A Holiday Project

I just discovered that it's almost two months since I posted. Life has been busy. Before school officially started I kept busy getting my office sorted (still in progress) and getting things ready for teachers. I also interviewed new students, and did my best to get things moving for the new library set up. That is still a work in progress, but we are getting there. The new teachers all arrived and have settled in to their classes, as have the returning teachers. We implemented a new "house" system and on Friday had our first "house" competition. That was primarily a secondary school event, but the elementary students did wear their house colours and wrist bands.

One of the projects I hoped to do over the summer break, but just did not get to, was reorganising our elementary teacher resource room. This week I have a whole week with no students in the school, so I thought it would be a good time to get this job done. The photos will help you understand why it's a "no students around" job.

The one on the left gives you an idea of the starting point. If you look closely you will see that there is quite a bit of order to it, but there is also quite a bit of chaos and stuff in boxes that are not very clearly labelled.

At the end of last year, I talked to teachers about what they would find useful in the resource room, and one thing I discovered was that most of them went to the library looking for non-fiction books for students to use for research instead of this room. I therefore decided that the non-fiction books will go back to the library, and our levelled reading resources (which teachers are using regularly) are being moved up to this room. There were also quite a lot of resources still in either the elementary library or the secondary library which were not getting used (most likely because teachers didn't know they existed or the treasure they contained). Those resources were all brought up to the Resource Room area on Friday, and I did a little work on sorting them out on Friday afternoon. Here's what they looked like when I left on Friday about 6pm. This is in a corridor that will eventually lead to classrooms in the centre building. 

Once I finished getting most of those sorted on Saturday, it was time to start moving stuff around. First I emptied a couple of bookshelves, one in the resource room and one in this corridor. Then I went to find someone to help me move the shelves. Our maintenance man was very helpful. Not only did he help me move the two shelves that were ready to move and one of the tables out to an area that is better lit, he also helped me move stuff from one shelf to another so we could move two more bookcases. Finally he went and found another very helpful young man to bring one more shelf up from the library. Thanks guys.

Already the room is looking better. I started work organising, sorting and shelving the books, and made quite a bit of progress. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm happy with the start that I've made. Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have all the resources sorted and the room set up in a way that will make it easy for teachers to find the materials they need (or identify what we need to get if it isn't there). Here's what is waiting for me to go back to tomorrow! Levelled readers are sorted, and as I work I'm checking for damaged books and ones that need to be replaced.

One thing I really want to do is to make sure this room does not collect "junk". I will be asking teachers to only put things back in this room that they will definitely use them again. I'm fairly confident there are people out there who could use some of the materials that I'm not putting back. The challenge will be to find those people quickly as we get the school ready for our next accreditation visit.

The photos below, and the top left one in the photo on the left, show what I still have to sort out. As you can see there is a lot of "stuff" there as well as some very useful resources. Check back at the end of the week to see the progress!

So, am I going to have a holiday? Yes, I've already had one evening out with friends at a big shopping mall. We had dinner, and then went to see "Renegade". Good movie. We also did a bit of shopping. Today I'm enjoying a day at home, until it's time to go to church. I'm also looking forward to doing a little sewing tomorrow and having lunch with a friend who lives and works on the other side of town.

School's out

Another school year is over. School officially finished on Friday afternoon at 2.30pm. We had a good day, and the children went home with a bag of goodies, including a new book to read and a memory page, plus a bouncy ball and a sticky stretchy creature, a few lollies, and whatever they chose to buy with their "tickets". We also enjoyed ice-cream and movies. The day before they helped me start packing up my classroom by pulling most of the posters off the walls, and I sent home all their workbooks and notebooks. Alas, I still had work to do! First I have to finish the documentation to handover to their grade 5 teachers. I also had to finish designing our new Elementary Library, and prepare detailed documentation of the new furniture we will need so it can be made while we are away for the summer break. The other massive job was to pack up my classroom, sort out what I would leave for the new teacher and what would go with me to my new office, pack everything that had to be moved, and organise for the move to happen.

I just realised that some of you reading this might be wondering why I am moving out of my classroom and into an office. After ten and a half years of teaching, I'll be exploring a new role next year as Elementary Coordinator (Primary - Grades 2 to 5). I'll be working closely with the other Elementary Coordinator who will be responsible for our Early Years programs (Nursery to Grade 1). Together we will be trying to replace the Elementary Principal who has just left. Some of my key responsibilities will be reviewing curriculum and supporting staff as they implement the curriculum. I'll also be work on our WASC self-study for our next Accreditation visit, which is due in 2019.

Back to today. I finally finished packing everything at about 5pm yesterday, having run out of boxes on several occasions! This morning, four young men were waiting for me to arrive to carry out the move. First they moved a number of items out of the office, then they moved all my stuff into the office. While they were working on that, I went and did an interview with a prospective new student. When I finished that, I returned to my old classroom to discover it was almost completely moved (only a couple of things left which they possibly didn't know needed to be moved). I went downstairs (my new office is on the third floor). I was very satisfied with their work. Here's what my office looked like at 11.30am today!

I plugged away throughout the day, and managed to sort the boxes the contain my classroom library from the rest and put them to one side to deal with in July, when I come back from Australia. I then managed to unpack most of the rest of the boxes. I hit a glitch when I couldn't find the shelf supports to go inside my cupboard, which I knew I'd put in a safe place. They were found eventually, and so I've got one cupboard sorted! The big bookshelf needs some work, but I did manage to sort a lot of stuff as I unpacked it, so that's not too bad. In fact, there are quite a lot of things that still need homes, but the photo below shows just what I did achieve. Tomorrow I'm planning to do a few other jobs, then Friday I'll tackle the office again and see if I can get it to a point where I can be productive with a few other jobs that need to be finished.

Relaunching Scholastic Book Club at East-West

Back in December 2016, after receiving approval from the school admin team, I enquired about re-introducing Scholastic Book Clubs at East-West. A lovely lady in the UK contacted me, we set up an account, and our first flyers were sent by DHL in early January 2017. On 26th January 2017 packages of forms, envelopes, and covering notes were distributed to staff with the hope that they would get their students excited about being able to order books. Orders came in over the next week, and on 8th February I got all the orders entered into the computer. A total of 257 items were ordered, over $2,500 worth of books. We then received 20% of the value in rewards and I was able to order 17 books/packs for the school library/teacher resource area. It took a little while to work out our payment processes, but it eventually went quite smoothly, and the order was processed.

Meanwhile Scholastic changed shipping companies, and that was definitely a learning experience. DHL had previously handled the whole process and delivered books to the school door, with no hassles over customs or anything like that. We'd heard from at least two schools that their orders were coming through very reliably with no hassles. First there was a delay in the warehouse due to the change over. Scholastic staff were quick to respond to my enquiries and very helpful. Eventually our shipment went out on 22nd February with the new shipping company. That same morning I get a distressed message from a colleague at another International School saying she had received a quote for over $500 to have her order (similar in size to ours) cleared through customs. I quickly contacted Scholastic and they said the orders were shipped in such a way that we shouldn't have to pay that but to let them know if there were any problems. We got a tracking number and that enabled us to see where the boxes were. They moved fairly rapidly from the UK to Singapore (via Germany and China), arriving in Singapore less than 36 hours after leaving the UK. They stayed in Singapore for 4 days before finally arriving in Phnom Penh on Tuesday 28th February. We were notified of their arrival and advised that we would need to arrange customs clearance through another company since the shipping company handling our delivery didn't do that. The shipping company delivered a packet of photocopied forms to our office and then marked the delivery in their tracking system as "delivered".

Meanwhile we'd been keeping the lines of communication open between us and Scholastic and been told that we would have to pay the customs clearance since it couldn't be invoiced directly to Scholastic in the UK. Scholastic assured me they would cover those costs, even though we were going to have to pay them up front. We went ahead and got another company involved and they said it should take about 3 days to get the shipment cleared through customs and delivered to us. Then we struck another problem. The packages were addressed to me using my initial and surname, but to get them through customs a copy of my passport was required. As you might imagine my passport has my full name on it and the staff at the shipping company said that because the names were "different" it could be a problem. Thankfully customs did accept our documentation and at 7pm last night 10 boxes of books were delivered to the school. Now, as you can imagine there aren't many people around at school at 7pm, and on this occasion there were even less than usual since some staff had gone away to attend a wedding. Once again God provided. Unbeknown to me until about 6pm, a High School "sleepover" was happening at school last night. Not looking forward to carrying 10 boxes upstairs myself, I thought I'd see if I could enlist some help from the high school students attending. At 7pm, when I got the phone call saying the truck was at the school, the teacher supervising rounded up 9 boys as well as carrying a box himself, leaving me with nothing to carry up the stairs to the 4th floor except myself. A big thank you to the Grade 10 boys and their supervising teacher. 😊

The boxes as they were when they arrived in my classroom.

So now I could finally get down to the fun stuff. Yes, I got to open and unpack all ten boxes of brand new books. Those who know me well will know how much please that brought. It was fun! I was glad I'd asked the boys to bring our "backpack" table into the classroom. By the time I'd finished all the tables in my classroom were covered in books and I'd had to rearrange a few other shelves to get some extra space as well. Here they are.

Having done that, I settled down to complete one more job before heading home for some rest. There were 270 plus items that needed to be checked off against the packing slip to make sure none had gone missing along the way (when you look closely at some of the boxes you'll understand why I needed to do that. I almost managed my 10,000 steps yesterday as I covered a lot of ground tracking down titles. Happily everything was there. 👍 At that point I called it a night, turned off the lights, locked up the classroom and headed for home.

This morning I undertook the first stage of the distribution process, matching the books to the individual student orders. Scholastic made this much easier for me by providing a series of "bookmarks" which each listed up to five items that a student had ordered. These were much easier to read than the original order forms, and four hours later I had finally finished. I've already delivered one batch to a classroom (I noticed a teacher in his room when I went past to go to the bathroom so I dropped off the books for both his class and the other class at that grade level since I was running out of boxes).Here's the rest of them, ready to go out on Monday morning. There are going to be some very excited students on Monday morning!

Next, I want to share what the school has gained from our efforts. Scholastic Books offer us 20% of the value of the books purchased as a reward for our school. With that 20% plus a donation from one family I have been able to get 41 hardcover books, and 79 paperback books for our school library and teacher resource room. I have no doubt these will be received with great excitement in the library.

Finally, my classroom library is getting some new books as well. The Science Vocabulary Readers have been purchased with one of our upcoming IPC units in mind, a couple relate to a unit we've already done, and others just looked good. I could easily have spent more, but I set myself a limit and this is what I got within my budget. I confess I've already read the National Geographic "Ape Escapes" book from cover to cover and it is good.

The other good news we've received in the last few days is that Scholastic are returning to DHL for shipping to Cambodia! That means we'll be doing it all over again, although hopefully with a few less hassles. The first time of doing anything is always a challenge, but in this case I think it has been worth it. Thanks to all those who've helped, supported and encouraged through this "first" and to those who prayed those books through.

Australia Day with a Difference

Australia Day this year was not "just another school day" this year for me. This year it coincided with the beginning of Chinese New Year holidays here in Cambodia, and it was scheduled as a Professional Development Day for staff, while students got to start their holidays a day early.

I had offered to run a session on Positive Behaviour Support and Classroom Management for our Elementary staff, and so decided that a good way to get everyone there on time would be to offer some snacks about 20 minutes before the scheduled start time. In honour of Australia Day I went to one of the local grocery stores and stocked up for a highly unhealthy morning tea, consisting of Anzac Biscuits (freshly made last night), a fruit cake (Black & Gold brand - pretty good), three varieties of Arnott's Shapes, a tub of cream cheese drizzled with sweet chilli sauce, and a wide selection of lollies (Minties, Fantales, Jaffas, Freckles, jelly snakes, Life Savers (musk and peppermint), bananas, false teeth, black cats, Chickos, milk bottles, spearmint leaves and a few "party pack" lollies.

It worked, and a number of people enjoyed lollies they had enjoyed as children in the UK. I think the most popular item was cream cheese "dip". Others really enjoyed the fruitcake, evidenced by the fact that I didn't have a lot to bring home. A couple of people took some goodies home to share with their family after it was all over, and I'm stocked for lollies for a while.

With tummies and/or sweet teeth satisfied, I started the session by displaying the statement "Prevention is better than cure" and asked if that statement could apply to school. We had some discussion and then I presented the session that I developed as part of my uni studies last semester. One of the goals of the session was to come up with four or five positive statements or rules for the elementary school. The photos below show staff discussing their points.

First they all wrote their own four "Be ... " statements, then they paired up, then groups of four, then four groups of about 8 each. Finally I wrote all the words from all the groups on the board and we narrowed them down to five.

We still need to do some work on this, unpacking each of the statements and getting some specific statements about what they look like in different areas of the school, but we've got a starting point, and teachers can think about unpacking them at least in terms of what they look like in the classroom. From there we moved into looking at creating caring classrooms and some specific classroom management strategies, finishing off by watching a brief video where a teacher shares some simple and practical strategies.

Next on the agenda was relaunching Scholastic Book Clubs in the elementary school. I'm hoping there will be lots of excitement among the children when they get their forms after the holidays.

After that it was lunch time, which ended up being fruit and a baguette, then I did a few more jobs around school, making sure the guy dealing with work permits has all the information he needs from me, and meeting some people from one of our "sister schools" within the bigger organisation that East-West is part of.

About 4pm I decided to call it a day, and go for a walk. I'm waiting on some snail mail at the moment, so I took a walk up to the post office. Unfortunately when I arrived there at 5pm it was already closed (usually it doesn't close until 6pm). That was unexpected, since Chinese New Year isn't an official holiday here, but I guess it shouldn't have been, since already I'm noticing other businesses closing early or not open at all. Cambodians love their holidays!

By the time I got home I'd walked about 14,000 steps and climbed 50 flights of stairs today. Yes, I'd say it was definitely a different Australia Day.

What's new around Room 16

It's been a while since I posted any pictures of my classroom and the hallway outside, so I thought I'd do a quick update. I recently asked our school director about the possibility of some extra bulletin (notice) boards for the hallway outside my classroom and one more for inside. He said yes, and they were installed a couple of weeks ago. It took quite a bit of time to move material around, freeing up one board for the Khmer classes that meet across the hallway from my classroom to use if they desire. If they don't use it, I will no doubt find a way to fill it up again. Meanwhile, here's a glimpse of the bulletin boards for Grade 4K.

This board is at the front of the classroom,

right beside the whiteboard that is the main focus of teaching,

and where I also project onto, making PowerPoint presentations interactive.

Our IPC units require various resources and student thinking to be displayed.
That's what this board is for.

This is a the other end of the room, and changes regularly.
As the year progresses, I plan to include more Khmer language on this board,
to help increase the children's vocabulary in both languages.

This board is next to the door and holds classroom management material
as well as our IPC Personal Goal material

This photo is the hallway outside my classroom.
As you can see I've now got three bulletin boards
on which to display important information about what we're learning as well as student work.
Board 3 is waiting for student book reports which are almost finished.
I hope to have those displayed before parent-teacher conferences this week.

This is first of the two boards together.
The focus of this board will be what we are learning about.

These cute posters were created during the first week of school
using some foam dolls I picked up at KMart when I was home.
The students loved making these.

First major writing task of the year are our "All About Me" posters.
This was also opportunity to teach students about writing Personal Narratives.
The smiley faces cover photos of the students!

This year we have an improved system in place to follow-up students who are absent. It requires teachers to complete a slip and put it on the door outside our classroom to be collected by one of the guards/drivers during the first part of the morning. I got tired of sticky-taping the note to the door, and then finding sticky tape left on the door, so I asked our maintenance man to screw this cute little character to my door. I was given four of these some years ago, but I hadn't really used them very much. Now I'm really happy to report that, although the first one was broken when they tried to use an electric drill to screw it up, I had another one AND an ordinary screwdriver. Now this cutie is happily doing the job. No more sticky tape!

A successful outing

Today I had a successful day. Nothing big was achieved, although it was a fairly good day at school. The success came in the form of a shopping trip.

Our current IPC unit has an extensive list of resources needed, one of which is PH testing strips. When I was at school I'm fairly sure we called it litmus paper. There were a few alternatives, but they are quite complex, so if I could find what I needed it would be good.
Not having easy access to a science teaching supply store, I thought that a medical supply store might just have what we needed. So, this afternoon, I headed out on my trusty moto to the area known to some of us as "pharmacy corner". Yes, there are literally dozens of pharmacies and medical equipment stores all located on the same couple of city blocks. I tried a couple of smaller places without success (no doubt hampered by my lack of Khmer language) and then a bigger pharmacy. Still no luck, so I headed down the street a couple of stores and walked into a place with a name that seemed to have good potential. A young man opened the door for me and offered to help, but litmus paper just wasn't working. When I talked about testing acid and alkaline, another young man behind the counter seemed to know exactly what I was looking for, and told the first young man where to find it.

Hooray! It seems like a small thing, but finding this will make our unit of inquiry that much more interesting for the students and definitely simpler for the teachers. Yes, that's what I'd call a successful outing!

Something that delighted me this afternoon

One of the activities students in my class do is free writing. They have 10 - 25 minutes depending on the day and what else we are working on to write about anything they like. I try to do it every day, but somedays it just doesn't happen. Teaching's like that.

Managing to read and provide feedback on students' writing has always challenged me, so this semester I decided to try something new. I divided my class into five groups, labelled their book boxes, reading journals and writing notebooks with a coloured sticker on which I'd written M, Tu, W, Th, or F. Now students hand their books in on the correct day and I tackle 4 reading journals and 4 writing notebooks each day instead of having a pile of 20 at the end of the week. So far that strategy is working well. Wednesday can be a bit tricky when I leave school as soon as the class does in order to get home for my uni "Collaborate" session, but either they get done on Thursday morning (early start) or I bring them home (and do them when uni is finished).

So today I had 3 sets of books to read, from 3 totally different students. One set was from a very capable, confident and creative young lady, who had written some very creative fiction. The second was from a student who still struggles to put sentences together correctly, who had told me about races they ran in their PE lesson, and the third was from a student who has made huge strides in reading this year. As I read the third student's writing I was thrilled. Here's what he had written.

Reading is fun.
Reading is fun, at the beginning  of the year I know that reading was hard for me, and I keep saying that reading is hard, then when I do more of RAZ-Kids it become easier and funner to read. Reading is very fun and easier for me now, because I read lot's of books in RAZ-Kids and at school too. My favourite author is Suzy Kline, because sometimes she write funny book and sometimes sad book. My favorite book is about Horrible Harry, he always do horrible thing, but sometimes not. I love reading now, and I even read at home too!

Reading that piece of writing filled me with delight. This is one of those intangible things that makes teaching a joy and a privilege. Yes, it isn't perfect writing, but how many of us write perfectly first time anyway? This student's first language is Khmer. This was written directly in English. I couldn't do it! These kiddos amaze me.

Construction progress continues

While students, teachers, and cleaners enjoy their Winter Break, progress on the construction site between the two buildings has continued. The hallways are filthy and the cleaners are going to have a big job to do to get them clean before school resumes, however at least work is progressing, albeit slowly (or that's how it appears). Here are a few photos to bring you up to date.

First is shot of our new PE area, taken on 22nd December 2015. Framing for the roof was going up.

The roof is on the new PE area. Looking north west.

Looking South East at the PE area.
The roof has some sections of green poly-sheeting to let additional light in.
They are green, rather than clear, so hence the green cast on these photos.

Looking up at the roof of the PE area.
Definitely room for balls to go high in Volleyball and Basketball games.

Some of the area outside my classroom with with framing removed - 20th December 2015.
There had actually been some effort made to tidy things up.

Looking out the window from the "walkway" area towards my classroom - 26th December 2015
The white rendering definitely makes things lighter and brighter in the classroom.

This is what's going on at my end of the building. 26th December 2015.

And this is taken from my classroom looking the other way.
They're working on both ends at the same time.
26th December 2015.

I'm not sure, but from the noise going on outside my room this afternoon, they are probably also working on railings along each end of the building at the moment. I keep on shutting the doors that lead to the work area to remind the children that these areas are off limits. As you can see, cleanliness of the work site is not a priority, and we can't wait for construction to be completed, since all that cement dust gets routinely tramped inside the building all day every day. Poor cleaners. It has to be discouraging for them that 5 minutes after they mop the hallways there are dirty, dusty footprints all down them. Life's like that.

The last three photos were taken back on 22nd November, 2015 and show the progress that has been made with the new hall. We're hanging out for this space to be finished so we can be more comfortable for assemblies and other whole school events.

That's it for now. I wonder how much more will get done between now and when we resume school. I'll try and remember to take some more photos on the first day back!

Winter Break Begins

Last time I wrote was after a crazy weekend. The week that followed was a good one, with two teaching days followed by an inter-school sports day at the International School of Phnom Penh. I think there were students from eight schools involved, all from Phnom Penh. It was a great day. The emphasis was on participation rather than formal competition, but there was opportunity for that as well. Our students had opportunity to try a variety of activities that they don't get to do at East-West, including an 800m run, long jump, high jump, hurdles, sprints, and shot put, as well as fun activities like "rocket throw" and "fish throw" (kid friendly versions of javelin and discus), sack races, three legged races, water relay races, and standing long jump. At the end of the day there were 4 x 100m relay races for each grade level with one team from each school in each race. It was a hot day, but my lovely head umbrella helped keep me cool. Generous lathering on of sunscreen was also necessary. Frozen water bottles, topped up as I emptied what had defrosted, kept me hydrated during the day.
One highlight for me was seeing a young man who I had known as a teenager during my first years in Cambodia, working as a responsible teaching assistant at that school.

We returned to school after lunch, and retreated to the classroom where I turned on fans and air-conditioning, and settled the students with a movie. We watched Treasures of the Snow, a story I have loved since childhood, and finished it off the next afternoon after the Grade 3-5 assembly. 

It was good to have a day off the next day, and then one more teaching day before the weekend.

This week we had a full week, but since it was leading up to holidays I decided to get most of the real work done by Thursday, and make Friday a fun day. I took it one step further, and decided to show a movie on Thursday afternoon. It's a fun movie, but the setting is Egyptian and it involves archaeologists hunting for lost treasure in a pyramid, so it fits in with our current Social Studies unit on Ancient Egypt and pyramids. Friday morning we played math games (practising multiplication facts), did a little grammar, and then either played a word game or listened to a Raz-Kids story on internet safety. 

Report cards were handed out on Thursday, along with school calendars for the coming year, and returned work folders. My students amazed me by ALL remembering to return their blue returned work folders to me, empty on Friday.

Today, I enjoyed a relaxed pace and worked on producing a news/prayer letter. There are quite a few hours work involved, but it's done now, and sent. Mission accomplished. I slipped out for dinner, and ended up sharing a table with our elementary principal who was on a similar mission. It was nice to have company after spending the day alone. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to meeting up with one of my students from my first two years at East-West. Her family were in Cambodia for two years with Australian Volunteers Abroad, and I had the pleasure of teaching her and her friends for both 3rd and 4th grades. Her family is visiting Cambodia, and I'm looking forward to seeing them.

A busy weekend

This weekend was fairly busy for me, but in a fun kind of way.

Saturday had three events, and Sunday had one. In between I managed to put a few Christmas decorations up at home, do a little bit of school preparation and grading, and get some sleep. Thankfully we get a public holiday on Thursday this week, and Wednesday is our Grade 3-5 Inter-School Field Day. The forecast for Wednesday is mostly sunny, and 33 degrees Celsius! Lots of sunscreen and water, along with my crazy head umbrella should help me stay cool. I've already got water bottles and peanut butter sandwiches in the fridge in preparation for that day.

Saturday morning was the grand celebration of East-West International School's 10th Anniversary year. The school opened in August 2006, just 5 months before I moved to Cambodia, and I joined the team at East-West in August 2010. There were a number of fun activities going on, but the one I enjoyed most was playing volleyball. It's not something I do often, but when I get the chance and feel inclined to do so I enjoy it (even if I'm not great at it). I did manage to get quite a few serves in, and a few other good/lucky shots. My right arm is only slightly bruised, although it was pretty sore for a while on the day. The day was complete with speeches, cake, and a presentation to our principal, who will be leaving us in the not-too-far-distant future. She has been there since school started, and is much loved by those who have worked with her.

One of the features of the celebration was an art display, put together by both the elementary and high school art classes. I was totally impressed with the work on display, and couldn't resist taking some photos to share.

This is work by students in my current class, who have been studying Egyptian art.

This work is by students from previous years now in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades.

Three of these are also by previous students in 6th and 7th grade.
The bottom one of the puppy, is by one of our 11th grade students, and it was so beautiful I just couldn't resist snapping it.

Following the morning's activities (from 9 - 11.30am) the staff were invited to lunch by the owner of the school, which was held at a local buffet style restaurant. The food was good, time with colleagues away from school was good, and this was the chance to present Sandra with a very special card, created by our elementary art teacher.

From there I headed across town to a Christmas Fair, where I caught up with a few friends, and enjoyed wandering around and looking at what was on offer by various NGOs, and making a few purchases.

 By the time I got home I was ready for a quiet evening.

Sunday afternoon brought the final choir practice for this season, followed by our performance. This year's Bella Voce Community Choir Christmas Charity Concert was to a packed house with 700 tickets sold. We've worked hard, and had some fun and laughs along the way. The obvious enjoyment of the audience made it worth all the effort. There are two more private performances to go, only one of which I am involved with, but I'm looking forward to that on Friday.

Meanwhile here are a few snaps from the evening.