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Joshua Cowpland <ChadianScot>

	Christmas Newsletter	701 dni temu
	Hello all, and greetings from Senegal! Well… It’s been four months now and life is great! So many things have happened since I wrote my last newsletter back in Septermber. I can’t believe it’s been so long. Time has passed really quickly yet I feel like I’ve been here longer than four months. Life has been so busy I haven’t had any other chance to write really so these Christmas holidays seem the perfect opportunity. School Life After four months as a teacher, I think I’m finally beginning to get the hang of it! The kids seem to be enjoying it and learning some things through it so I must be doing something right… I might be getting another student after the holidays but I’m not absolutely sure of that yet. I have started to teach/supervise a bit of French so it’s nice to have a bit of change from teaching ESL most of the time. We lose Coralie(our French teacher) after the holidays as she goes back to France, so I have been asked to teach Y7 French and have discussions with our one year 11 student. In other parts of school life, a few weeks ago we had the BCS “Winter” Olympics. This was spread over a weekend and involved all kinds of events ranging from ice hockey (played using a puck made of ice) and bob sleighing to curling and tug of war. It was a really good opportunity for all the kids to get outside and support each other and enjoy themselves. The Sunday afternoon of the weekend was spent on the beach where we had a tug of war and enjoyed a great time in the sea. All the parents of the kids were invited so it was also a really good opportunity for them to see their kids and enjoy a bit of school life. Dorm Life Hmm, where to start… Dorm life is great! It’s probably the part of life here that I enjoy the most. At the beginning of term I spent most of my free time in the dorm but began to find it really exhausting. I don’t spend so much of my time there now, but still am around the dorm for most of the time and I really enjoy just spending time with the kids. The floor of our house just recently got tiled so I spent a week sleeping in the dorm with the boys while the work was done. It was a really tiring week but I really enjoyed it as did the boys! The dorm activity schedule has been absolutely full this term. Every weekend there has been something really exciting for the kids to do. We have had the Gaul’s weekend based on Asterix and Obelix, we have had a backwards day, crazy hair day, and many more. One of the highlights was undoubtedly the Christmas party. We had a fantastic meal followed by a visit from Santa. The size of some of the smiles on the kid’s faces was incredible. Even the staff got to sit on Santa’s lap! Unfortunately the dorm parents of Eagle (the dorm I am in) have now left. Tobi and Damaris were only here for a couple of months as a way of filling in some spare time during their teacher training. The kids will really miss them as will we. We had a really nice evening before the end of term where we (the kids, Svenja and I) gave them a present and had a really great time around the dinner table. The dorm parents from last year are now due to arrive with their newborn daughter. It will be interesting to see if things will change much in the dorm or not and how the kids will react to having new dorm parents. Men’s Retreat At the beginning of December, I had the chance to go to a men’s retreat for all the men serving in Senegal. Entitled GOR (Guys On Retreat) it was a really fantastic weekend. It was situated in St.Louis in the north of the country and on a remote peninsula near the city. The weekend involved some really competitive games and involved all sorts of things, ranging from push ups and swimming, to crossword puzzles and litter pick up. It was a really great time to just spend time with other guys and find out what it is exactly that they are doing in Senegal and just to have a bit of a time where we could do some really guy type things. On the Sunday we had a really great morning where we had a time of worship and then one of the guys shared a message taken from John Eldridge’s book “Wild at Heart”. Overall the weekend was absolutely fantastic and if I were to write down everything we did, I think I would run out of space! Velingara The holidays are now in full swing and things are really relaxed and it is a great time to just recharge my batteries. However last week, Coralie, Johannes, Svenja, Katharina and I took a trip down to the south of the country to Velingara to help with some practical work down there and to see a bit more of the country. We left BCS on the Saturday morning at 8 o’clock in the morning. We had hired a taxi to take us all the way down to Velingara. However once in Mbour, which is about half an hour from BCS, the driver said that he didn’t think his car would make it. So he went to go and find us another taxi to take us to Velingara. And so we set off again. After a couple of hours in the car we arrived in Kaolack. Once again, the taxi driver told us that he had a problem with one of his front tyres and that he would have to find us another taxi to take us the rest of the way. Having found us another taxi, we set off. The road between Kaolack and Velingara is full of potholes though. And so the rest of the journey was fairly uncomfortable. However, we finally arrived in Velingara… at 10 o’clock at night! After our adventurous 14 hour journey, we were absolutely shattered. The Greiners (the couple who were hosting us) took us to the house and we were able to get some food before crashing to bed. Sunday morning we were taken to the local church in Velingara. The afternoon was spent in the bush. We had a nice picnic before going for a swim in the Gambia River. Apparently there are manatees that live in the river, but we didn’t get the chance to meet any. After a swim we went for a nice walk where we saw some monkeys as well as hundreds of different birds. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning were spent at Carlos’(a co-worker of the Greiners) house where we worked making mosquito nets for the windows and building doors. Monday afternoon was spent with Luc Greiner as he told us about the work that as going on in the area and we then spent a time in prayer praying for the work. Tuesday afternoon we visited the village where the Greiners work, and Wednesday we visited another village where there is a new church. We spent a couple of hours with the believers there as the worshipped in their own tongue. Luc then shared the Christmas story with them. We were then shown around the village and Johannes and I went off to play some football with the local kids. Thursday morning we set off at 6 o’clock in the morning for BCS and arrived at around half five in the evening with no problems at all. Well, I hope that has given you a brief overview of how things are going here. Thanks to all of you who are praying for us here. May God bless you. In Christ, Josh Prayer Points - That Eagle kids will settle in ok with the change of dorm parents. - WEC Conference is being hosted at BCS this year and I am helping with the kids program. - The new term - The arrival of new staff
	opublikowane przez Joshua Cowpland

2 komentarze:

	Ross mówi…	701 dni temu
	capitain slow i am dissapointed with this blog as there are no funny stories. also can you tell me something. I want to know if the kids treat you like some geeky trainee teacher and take the complete piss out of you ?
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	Mickey Macpherson mówi…	700 dni temu
	Hello JC hope you had good christmas and new year For your teaching can I make a suggestion that one lesson you teach them bad words. This will save hours of teaching time wasted by people spending the whole lesson looking up bad words in the dictionary. Some ideas- "Cul de merde" as in "Kemlo nomme Tatty a cul de merde" "merde" as in "Oh! Merde! Je suis desole d'avoir renverse ma biere sur vous" or indeed "On a du merde dans la forest" and "salope" as in "je deteste cette salope" If you want anymore lesson ideas you know how to contact me
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