Monday 23rd June

"Courage is being scared to death – but saddling up anyway." –John Wayne

Today heralded the beginning of our second week and the realization that one week had flown by already.

At school we decided to try bingo with the first two students – joining as a team to play it. It worked so well that we repeated the process with the second two students. Suzanne then concentrated on rhyming words, trying to teach the students that if you can read ‘light’, then ‘might’, ‘sight’ etc are easier to pick up. Nikki continued with teaching phonetics and was delighted to see students using this method and working out the words.

The school’s ‘virtue’ for this week is ‘enthusiasm’. Nikki taught each of her students how to pronounce it (none could) and then explained what it meant.

After-school activities saw Suzanne heading north to town to spend time with her friend I. Net!! Nikki headed south to try out the snorkeling at Titioki Beach. A delicious smoothy from Fruits of Rarotonga finished the snorkeling experience with Nikki having seen some VERY big fish. Some swam round and round her and she realized they probably wanted to be fed. Something to remember for next time.

Dinner was home-made pizza and salad provided by Debi – another delicious meal from her kitchen. Debi joined us for dinner where we relived the days events and discussed the children’s reading abilities – along with lion kills, penguin habits and ice-skating in Japan.