At breakfast we met a Singaporean group from the humanitarian and disaster wing of Caritas, who are upgrading the drains of St Mary’s Orphanage opposite the hotel, putting bicycles into a local village and carrying out a range of other projects. They had been to 6am Mass which I have not yet and Joan and I have now promised to do tomorrow.
I went to class to get things started and then came back to the hotel to catch up on paperwork and photographs. What I must do when get home is take all my previous photos off – thousands and thousands of them – and put them on an external hard drive. They making accessing iPhoto sooooooooo slow. When the hotel is empty the wifi is faster and so is the personal hotspot on my phone.
At 11:30 I went to the Social Centre to prepare for the meeting in the afternoon and also to prepare a template for the evaluations we must think about preparing now for Friday. After some discussion we have established that these are indeed useful tools for the students as some have taken them to job interviews and used them as evidence of learning. We have enhanced them further by adding a short evaluation of students’ progress.
I met with Fr Henry and Fr Peter at 2pm with Marcellinus taking the minutes. It was a useful overview of what we have achieved over the last year and our plans for the future, working together with KMSS. Anne told me that ‘ahtutu’ means not only ‘together’ but ‘the same’ – ahtutu beh, the same. What a lovely philosophy! We are all the same: we just live in different parts of the world. The meeting summarised what we have done together, plans for the future and the confirmation of dates for next year. Much to discuss with my trustees when I return home.
The presentation work goes on apace with each group making a PowerPoint which will be shown to and evaluated by the other groups. The Napier Team feel that this is a skill both in terms of preparation and execution that will give students tools for their future.
Anne invited us to look round her classroom as a group and, as previously stated, the Japanese lessons are well graded and give the students scaffolding for their learning.
Feeling somewhat anti-social and nothing whatsoever to do with a lot of beer and a late night last night, I ducked out of Maths Club – sorry, Kate – and spent the evening listening to music and, yes, how did you know, blogging?