In the UK, 'back to school' means endless George at Asda adverts promoting their easy iron shirts on the telly. But when February the 3rd came, we knew it was back to school for us by the return of the screaming children outside our window and half past 7 in the morning.

Last term, myself and my partner Roberta mainly worked in the nursery class. Although we absolutely loved that, teaching the numbers 1 to 5 wasn't what we wanted to carry on doing for the rest of the year. So this term we have thrown ourselves into teaching at Ryabirengye Primary School.
In Uganda, where a pupil is at in their education is not down to their age but instead their knowledge. So even though we are only teaching two classes, P5 and P6, the ages of the children that we teach goes from 10 to 16. We only have about 13 students in each of our groups, but we find this better than the usual 60-70 because we are starting to build a really good relationship with our pupils and know what each of them are like and who needs the extra help.
I absolutely love teaching and I find it very rewarding when we notice how a pupil is developing and becoming better. Although the majority of the children are a delight to teach, we do have a few... how can I put this nicely... mischievous pupils in our class who make me feel sorry for my past teachers when I was playing up! But now we have introduced a reward chart into our lessons, and at the end of term the student with the most points will get a prize. This has worked amazingly and it is so nice seeing their faces brighten when they get a point, and pretty funny how moody they get when we deduct one (Roberta normally is the one who does that though, I'm the nice teacher!)
A few days after school I also do one-to-one extra reading lessons with some of the students who are struggling the most. This is really good as it is nice to just sit down in a quiet area with the pupil and read a book, as well as see their progress over time.
When we are not teaching through the week, we are busy lesson planning and trying to create fun activities for our classes so it can be a change from the usual copying off the board that seems to be common in Ugandan schools.
We've even had teachers complimenting us saying that "you are doing a really great job, we are very thankful and so are the parents", which was of course lovely to hear!

In other areas of my life; a few weeks ago we were cooking our usual Sunday roast without the roast when Roberta said "imagine doing this on a charcoal stove", surprise surprise what happened? The gas ran out in the middle of cooking. But six months (six months!) in Uganda has made us into little practical beings and I ran out to buy some charcoal to carry on cooking on the babula. Three weeks later, we still have no gas so are still using the charcoal stove to cook on which is about the size of a small pan. But this time it really isn't bothering me and I find it so cathartic sitting out on our verandah, which overlooks the village, with a mug of hot chocolate and the charcoal stove burning. It is definitely something I will miss when I go home.
However, just like last time, now our gas has run out so has our water, which is much more annoying. For the past few weeks we have been doing everything that is water-based out of two jerry cans. Which is a lot harder than it seems, water is used for everything, trust me! I will definitely appreciate a running tap when I'm back in England.

Other than that, life in Uganda is perfectly dandy for me right now. I am over the half way point and time is going by nice and smoothly. We are living with a woman called Charlotte from London who is lovely and always complimenting our cooking, which six months ago had never happened, I am enjoying teaching more than ever and my sister is coming out to visit me in just under two weeks! Perfect.