiful though - worth a bit of a climb :)
Alira Update
Big couple of days for the cutie. Last night she got her first tooth which was very exciting. Today she's got a cold, and last night wasn't a great sleep - we're all praying she has a good sleep tonight <3
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