Jungle diaries days 4 – 7…

Much activity (and reading) has meant I neglected to keep my diary for a couple of days…

The transect activity was interesting, through the forest from the flood plain to the palm swamp looking at the distribution of 4 palm species. Quite a noisy activity so saw no wildlife apart from a pair of very surprised Spix’s guan (Penelope jacquacu) that stumbled into our path! We did get quite good at identifying palms though…

Another good meal, an hour looking at insects, 5 hours sleep and a colpa later and I was back out into the jungle again, this time on the hunt for evidence of mammals. The forest was badly flooded about 2 weeks ago (as it does every 30 years or so) and so there was a fresh covering of mud everywhere making tracks really easy to see! Evidence of peccaries, paca, agouti, cayman (not a mammal), ocelot, tapir, capybara and coati (but no actual mammals) was abundant, and we got some VERY good casts of the prints using wax. We did eventually come across some live mammals – a group of red howler monkeys having a siesta! After lunch I fell asleep and woke up at dusk having missed an afternoon’s fishing.

As I’d had a lazy afternoon I decided to go on the night walk. We wandered into the jungle armed only with our torches on the lookout for the telltale reflection of eyes. We saw a fair bit of stuff – wolf spiders, a tree frog, a wolf spider eating a tiny tree frog, some moths (attracted by our torchlight) and some bats (attracted by the moths) but nada mas.

The following morning I slept in until 5am when I got up to accompany the kids on the birds activity. We set 2 mist nets and waited, checking every 15 mins (the optimum balance between scaring the birds away and leaving them exposed to predators in the nets). At 0730 when we went in for breakfast we’d caught nada. After breakfast we did catch a male plain throated wren, measured him and then let him go. We then had quite a long break before going out to the palm swamp to measure the biodiversity of the various regions of the forest using the Simpsons biodiversity index. I’d never heard of it before so it was good for me to learn some new ecology stats!

At the end of the walk was a 15m high scaff tower, built by the National Geographic to photograph the blue and yellow macaws that nest in the aguaje palms, which we climbed without harnesses or helmets – slightly different from UK health and safety. I only got half way up before I got too scared and had to stop. I’m not too good with heights! The walk back to the lodge was uneventful and after a good meal and a little time to read I went to bed happy that I was getting a lie in the next day.

The lie in was spoiled slightly by the amount of noise the kids made getting up for the colpa at 0430 but I dozed off again to the sounds of insects chirruping and birds starting their dawn chorus. I got up at 7 – what luxury! After breakfast Myself and Sandro were taken on a walk by Harry. We went to an area called ‘ the bowl’. It was fantastic! The scenery was amazing and the bowl was beautiful, a sort of swamp with quite unique ecosystem compared to the rest of the forest.

We saw LOADS of dragon flies and damsel flies and other arthropods as well as getting very close to a rufescent tiger heron and a pair of razor billed curasow. Best of all we saw a lot of small (30 – 50 cm I’d guess) cayman in one of the pools. On the way back we saw a family of Taira (pole-cat family) making their way through the forest, que lindo, but also quite smelly (they are mustelids after all).

After lunch there was a little time to rest before we went off for a ‘pechanga’ (that may not be the right way to spell it!) – a thank you football game with the local staff from the lodge. Despite being roughly half the height of the Markham lads, and playing barefoot (and despite 3 of the lads playing for national sports teams) they hosts won 8 – 1. To be fair to the kids the conditions of the pitch are not really what they are used to! Ankle deep clarty mud is not a common feature in Lima. Afterward, to get rid of the mud, we went for a mud-fight and swim in the river. Much fun was had by all…

After tea and thank yous the kids got stuck into the booklets that they should have been completing after each activity. By all accounts some of them were up VERY late, I’d gone to bed at 11 as by that point I wasn’t being much help!

Another lie in and then a struggle to get the kids to finish their booklets, get packed, tidy the rubbish out of their rooms etc. Then there was the shoe episode… but that’s another story entirely! The majority of the kids, Harry, 2 of the guides and Sandro went back towards Puerto Moldonado and I stayed with the kids that were fortunate enough to do geography as well! The seven of them (well 6 – 1 had his leg in plaster and couldn’t do the longer or wetter walks!) and 2 guides got a packed lunch and went for a walk to the bowl, where we hoped to catch cayman. We didn’t see any cayman at all this time, but we did see squirrel monkeys, a saddle backed tamarind, some stranded fish (the water level in the bowl had dropped a lot overnight!) and more curasows. We ate our pack-up (rice and chicken wrapped in leaves) on a bench overlooking the forest with pairs of macaws flying past – bliss! Back at the lodge we saw the taira again and an agouti We got back in plenty of time to have a shower and a ‘rask’ (a Harry-ism. He’s an Aussie and often comes up with Spanglish slang, the derivatives of which are often a little risqué to use at school really, but he seems to get away with it! ‘Rasking’ comes from a Spanish term meaning to scratch one’s balls apparently, although most of the kids seemed to think it was an English word…) while we waited for the next group to arrive.

The geographers are better behaved than the biology lot that have just gone, and Geoff has them well trained (and there are fewer of them which always helps!). Going to the colpa again tomorrow – can’t wait!

Jungle diaries – Day 3 5th May

I didn’t feel too bad at 5 am as we started through the forest towards the boat. The sunrise was again beautiful! We travelled about 5 minutes upriver to the colpa (clay lick), disembarked and sat to watch. My first colpa was a little disappointing, not because of the birds, but because of the attitude of the kids.

There weren’t too many birds at the colpa (it’s a friaje after all) but the noise and the colours were still awesome – macaws, parrots, parakeets, parrotlets and other birds all sitting in the trees or eating the clay. Without binoculars some of the detail was difficult to see, but the sight of the entire flock taking off when startled was stunning.

The kids were completely disinterested, which was a bit of a shame – maybe the higher group will be more enthusiastic next week! By then the friaje should be over and there should be more birds should be about.

Breakfast was VERY welcome after a long morning! So much so that I had double helpings (this is becoming a habit – the food is great and we’re busy all day so I’m always really hungry at mealtimes) There was some kind of banana-oat drink, scrambled egg cooked to perfection, 3 sorts of bread and jam.

Activity 1 was an ‘ecology’ walk through the jungle looking at examples of adaptation, competition etc. as well as looking for evidence of nutrient cyling. The guide was really knowledgeable and we saw LOADS of plants, including a strangler fig, the famous walking palm (that can move 2 – 5 cm/y) some saddlebacked tamarinds, army ants, leaf cutter ants, a bullet ant (so called because it’s bite is supposed to be as painful as being shot) and many tracks, such as ocelot, peckaries, armadillo, paca and coati. We also found and tasted termites. The sheer number of different species here is staggering!

Lunch was excellent, yet more tasty traditional peruvian food. The lodge displays the menu including the ingrediants, history of the dish and full instructions for making it. I may copy one or two out before I go! There had been enough time before lunch to have a shower (cold but very welcome) and a small nap on one of the hammocks! During lunch we saw 2 dusky titi monkeys in the trees outside the dining room. It’s not everyday that you get to watch wild monkeys while you eat. At the end of lunch we were visited by a cappuchin monkey eating fruit from the trees on the edge of the clearing. 3 species of monkey by lunchtime – great! After lunch there was just enough time to get back into my muddy clothes before going back out intot he forest to take a transect (or rather to watch the kids do it!)

I am loving it here, totally shattered, but such a nice change from the city!

Jungle diaries day 2 – 4th May 2008

Once the kids were quiet I slept well and was woken at 4-20 am by Harry’s dulcet tones.  Dressing and packing by candlelight felt odd for some reason – it had seemed OK the previous night, but somehow candles in the morning are wrong!

 

Breakfast was a buffet, with a choice of scrambled eggs, yucca chips, fruit, yoghurt, bread etc. and VERY strong coffee (later I learned that it was a type of coffee essence and you’re supposed to mix it about half and half with water)!  We left our bags in the bar and headed off to an oxbow lake (memories of GCSE geography came flooding back!) where a family of giant river otters breed every year.

 

I can’t quite put into words the sight of the sun rising over the Amazonian jungle – it was awesome!  It definitely made getting up at 0420 worth while!  We took a boat about 15 mins upriver from the lodge and moored against a set of rickety wooden steps that looked like they led nowhere (which was broadly speaking true…) and began to walk towards the lake.  Walking through the rainforest early in the morning was very peaceful (the kids were too tired to ruin it by talking yet!) and after about 30 mins we reached the lake.  It is one of the most peaceful places I have ever been to! We stepped on board our viewing boat and glided out onto the lake.  The only sound the splash of the paddle, the creak of the boat and the spray of repellent cans as the kids doused themselves in poison!  Sadly we didn’t spot any otters (I may have glimpsed one for a fraction of a second, but I couldn’t be sure) but we did see heaps of birds, insects, fish (we caught some piranha when the kids got bored of looking at birds).  The cutest things by far were the bats we found sleeping on a tree trunk overhanging the water.

 

The journey back was a treat – we couldn’t get the boat back to the launch as the wind was against us, so in the end the guides pulled up to the bank, rigged the oar so it made a gangway to shore and made our way back to the river through the jungle with our guides cutting the trail with machetes as we went!  Proper jungle experience!

 

It was now nearly 10am and we should have been back at the lodge at 9!  Consequently we arrived back at the river boat to find the other half of the group (who had been up to the canopy tower close to the lodge) waiting for us and all of our things packed onto the boat, along with a welcome snack each.  We then began the MAMMOTH journey up river to the Tambopata Research Centre lodge.  We saw more wildlife on the way (including caiman) and made a couple of stops at other lodges to use their (variable) facilities.  At 1pm we were served lunch, again wrapped in leaves, this time of lomo saltado (with rice and chips of course – Peruvians don’t consider it a meal unless it contains 2 large helpings of complex carbohydrates!).

 

The sights were spectacular as we meandered upriver – constantly changing scenery and plenty of birds, but the journey was a little erratic – the river is wide, fairly shallow in places, quite fast flowing and after the floods last week, full of submerged rocks, trees, new sandbanks etc. to navigate around.  The friaje is causing a lot of the wildlife to stay at home in bed, so I took the opportunity, as did many of the kids, to have a nap. I hope I didn’t miss anything!

 

12 hours after I got up and we are STILL on the boat.  The mountains we flew over yesterday have come into view, but a distance we flew over in less than 30 mins yesterday has so far taken 6 hours by boat and we may still have another 2 hours left to go!  I’m not sure my bum can cope – I rarely sit for this long!

 

We arrived at dusk – the lodge is great, I’ve got a double room to myself with a view towards the kitchen and rainforest!  The view of the sky through the trees is mesmerising, even through the mosquito net.

 

By the time we’d met, gone through the rules, found out about the leishmaniasis risk in the area, eaten, washed up (normal tourists don’t do that obviously, but it’s good for the kids to have to look after their own mess for a change!) had a talk about the macaw project, and made the kids decide on their own experimental design project it was 2230, and with another 0430 start I went straight to sleep!

The jungle diaries – day 1

I was incredibly excited to be told I would have to go to the jungle for 2 weeks with the IB biologists.  A lot of people appologised about it and said that normally the trip would be split between two staff – as if I WOULDN’T want to go for 2 weeks – how odd!

I was less excited when I found out I had to take 26 kids from school, to Cuzco on the plane on my own (the head of biology was meeting us in Cuzco).  Lima – Cuzco could have gone better!  One of the kids was nearly an hour late, and then halfway to the airport realised she didn’t have her passport with her (and had to get her driver to bring it to the airport for her).  One of the kids didn’t have his permisio notorial (there is a big problem with child trafficking in Peru.  If you want to travel with a child that is not yours you have to have a notorised document from BOTH parents, thankfully he had dual nationality and had his US passport.  The government don’t care if we steal foreign kids!) and another had forgotten her yellow fever certificate.  This stressed me slightly, but all worked out OK in the end!

The flight was fantastic – the view over the mountains just out of Cusco and the view over the jungle were magnificent!  When we landed in Puerto Moldonado there was something in the air and I knew I was in for an excellent trip.  We arrived in the middle of a friaje (cold spell) so it wasn’t too bad – about 25 degrees C and 98 % humidity, great in the day time but cold enough for a jacket at night.

1 hour or so by bumpy combi, our luggage strapped precariously on the roof, and then onto a river boat.  We were served lunch – chinese style rice wrapped up in leaves – and a view that the pictures don’t do justice to!

 

The lodge is fantastic, en-suite rooms that are open to the forest on one side!  You have your own hammock, table and chairs for relaxing in and a double bed with mosquite net.  No doors though – only a pair of curtains that close across the doorway.  There is a ’safety deposit box’ in each room – but it’s to put food in so the opposums don’t destroy your bags trying to get at it!

We had a short lesson on statistics for biology (standard deviation, t-tests and chi squared) and then got ready for dinner.  Thr food was OK, but the most amazing thing about the evening were the stars.  I can’t get over how many of them there are and how bright they look!  The patterns are completely unfamiliar too, being in the Southern hemisphere.

After dinner we did a night solo.  THe guides took us into the forest and left us on our own without our torches for 20 mins.  It was great, warm, dark, insect noises, stars glimmering through the canopy, just me, in the dark, in peace – bliss, could have stayed there for hours, not just 20 mins.  Some of the kids were TERRIFIED though!  Bed was welcome by the time I got there – especially as I had a 4 am start the next day…

Palacala

At 0330 when the earthquake woke me up I began to wonder whether taking 15 kids on a walk from 2000m up to a waterfall at 2800m, in terrain where there are frequent rockfalls and mudslides when it rains, was really such a good idea. However at 0700 when I arrived at school I’d forgotten that the earthquake had happened – I thought it was just a bad dream! It was only at about 0800, when the kids’ parents started to ring their mobiles to see if we’d felt the second earthquake that we got a little concerned. However after a call to the local police, who said that Palacala was unaffected, we continued in the minibus towards our starting point. Passing a number of fresh rockfalls on the road there did make us all a little uneasy though.

The falls at Palacala are being developed as a tourist attraction, as such the route is well marked on stones along the way! However by British standards it’s hardly a touristy walk. It is almost entirely uphill to the falls, and although there is a marked path it is not easy going! It’s at a much higher altitude than I’m used to (we got out of the minibus at abot 2000 m and the falls are at about 2800 m) and there are places where you have to scramble rather than walk. There is also a 2 sol (40 p) charge to walk in the area (1 sol for students and school groups – lucky us!)

The views were spectacular, the surrounding mountains are huge and the tops are lost in mist! We passed a number of small settlements on our way and also bumped into some of the locals (and their donkeys!). We were accompanied on the walk by a friendly black dog (who looked a bit like Skipper in the face, for those of you who remember him). He was a bit mangy – there were a couple of patches of red, bare skin near his tail, but he seemed delighted to join our pack for the day (he tried to get into the minibus when we got back too, which was less helpful).

The weather for the ascent was lovely, warm and sunny, until we got to just below the falls, then the mist came down (or perhaps we’d walked into it). At first the coolness of it was a welcome change, but then it started to get a little cold. Just as we got to the falls and began to eat lunch it started to rain. Real rain, not like the sort you get in Lima! Followed quite quickly by some impressive rolls of thunder. Most of the kids hadn’t got any waterproofs (neither did I as mine are still in a box in the Port for some reason along with my walking boots…) and so we all got wet and cold quite quickly. Because of this it was a short lunch break before we turned round and headed back. The dog LOVED lunchtime – he was spoiled with tit-bits from everyone’s pack-up.

The journey back seemed much shorter than the journey up, despite the rain. That is until we got to the ‘alternitive’ route down, that was steeper and less well maintained than the route we’d walked up. This is apparently a lot more typical of tracks when walking in Peru, and was really to show the kids what they could expect fom the next walk, and why they should buy proper walking boots! This was the only part of the walk where I really wished I was walking in my boots and not my trainers. It was VERY slippy – hills in Peru seem mainly to be made of gravel and sand. That is until you slip over, then it magically turns into lumps of jagged granite.

It was really good to get out of Lima for a bit and see some other parts of Peru. Having something constructive to do, that wasn’t work, made a nice change. I actually think that it’s the first weekend when I haven’t ended up walking to Larco Mar and getting a coffee. When I unpacked my bag I found a good example of Boyle’s law. I had put an empty water bottle, with its lid on, in my bag at the falls. This is what it looked like closer to sea level…

Teaching in a zoo…

As a teacher you sometimes feel like you’ve accidently walked into a zoo and not a classroom. In my case I might have… I thought I’d put up some photos of school and the zoo for those of you who either don’t have Facebook or can’t look at my profile because I don’t want to be your friend…

My room is nice, bright and stays cool for most of the day . I have already got some work up on the walls but, with 7 lessons per class a week I’m already behind with the key word lists – they may need a rethink.

The zoo is located behind my room. It has a pond with terrapins, many rabbits, 3 scarlet macaws, 2 red masked parakeets, a wild West Peruvian Dove that managed to get into the aviary but can’t get out, 2 tortoises, and a ferret. I have no idea what happened to the gunea pigs that they had the first week I was there. I haven’t dared ask…

To the side of my classroom is another cage which usually contains 2 squirrel monkeys and a spider monkey named Lucy. The spider monkeys are allowed out sometimes as they don’t go too far and come back eventually. Lucy is only allowed out on a lead as she runs off and goes places she shouldn’t. It is an interesting sight to see a small Markham student being taken for a walk by a wooly black monkey on a lead!

Another great thing about the school is the staff room. Not only is it a nice place to work or relax, it also has a fairly large kitchen area, with 4 microwaves, a big fridge freezer and sink, plates, mugs, etc (but oddly no teaspoons…). It has a TV with cable, lockers for each memebr of staff, decent toilets with nice showers, and the usual printer (which your laptop is wirelessly networked to), photocopier, guillotine, binding machine etc. As if that wasn’t enough it also has an area, that as of 4pm each evening magically becomes a bar selling beer and wine! At break time and lunch some of the obreros come with trays of coffee, milk, sugar and clean mugs and there is an outside catering man who comes at break with a selection of food including fresh fruit salad (breakfast – so healthy and so nice!), and sandwiches for lunch. He also has a ‘daily special’ lunch thing, which is a pot of food containing lunch. It’s different every day, but usually involves meat/chicken, rice/potatoes/Yukka and veg so I’ve eaten really healthily lately – I’ve even known what some of it is… For the service of bringing me both breakfast and lunch he charges S/ 9.50 (it’s about 6 sol to the pound…) which is worth every centino!

Better get to bed really – need to be up at 6 as school starts at 0730 and I like to be there at about 0645. There’s always coffee in the pot when I get there too – I really do love this school (even if I will end up with RSI and bad eyes from all the computer use!)

Vermilion Flycatcher

Pyrocephalus rubinus. The picture shows the male (I haven’t seen a female yet – they’re similar to the males, but have a white throat. There is also a melanic form which I haven’t seen either!). According to my bird book (which is in spanish, so I could be wrong!) they are VERY terratorial and have been known to attack their own reflections! They nest in trees and build cup shaped nests into which they lay 2 – 4 white eggs (which may have brown spots on them). They incubate the eggs for 14 – 23 days. They eat insects which they catch in flight (which you’d expect really if you’d read the name – ‘The Vermilion flycatcher – does exactly what it says in the tin…’).  They are really very pretty and also sing a nice song morning and evening (as you’d expect from a territorial bird I suppose).

The Desk Saga…

I need a computer desk in my room (so that, if for no other reason, I have somewhere to put all the books that are currently on my bedside table and get knocked off everytime my alarm goes off in the morning!). Consequently, last week, I purchased a computer desk from ACE homestore (a lot like B and Q for those in the UK). That in itself involved more Spanish than I really speak as I needed to get the desk I wanted, pay for it, get it put aside for later, then go back and pick it up and get it into the taxi! I managed, just. It is a flat pack desk that requires assembly at home. I have done similar things before so I wasn’t worried…

Like my dad taught me the first thing I did was get all the pieces out of the box and sorth them. At this point I made my first mistake. Rather than go through the entire list of pieces I did the teacher thing of counting them (18 pieces) and then looking at the instructions (18 pieces).

I was pleasantly surprised by the tools supplied with the desk – I’ve never had flatpack come with a screwdriver and spanner before, and before long I was happily following the diagrams in the instructions. Each piece of desk had a sticker with a part number on it and the same number used in the diagrams so it was very straightforward to start with. Soon I had the makings of a nice desk! It was at this point I noticed that 2 pieces had the same number stuck to them. On further investigation I found that this was indeed correct, and I was missing part number 18. A small, but pivotal piece. I stopped work at this point and was mildly cross! I tried emailing ACE, but had no reply. Probably because I’d written in English!

I decided that my best bet was to go back to ACE (which is in Jockey Plazza – a new, large, shopping mall about half an hour’s taxi ride away) at some point with the receipt and the instructions and try to obtain piece number 18. This I did – I have no idea what the woman in the shop kept asking me, but I looked stupid (not difficult) and repeated ‘numero 18 no es en la caja’ until a nice young man took me to the back of the shop and opened one of the boxes to get me piece number 18. I was slightly disappointed with how small and insignificant it looked after all the trouble it had caused me!

Full of new hope I recommenced work on the desk. It had looked so simple in the shop, but it has obviously been designed by a dim-wit who has never actually put together a single item of flat-pack in his life! 4 holes have been drilled at a place where it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a screw in because they hit the piece above them when you try (never mind being able to get a screwdeiver to them!) and a couple of places were too tight for the screwdriver they supplied to work. On top of that not all of the holes lined up properly so it was very difficult to get the screws in properly. Very soon I felt like throwing the whole lot out of the window, but after some basic tool design on my part (remember that time when you did moments in physics and could’t see the point? All becomes clear now eh?!) and a bit of settling for it being shoddy workmanship in places, I had finished! I’m not sure it was worth the effort really, but it is a LOT better than nothing!

I have NEVER had so much trouble with flat pack furniture before. Maybe this is what happens when the people that design the furiture have handymen to put them together! I need some bookshelves too. I’m thinking that I’ll be a LOT more choosey about the ones I get this time, and probably won’t be shopping at ACE…

I went to an ale-house I used to frequent…

I went out last night for St Patrick’s… There is one Irish bar in Lima. It is owned by an Englishman and doesn’t serve any Guinness, Murpheys, Irish Whisky or Beamish. I’ve been once before. It’s usually full of Ex pat men drinking lager, and Peruanas trying to pull the Ex pat men. Last time I went I stood out a mile and got chatted up by a Serbian, called AK, who may be wanted for war crimes (someone said it as a joke, but I wasn’t so sure!).

This time it wasn’t so bad as it was PACKED for St Patrick’s, with a very international crowd. In the spirit of the occasion they were adding green food colouring to the lager… that probably tells you all you need to know about the place, still the atmosphere was good! There were a couple of live bands (one of whom is made up mainly of staff from the school!) who were really good (much to my surprise!) and they played a mix of random covers and some traditional Irish songs.

The drinking competition was won by a very tall, very blonde Swede. He and his friends, who were the tallest people in the pub by MILES then stood right at the front so noone could see properly. Even this didn’t seem to upset anyone and much dancing, singing and jollity ensued.
I wasn’t drinking as I had school today (only wanting coke seemed to be a very difficult concept both for the bar staff, and for the people from school that I’d gone with!), but even so, staying out til 1 am in a sweaty pub has taken its toll – I must be getting old! I felt alright when I got up at 6 am, but by the time I’d done cafeteria duty at lunch time, in the blazing sun, I was feeling a little worse for wear! It didn’t help that I’d forgotten my sun lotion and sun glasses either. By the time I got home I was starting to feel hung over, which seemed a little unfair all things considered.

However a plate of spaghetti bolognaise and a couple of episodes of Smallville later I’m feeling human again and thinking I probably ought to go to bed soon! Thankfully it’s a 3 day week due to living in a catholic country and it being Maunday Thursday and Good Friday. Tomorrow after school there is a ‘communidad’ event. All the staff at the school pay 0.4% of their wage into the communidad fund which then pays for refreshemtns in the staff room at break and various events throughout the year. Tomorrow it is a barbeque at the Lower school campus. Should be nice to relax for a bit after a hectic start to the term!

My first week of teaching.

I would have written this post on Saturday, but I spent a large part of it asleep and most of the time when I wasn’t asleep eating.  On Sunday I decided to follow the wise words of a Zen cow I got as a birthday card once – it suggested the one should ‘wander aimlessly and eat alot’ I did both on my way home from church.  I also had a very strange conversation with a woman in the inca market about alpaca fleeces (which you apparently can’t get – they always cut them up and make them into rugs of a more sensible shape).  I could have bought a sheep one for 75 Soles (15 pounds) without bargaining.  Alpaca is MUCH softer though, so I am currently in a quandry.  Natural fleece or softer, but slightly more manufactured rug?  Difficult choice, but I don’t need to decide until it gets colder.

 I have now taught right through my timetable once (last Monday didn’t count as it was mainly admin).  It seems OK.  I have bored my lower sixth to death doing a practical on the rate of diffusion into agar blocks and the effect of surface area (hence cells being small).  At least when you watch paint dry you can get high from the smell and don’t have to wear safety specs…

My GCSE kids are nice – I’ve already done activities with them that I wouldn’t have tried with most of my classes in ‘ull!  And weirdest of all they all say goodbye and thankyou at the end of the lesson!  I have had all the homework I have set back in so far too – I’m sure this can’t be normal, but other staff say it is!

The swimming standards were not as much chaos as I thought they’d be – the kids pretty much knew what they were doing, and seemed to naturally want to line up in alphabetical order.  Even the most unathletic kids did 50m and most were quite competitive about it!  The bit that confused me most is that otherwise fast and graceful swimmers took 3 or 4 seconds to turn round at the end of their length – very few of them could do those turning-under-water type turns you see in real races.  I think it’s because they do most of their swimming at the beach over the summer.  Stupidly I forgot to take sun lotion or my nice new Oakley sunglasses so spent a lot of the time squinting and trying to keep in the shade – still I’ll know better for next time.  Other house events that are coming up include a National Anthem singing competition, the proper swimming gala and a music contest.

 The main stumbling block to good lessons is the scarlet Macaw.  I am convinced now that he is being deliberately disruptive, safe in the knowledge that I can’t give him a detention.  I’m sure he watches me in the room, and only starts to squawk if I stand at the front and try and talk to the group.  When I’m walking round, helping pupils etc. he is silent.  As soon as I go near my desk, or pick up the eBeam pen, cacophony!  Driving me mad, but amuses the kids no end.  Maybe I should try bribeing him with fruit…