Ten months into the game

Right. So. After quite an extreme blog pause, I am back. Not back from anywhere special (except a long day at work), but none the less back.

I can hardly think of what to write about what has happened in the time that has elapsed since last time I wrote. You know, it's weird but somehow I've forgotten a lot of it. I think everyday life does that to you. It blends together and makes a mush of lessons, planning, chats, papers, lessons, papers, notes, pens, driving, lunch, frustration and laughter. All in all; not boring, but very busy. And today I found out I am to be even more busy the last week of November and first week of December, due to concerts, that I now for the first time am on the teacher-side of. Phew, so much work to be done. And so much music to be written and arranged. Mostly Christmas carols.

Otherwise, more unusual things I have done are:
Gone to CBC leaver's dance with a fascinator in my hair.
Experienced more lightning than I have ever before.
Danced in the rain til I was soaked through and through.
Spent my last night as a teenager being violently sick.
Turned Twenty!
Had Birthday Dinner and Birthday Lunch. (on different days)
Got lovely presents.
Played with glow sticks for the first time in my life.
Skyped a lot.
Taken care of a choir consisting of 80 teenage girls by myself.
Participated in Girls' College Speech Day (typ skolavslutning fast Mycket mer formellt.), which demanded twelve hours of work.
Built blanket forts.
Etc.

Really, a lot has happened and even more lies ahead. I now definitely understand the necessity of weekends, although some of them make me more tired than the week days.

The weather has been interesting, first stupidly hot, then rain and really cold and cloudy (for being here), and now it's getting hotter again. I now appreciate clouds much more than when I first came here. The midday sun can be so very harsh. Not to say that I long for the dreary yucky autumn I imagine they have in Sweden now. I am very happy to be here right now.

People keep on asking me if I am really leaving, and then why. Sometimes I do wonder, but mostly I know that my time here soon is up, more places need to be found. Right now I can think of one special place that needs deep exploring and that is my pillow. It has been a long day (my statement that I don't work on Mondays is a big fat lie, I have realised). So night night people!

The first rain in over half a year!!

I seem to have made blogging a Wednesday thing. Well, three in a row now right? I must say, it is much easier posting pictures on nellieinafrica.tumblr.com. I have fallen in love with tumblr, I really have. It is a whole world. Anyhow. I have started taking photos with my phone camera now, which means I can take of things anytime anywhere, since my phone is with me all the time. But of course, quality wise it can never ever compete with my sweet Nikon D90. Which now has four different lenses. Amazing, how on earth did that happen?

Yesterday it rained!!!!!! For maybe five minutes, but at least it rained. I was in the office at the academy, so I jumped up and ran outside to feel the drops. It was glorious. So I walked around the building hearing the rain fall hard on the corrugated roofs next door and seeing the the dusty reddish brown ground turning spotty. So so nice.

Obviously my tactic worked. You see every week my students have to paint one thing each time they practice, and every week has a different theme. For a few weeks now my kids have got rain clouds, where they have had to draw a raindrop each time they practice. I told them it was wishful thinking, since we wanted rain. And TADA it came! Yeha!

Today I am first off to GC to start arranging all our christmas songs that we are going to play, then I have lessons at the academy in the afternoon. And I today had my alarm set for six o'clock. ... I am honestly telling the truth. I volountarily did so, because otherwise I die by the end of my morning walks. It is quite fun now, walking this time in the morning. It is before the real rush of cars for CBC and Petra, but just in time to meet all the kids walking to Hillside Junior School. And they are sooo sweet. By now they reckognise me and since I always say good morning to everybody I meet, they now even sometimes say good morning to me before I've had time to open my mouth. There were two small girls today who looked so happy when they said it, I couldn't stop smiling for another twenty five meters. Cute! I love kids.

Right, sore elbow. Must be a sign, saying I should be off. Which I should. We have a few whispy clouds today, so perhaps we won't die of heat. Like we did yesterday. Sweating in my room ten o'clock at night. Africa. Anywho. Toodles!

A longer update

A week of blog pause. Well at least it wasn't longer.

Life is a bit hectic during the days. I am working so hard on Sibelius arranging stuff for GC that I feel totally square eyed. We are playing in two weeks on Speech Day and we haven't started with all the stuff yet. I'm still getting it ready!! But by tomorrow lunch time it should all be done and I can relax when the weekend comes. Again. I definitely understand why we have weekends now. How on earth would we survive otherwise?! Last weekend was wonderfully chilled. I made a feeble attempt at filling up my 2TB external harddrive with music and movies from Sam, but it hardly made a differenc in this black box. I slept and wrote a lot. I'm doing a thirty day writing challenge which is such fun! Most often I end up writing bleary eyed just before bed though, so when I read it in the morning I have to try and decipher what I've written and what I actually meant...

I've been getting up so early the last two weeks, trying to get my walk in before it gets too hot, so now I meet all the school people when they go to school, which is amusing at times. Both Petra Primary and High and CBC go past our house on their way to school, so there are a lot of them. It becomes one long line of cars at the busiest of times. Anyway, so I get up early, but unfortunately I don't go to bed earlier. Too much of a night owl.

I read the other day of how science had shown that there were big differences in the brain and genes between early birds and night owls. At last. Proof. Early birds are most productive and efficient at 9 am, and then during the day they slowly get worse, while night owls are the exact opposite, with their peak at 9 pm. Ha!! There you go, I'm not lazy, just not made for society. Tonight though I am going to bed early, since I have so much to get done tomorrow morning.

Yesterday I had a new student, first in many months. Her gran had bought her a violin, and when I opened the case I got quite a shock. An electric violin!! Obviously it wasn't possible for her to have that, what with zesa-cuts and so on, so I tried to explain the difference between it and my violin and how she needed to get one with a box, not an S shape. But my insides were all the time screaming "I WANT IT!!" It actually didn't look to bad, she had paid quite a bit for it, so it wouldn't be a rubbish one either. Anyhow, I put it away reluctantly and today she came with a wooden one (honestly, if it has headphones, do you not think it needs power...?) and I am now to assemble what will be something like my twentieth violin since I got here.

Right, writing time, before I spend some quality time with my pillow.
Night!

Time in the heat

So, I think this is the third week of term, but I'm not sure. Time is just running past me. I now have a slightly different schedule, but only a tiny bit. It feels so weird to think that this is my last term. Ahh!! I don't want to leave my kids/teenagers, they are too wonderful. But I will as I must. Before I do though we have a lot going on. Concerts and gigs and concerts. Phew. Plus my birthday!!! I am turning twenty in less than a month. I can hardly understand it. I don't feel nineteen, but I don't feel twenty either. Hopefully I'll be in Hwange then, seeing as I  haven't been there yet, despite my best efforts.

It is getting considerably warmer now, which is welcome after the freezing winter we had. However, I am constantly warned that October will kill us all with it's stinking heat. I wish we could keep it like this; warm enough to never be cold in a summer dress. (Bought soooooo much stuff at Bendover last time.) I have noticed that my morning walks, which I have now revived after the holiday, feel a lot better heatwise too early in the morning for my liking. So unfortunately that might continue from now on...

I bought a 2TB external harddrive just before Linda left and have now transeferred nearly all my photos and movies there, which on my computer made it impossible for me to even play spotify songs, due to lack of disc space. On the external now, it hardly makes a dent in the space. Amazing. Very cheap as well, $215. Good buy Nellie, good buy.

And good bye to you as well. Time to skype Ella. I think.

Kind of back

I have kind of struggled getting back into blogging mode since Linda came/left. Suddenly work is back and in full speed and life just seems to wizz past. A week ago exactly Linda ran off back to Sweden and for the first time since February I am the only person under 50 staying here. Strange.

On Friday we had another performance of the SOTC, but this time without intruments which was very interesting and meant we choirleaders had to do much more. Anyway, we survived and it is over now. Celebrated with pizza at Sam's.

I feel like I should tell lots about when Linda was here, but I can't remember what I've already told you. We did a lot anyway. Antelope Park, Chipengali, bendover, craft shops, work, Vic Falls, Jeanette's farm, Heather's farm, tummy bugs, car breakdown, a whole heap of chatting, Wordfeuding, walks, shopping, suntanning, cooking, dinners and lots more. I couldn't believe how bad my Swedish was when she came, but by the time she left it was kind of okay. It was a bit of a stress having to try and think in Swedish, and talk! Much easier with English I felt. So now I am back to that. Comfortable. I just kept on forgetting the Swedish words, or making them English. For Swedes: Once Linda and I were driving in the dark and I said " Åh, kolla väglamporna är på!" And she replied "Japp, och gatlyktorna också..." Felt a bit stupid. Anyhow.

Today I am to meet a girl called Chelsea, who is a niece of someone who gran knows (if I've understood correctly), at Hillside Dams, so I better get going. I'll try to come back here a bit more often than I have lately. There have been coming up a few photos on my tumblr if you've missed that in my blogging absence. nellieinafrica.tumblr.com

Toodles!

Matopos, Bulawayo and Vic Falls in a week

Wow, it seems like forever since I wrote here last. Anyhow. Terribly tired now, got back from three nights in Vic Falls this afternoon, but thought I should show signs of life here before the gravity of my pillow gets too strong and pulls me under.

SO, we spent two nights out on the farm last week, then on Friday the brakes on my Sunbeam (aka the yellow Nissan Sunny) packed up way out of town and had to take it to car-hospital for a few days. Problem here: we were going to go to the falls on the Sunday. Instead we went to the bendover market and to Chipengali, the animal centre. I should mention that Friday night was spent on our veranda roof watching the blue moon, with cardgames, a movie and sleep. Monday we jumped on a bus to the falls and spent three nights at a backpacker's lodge called Shoestrings. Linda looooved it. I knew she would. We went white water rafting on Tuesday which we of course loooved (only flipped once though...), chilled in the afternoon (/died of exhaustion), had pizza and chatted. Wednesday we went to Victoria Falls National Park. Well, I went there and spent a few hours with a milkshake while Linda did the Bridge Swing on the bridge. We then trotted around the park, seeing so much more than when Peter and I were there. There was much less water now, so less mist, but then also less water coming over the edge. For late lunch I had a Crocodile Tail Wrap. Way cool. We hurried home to catch the Sunset Cruise on the Zambesi above the falls. Beautiful. Home and shower at last. It was actually really warm in the falls, much warmer than here at home. After a long and good night at the Shoestrings bar we got up at another ungodly hour and headed back to Bulawayo.

That is basically a weeks worth of stuff we've done. I might write more about it later, we'll see. The days are going so fast now, but it feels like Linda has always been here. Part of the furniture. At the moment her bed. I think I will follow her example and head for mine. Night everybody!

Matopos next!

In about ten  minutes Linda and I are heading off to Jeanette and Manie's farm in Matopos for a few days, but I thought I'd write you a line or two before we head off.

It's amazing how suddenly when Linda comes I am eating such lovely lunches out in Bulawayo. Not to mention the milkshakes... We have spent considerable hours at coffeshops/lunchplaces the last week. We have also gone to a curioshop kind of thing and bought some actually quite nice stuff. The real deal. I bought a speghetti spoon made out of aluminium from an engine block! Then John left yesterday for South Africa, which meant Heather left the house as well, so we are at the moment downsizing the household.

It is now time for Linda to drive on the wrong side of the road, change gears with the wrong hand and all this with only one sideview mirror. Yey! I am looking forward to this. A lot.  Hihi.
Right. Bye!