2018Tonga

Week 7 Another busy week. Aside form teaching we had Parent Teacher meetings/Visit by HRH the Tongan Princess, who is also the Tongan High Commissioner in Australia and a play preformance. That was all on one day. To further create a full day the play we have been working on in Form 1 English we performed not only for the boy's parents but for HRH Angelique also. Parent Teacher meetings were held in the Hall and ran from 5pm until 8:30pm with a short break for the play performance, but an early finish due to a black out. Ten minutes per family was a long time after only 5 real weeks of teaching and my limited (zero) Tongan language skills. But the view from the venue was terrific. Te sun sets over the staff cottages on the farm road. Talking to parents as the sun set and coolness descended was quite a pleasant finish to the day.

Crazy heat still going, the change is expected in June!! As we begin to wind down for a short break we have reports, parent teacher meeting (3 hrs for one class) and a delightful (I hope) production of a play version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We wrote it ourselves, have cobbled together costumes, many of the boys wearing my skirts or sarongs. Will post pics next blog entry. Techo problems with the latest images. I have volunteered to begin to explore the closed rather decrepit school museum. Apparently ot has an array of artifacts and other stuff which has not seen the light of day for years. The end game is to have a little tourist attraction but in the meantime a little project and I will engage a group of boys who can use it as their 'community service'. Also more on that next time. But things are moving on with the restoration after the cyclone, a large water tank is now located adjacent to the water tank tower so service should improve. Weather has o

Now there really is news!! After 21 days we have power, well most of the campus does. Our temporary house and our real house both do, unfortunately the class room and staff room I use, don't. Our cottage is about to be cleaned thoroughly (debugged) and a move is afoot. I have four boys, mops, buckets, disinfectant etc etc and lots of surgical gloves and we will give it a clean to be remembered. Last night sleeping with a fan was certainly a real treat. And more importantly reading at night, what luxury. Still poor Tonga it has been a really difficult time and initially 80% of the main island of Tongatapu lost power. The clean up continues with rubbish everywhere and not enough man power to do it with any great haste. For the non-Newingtonian teachers/Staff I have added my report for their school newsletter In February, our world was turned upside down – literally – when Cyclone Gita hit Tonga. The night of the cyclone we stayed at the principal’s large, safe concrete