New Year and new emotions in Kampersrus
We have done it. We have reached Year 2 in Kampersrus. It has been fascinating looking back on this time last year. Observing myself with a bit of objectivity and distance.
Back to school last year was stressful beyond what I was prepared to admit. I fought back tears in the opening assembly, watching confusion on Charlie’s face. This year he sailed past me up the aisle with a casual wave and has been nothing but smiles.
Trying to figure out what books were needed by who and for what subject. Should they be covered? Labelled? No clue. I did both. Some were sent back and replaced with school-supplied (identical) books. Others were recovered and relabelled. Couldn’t have told you why.
Subject abbreviations in Afrikaans all looked like “WTF” to me.
The school whatsapp groups where exhausting to understand, so I mostly skim-read and decided to go back to them “tonight”. I did not go back.
Everything was hard.
This year, I bought two less of everything on the stationery list, but somehow I still have EIGHT EXTRA white board markers (???). I hand-wrote names on the brown covers of books, popped plastic covers on, replaced a few pens, colouring pencils and was done in 30min. This was a breeze, but somewhat disappointing for the Netflix session I planned to match my anticipated hours of stationary admin.
January birthdays bite and we have two of them. Gone are the days of combined parties and when I found out that I had been over-ruled on hosting them ANYWHERE but at home, I did take a (few) moments to breathe into a brown paper bag. Despite my worries about “What if it rains”, our house is too tiny, and what will the kids do, they were a roaring success! To parents, this equates to the weather being perfect (two weekends in a row in January in Boreno is unheard-of and possibly the strongest evidence for the onset of El Niño), kids having a jol and adults being relaxed enough to sit back and toast our efforts with a chilled glass of wine. To kids, this equates to an over-abundance of sweets and fizzy drinks and forts being built in the forest. *Reports of multiple trees being cut down in the process were verified as exaggerated.
Speaking of roaring, an emergency notice came via the school from Farmwatch a week or two back. Apparently, escapee lions from the nearby reserve were NOT located by “die manne” and extreme vigilance was needed in Kampersrus and in the vicinity of The Gym. I did not know this when I sauntered out of The Gym on my own that morning, but when I did read the notice, my watch auto-started a second Cardio Training session, based on heart rate alone!
I have instructed the dogs to be on high alert and the kids to put their fort-building up in the forest on hold for a while, despite their protests that they will “take down the lions with their axe”. Harry Woulhuter much??
Meanwhile, just thinking about going to the gym gives me sweaty palms. I think I’ll skip it this week. Running isn’t looking likely either…