Sorry, more about Cockroaches

Hi there

Due to popular demand I am adding my latest cockroach story.

Last Saturday night I was awoken by much rustling and crashing about in my cupboard. At 3.30am. I thought it might be a mouse, or worse, so turned on the light and hastily jumped onto my bed to view from a safe vantage point. Well, you can guess can't you. No, it wasn't a small rodent, it was a bumper large cockroach. It sort of fell out of the cupboard and then started to blunder about. I was freaked, goes without saying, and ran into the kitchen to get the DOOM. I sprayed it thoroughly and it lay in a moist and crumpled heap by the cupboard. I couldn't remove it as I was just too grossed out.

I turned off the light and lay rigid in bed. I mused about how bonkers I would go if one ever got on the bed, or worse still, ran across by body. This didn't help me settle back to sleep. And guess what, 15 minutes later more rustling and then I actually heard it run across the carpet. I couldn't see as the light was off but I had to make a dash for the light switch before retreating back onto the bed. There was another huge beastie. This time scurrying around near the bed. I doomed it but this one wasn't taking it lying down. No, he ran up and down the wall next to my bed. There was a good deal of muffled exclamations on my part I can tell you. Eventually it died.
It was now 4.10am.

So, the rest of the night was spent with the light on with me dozing fitfully. At 5am I pulled back the curtains to let the dawn light in and opened the window. By this stage I had a headache and I worried that the DOOM was having an effect on me!!!

Donna (now called Donna Doom as she disposes of most of the cockroaches) came in in the morning and removed the corpses.

I moved bedrooms.

Video Clips

Dear All

Not been on the old Blog for a while as we were having trouble with the internet connection for a few days.

On Monday we spent some time with 8A and 8B. It was the final day of their exams so sadly this was the last time that I would get a chance to do anything with them. Donna, (another Traveller's volunteer), and Julie, (from Australia and doing research on the South African education system), helped out. Thank goodness as it was mayhem for a while.

A whole bunch of kids turned up after their exam and we took video footage of them singing the South African National Anthem, a traditional Xhosa song and one of the songs that they sing at morning assembly on Mondays and Fridays. At one stage 5 boys sang a song in Xhosa which was about chidren being abandonned by their parents at a young age. One boy gave a Christmas greeting to 9D where he said 'Don't do sex, the virus will kill you'. I will be interested to hear what the St Dominic's student make of that ...

All in all some great footage. The quality isn't up to usual BBC standards but we were using hand held Canon Powershot cameras, not proper video cameras. Also, the sun kept going in and out so occasionally it looks like we have all been plunged into darkness!!

Unfortunately it seems that I can't load an avi clip on to the blog so we will have to wait until they go on the BBC website. That might be a little while as I need to put the material onto a DVD and send it my snail mail. I did try to email the clips but after 40 minutes nothing in the way of sending was happening. Even one clip at a time was not doing it at all.

If anyone knows if and how you can load an avi file on to the Blog please feel free to enlighten me!