Facebook

Updated the Facebook page, asking for donations! Hopefully, this and my messages on my wall will help me with the Christmas drive...

Diplomas

I realized that I need to make some sort of reward for people giving money to the school. I decided that a diploma would be a good idea. It is hard to find ways of encouraging people to give and a diploma is an easy way to show our appreciation. Still, you can't make it to advanced, it is after all charity. The money is so much needed and I really want to encourage people to give. I also need to find ways to market the school. Facebook and e-mailing is te easiest way right now, but I need other channels too! The most powerful is word of mouth, but being in Kenya makes that kind of hard. Next summer, I will spend time both in Sweden and in Washington D.C, and I need a plan to make the most of that opportunity. Right now I'm so busy in school, so I guess I have to take the christmas brake to figure things out.....

Christmas cards

I finally sat down do design the Christmas cards for the Christmas fundraising. The idea is to post them on facebook, have all my friends and family buy them as gifts. They can give as much money as they want in the name of a loved one to the school. I'm really hoping I can "spread the word" through Facebook, but I think I need to be very persistent in reminding people of the opportunity. We also started a fb page for the school and I'm going to post it there too. I have to personalize every card, but for once, I hope I will be very busy doing that closer to christmas. I also got the good news that a distant relative and her friend wanted to donate some money to the school! She sent me a message on facebook that she deposited 13.000 Kes on the account! The group from Northern Sweden also got a donation of 120.000 Kes! Instead of giving christmas gifts to their clients and partners, they are giving the money to Excellent school. I quickly had to design a christmas card for them and send it by mail.

The special Christmas cards for the big donators!

The regular ones.

More laundry from the Nest

OK - second batch of very, very wet clothes from the nest. I'm starting to feel I made up for the time I missed during the Macbeth rehearsals and performances. But unfortunately, this is a never ending story.... I start to sympathize with my mom who does the laundry all the time. She thinks this is a good way for me to learn to do my own...

Christmas Market with the Swedish Society in Kenya

    Selling lottery tickets and Swedish specialties.



Saturday was a fun, but busy day. We started the day out early, going to the Swedish school with prizes for the raffle, Swedish candy and caviar to sell and my poster from Excellent school. We started by hanging all the posters. This is one of the demands from the Swedish Association, every project that has received support need to display the result on the Christmas Market.
The board were busy with setting up the tables for selling the Swedish products, setting up the café and restaurant where Swedish christmas food would be sold.
I continued by helping out with organizing the prizes for the raffle. A lot of companies around Nairobi had donated the prizes and some of them were really good. Like two nights at a resort on the beach and a painting from a well known local artist. The other Scandinavian countries were also participating, and it was a lot of fun to see what they were selling. The Market opened by noon and I spent the next four hours selling lottery tickets, helping out in the kitchen, manning the tents were we were selling things and chatting with Swedish people. I had a good day, but was dead tired when I got home.
The money earned will go to projects in Kenya, another opportunity for me to apply for funds to Excellent. school.
I had a good time, but I also worked really hard and sold all the lottery tickets. It was nice to talk to a lot of people from the Scandinavian countries and there were many familiar faces. It was however, hard work and I was dead tired after the market. Even though I enjoyed it, I'm glad this event only comes around once a year!

 

The nest and laundry

Friday was free from school so I managed to go to the nest for a short visit. I didn't have much time, so unfortunately I made a mess in the room with the one year olds. They were, as always, very hungry for attention and I was hardly inside the door before I had two babies in my arms. I forgot to close the door behind me and one "escaped", so I had to put the two down and run after the third. As I let go of the two I held, they started crying and after lifting in the escapee, he was crying too.
I hugged them some more and played with them for a few minutes, but they just wanted to be held.

I had to go down to the laundry room, because I heard that due to the heavy rains we're having in Nairobi, they have a hard time drying the laundry. I volunteered to bring the wet laundry home and dry it in the dryer in our house, but got a bit concerned when they brought bag after bag after bag...... My reflection on this trip is once again, how lucky I am. To have a dryer when it is raining is very practical especially after it's been raining for days. The staff hardly had any of their cloth diapers dry and my parents just put disposable diapers on my butt! Imagine the hard work they put in, and being so dependent on the weather, luckily it is mostly sunshine in Nairobi!

    Pouring rain and lots of laundry

   Hanging diapers

Football self-evaluation and reflections

 I missed the last training sessions due to my Drama production, but I think it's been a big challenge being on the JV team this year. I didn't get to play in the games as much as I wanted, which made me negative at some stages during the season.
When doing a full IB, it is difficult to remain positive when you could be home studying as you "warm the bench". The thing I was enforced of, yet agin, is the importance of team work. To keep your friends motivated, to participate in training and to be positive during games is very important to get good team-work. Winning also contributes, but that is a result of practicing. I'm not so sure I accomplished that this season. I got frustrated and upset when I didn't get to play and I got angry with the referee when they made strange calls. I also got quite angry when my team mates didn't show up for practice, but still got to play in the matches.
Our football season was mixed, with brilliant results at the beginning of the year but with defeats in the end of the season. We did not progress as far as we had anticipated, therefore I am angry because this season cannot be compared to the last one. Even though we reached the final last year, hopes were even higher for a return there.
I'm proud of that I didn't quit and that I was working with my bad temper all through the season. I truly love football, but I think I'm not going to do the tryouts next year. It is just too time consuming. Maybe Taekwondo is more for me: you develop quite quickly and it is an individual sport, and maybe this is one of my conclusions from this  experience. I will not achieve my goal of being on the Varsity team next year, but I will absolutely continue to play for fun. My new plan is to do the pick-up games at the U.N, maybe not every week but always when I'll have the time to spare, and always just to have fun!

Po, our captain, is making the crowd laugh at Sports Celebration night.



















Meeting Rosslyn

My coach gave me credit for being one of the most reliable players and always giving a lot of energy to the team!

Application

Finally completed the application! We decided to seek funds for buying new rooms and to fix them up. Concrete floors are especially needed. The school is built on the river bank to the Mathare river and the slopes are not som efficient to build on, it is hard to put desks and chairs on the ground and imagine the mess when it is raining! A few months ago, the department of education threatened to close the school if they didn't fix the floors but fortunately we raised some money and was able to fix the worst parts. However, new rooms are needed so each class can have their own! Another problem is that the school is located in the middle of the resident area. The result of this is that there are people, laundry, crying babies everywhere on the school grounds and not very safe for the students. They really need to have all their rooms within a fenced in area to get some peace and quiet to study. This is why we're applying for funds to fence in the school from the Swedish society in April of next year. It is hard to compare Excellent school with the International School of Kenya, where only authorized persons, students and parents are allowed in. We have a beautiful campus, with walls around and guards at the gate. We have nice classrooms and are rarely disturbed when we have classes. The difference is monumental! I hope DSA and the Swedish society will accept our application because the kids in Excellent deserves a reasonable safe, calm and clean school with proper floors!

George emailed me the budget, so I managed to get it in!

Appying for funds from DSA

I had really good information: Due to one of the ladies in my mothers group, we're eligible to apply for funds from the Diplomatic Spouse Association! The application is due the last day of November, so we need to hurry up! I e-mailed Reverend  George, asking him what his current priority list was like and we decided to ask for funds for more floors (they don't have cement flooring in all the room and this makes it hard to put a desk there, not to mention when it rains) and fencing around the school. My mother is meeting the ladies wednesday to talk about it, so I need to make an application very, very soon. This is a great opportunity, but I still face the fact that they might not accept the application (very frustrating!). I had planned to visit the school on Saturday, but it didn't work out because of my busy schedule this week. Reverend George and I had a long conversation by telephone and mail and I got a lot of information and inspiration. He is going to e-mail me quotations shortly and we discussed the budget.

This is how a floor in a classroom can look. Imagine this when it's the rainy season!

Performances

We started up with a dress rehearsal, with audience coming from our neighboring schools. It was really tough, because every thing needed to be in order and the nerves of the cast were not! We finally pulled together and only experienced a few glitches in all the technical stuff and only a few moments of confusion. It is nice to know that rehearsal really pays off. The next couple of nights went on smoothly and we got a lot of appreciation for all our hard work. Today is the last play, so tomorrow I will be back to a normal life with school work and my Cas work.

   Tickets                                                 The entrance

    The cast and crew

Macbeth is coming to ISK

Due to my workload the last week, I haven't been able to update my blog as much as I have wished. However, I want to inform you of what I've been doing. No trips to the Nest or Excellent school, no football and MUN and minimal homework has been the routine - just work, work, work for the Machbeth play, going up on the 17:th. I'm the assistant stage manager and these weeks has been filled with, painting, fixing wardrobe, props and various technical stuff. We had a few setbacks: Duncan was forced to drop out of the play, due to a very heavy IB schedule, and Macbeth himself, was ill during rehearsals. I just hope (and think) we will be ready for the 17:th. All of this week, we're working until 8 pm and all through the weekend. Drama is one of my favorite subjects, and I'm doing the higher level IB. It's very surprising though  I've never done any types of performances in my previous life. I discovered, during 10:th grade (when I had to do two credits of fine art), that I enjoy drama a lot, and are actually quite good at it. I just love working backstage and these days working on the set are so much fun and very educational. I also discovered that Drama helps me in other subjects. My oral presentations has become a lot better after taking drama and to read all the plays I've been reading makes me have an advantage in English.

Busy 2/11

Today I was very busy. I’m working backstage for the Macbeth performance ISK is putting up, and today was the start of two busy weeks. My teacher tells me I should expect to get out of school at 6 pm this week and 8 pm next week. I’m working as a stage manager and props manager and it’s very interesting to practice the things I only studied. I love drama and really enjoy the work, so the only problem I’ll have over the next weeks is fitting in my schoolwork, my training and of course CAS. I will not have the opportunity to go to the Nest in a few weeks, and that is quite sad.

I did however manage to find some time to make a poster for the Swedish Christmas market. We applied for funds in April and got what we needed to buy 16 new blackboards and almost 90 new lecture chairs. One of the conditions from the Swedish society is to bring a 70x100 cm poster to the Christmas market and give them all the receipts. Luckily, I’ve taken the photos on my visit to the school - but I still had to design the poster! I knew that the deadline was coming up, but had a hard time getting myself to do the design. I finally decided to do it very simple: Write some headlines and print them and a lot of photos, and finally glue them to this big poster. To make it look a little more professional, I begged my parents to give me a nice frame to put it in and luckily they did (because of IKEA there's always old stuff around). 

I’m actually quite happy with the result, even if it took ages to decide what images to use, print them, cut them out and finally glue them. The whole operation is very important though. It will inspire the Swedish community to buy more (expensive) Swedish candy and other Swedish foods, buy more drinks and food on our parties and be OK with that most of it is overpriced. 

As I’ve blogged about before, I’m planning to apply for more funds for Excellent School in Mathare in april and the Christmas market is a way to earn the money. I know I’m going to have to work hard at the market, selling food, candy and lottery tickets, so hopefully the board of the Swedish Society will consider my application. I can only hope, write a good application and wait....

Work in progress........

Finished!

Taekwondo 30/10

This Taekwondo class was a different story from the last one! We practiced kicks and did a lot of sparring. A friend from Sweden with a black belt in Karate was visiting, so he joined us. We all got a little carried away so my sister put on all of her protective gear. I really had to strain myself to just mark the kicks and not kick her for real! We had a lot of fun and were sweating buckets! I also had a very enlightened  talk with Max about self control. In Taekwondo, you have to keep really cool and strategic when fighting. If you get angry, you'll just lose the game - because you have to be "one step ahead" of your opponent and really plan your attacks. At the same time, the moves, kicks and punches should really be in the back of your head all the time and be executed without even thinking. This is why every kick has to be practiced so many times and even if you're a black belt, you'll still have to practice even the most basic kicks!