Today marked the last week of school at Safisha. This week, the kids will sit exams from Tuesday to (most likely) Thursday. We all went to school and helped the kids revise some old exam papers. Calvin spent most of the time in the Year 1, 2, 3, 4 classroom and Kate spent most of the time in the nursery and babies class. In Calvin's classroom, Teacher William asked one of the students what '2016' was in Kiswahili - he didn't know so Teacher William asked all the kids the same question - no one got it right. Punishment was - frog jump holding their ears around the school yard for 5 minutes and then go in to all the other classes so the other students could sing "Shame shame shame on you, look look look at you, po po po po po po po". In Kate's class, she had to draw some pictures on the blackboard (but needed to bring in her husband to help draw a picture that resembled a car) but most of the time was spent marking the kids work and explaining how to get to the correct answer. How it works in the young class is they get work on the blackboard (eg. writing letters, drawing pictures, basic addition) and then they have to complete it all silently in their workbooks. When they have finished their work, they bring it to the teacher / volunteers to correct and explain.  The kids start school at 7:30 but the volunteers don't get there until about 9:30 so for the first 2 hours, there is 1 teacher responsible for all 38 kids spread across 4 classrooms. So the kids (even the youngest ones) teach themselves a lot. When we arrive at the school, the youngest ones are always eciting the alphabet taking turns to use the pointer to teach the rest of the class all the letters (e.g a is for apple, b is for ball, m is for mango). If the rest of the class stop repeating the answers, it is common to see the child with the pointer stick slam it down on the table to encourage classroom participation! Glad we went to school in Australia. If anyone wants to know the answer, it's "elfu mbili kumi na sita" - just in case Teacher William asks you. Lunch time games involved origami, skipping, chase, pebble games, high fives, lots of throwing kids in the air and kids tackling each other. School finished early today as exams are starting tomorrow at 0830 sharp. Before they left school, Teacher Mary and William gave them all a pep talk basically saying "Go home, don't play, study hard." If these kids don't pass the exams, they will have to repeat a year. All the volunteers got to give a pep talk too! Two new volunteers started today - from the USA - Jade and her 8-year old daughter Jayla. They arrived at the house just before we got home.  In the afternoon, most of us went to Greenspan mall (about 15 min walk away). Some wanted to print photos, some wanted to eat Chicken Inn (like KFC but not as good), and Calvin wanted to get his hair cut. Calvin was little bit nervous - most of the barbers really only deal with African hair and mostly use buzzers - also Calvin's hair is quite difficult to cut due to his odd shaped skull and receding hairline. It was definitely the oddest hair cut he's ever had, mostly done with a buzzer but Calvin did ask the barber to use some scissors so that fixed it up a little bit (even though he didn't look all that confident with scissors). Then he got a hair wash, head and shoulder massage and face wash included in the price of $5! Looked alright too! And Calvin and Batuh had Chicken Inn afterwards. The super moon was a bit hard to see with all the pollution and cloud but we did see it on the walk back home - iPhone camera didn't really work the best.