Monday, September 8, 2014

Letter to Richard - 8 September 2014

Dear Richard

Wow, September already… this year really is going fast, but then you know that ;) And I survived a crazy week last week! I final finished all of the public sector material that has been hanging over me for the whole year, and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve put together. I also finished all of the first year marking that keep me very busy! What complicated the week a bit more was that I got a tummy bug, so I took a bit of time off on Tuesday afternoon. It’s the second time in a month that I’ve been sick enough that I actually took time off work. That’s just not something I do! But as one of my colleagues pointed out, I am pretty stressed at the moment, so I guess it’s not that surprising… But it was thankfully just a 24 hour bug, and no one else in the family really got it!

On Thursday I did that CPD course for the engineering faculty that I was working on previously. It was a marathon session! I was teaching from 10:30 in the morning until 17:30, with only a lunch break where I ran off to another meeting and then a tea break where I did some marking… But the feedback was positive! I had had only a short brief on what to include, but the guy running it said that I gave exactly what was needed, and the participants enjoyed it :) One of them came to me during the one break and said that either he missed the point when he was doing accounting at school, or the teacher didn’t know it, but he hadn’t got the big picture of how a business actually works and how the accounting, and more specifically the reporting, fit into it. And that’s the kind of thing that I was hoping to achieve, so it felt good :) They are planning on repeating the course a few times each year going forward, including in Joburg, so I’ll get to be involved again, and then it will just be presenting, and refreshing my memory, rather than all of the work I put in this time to prepare :)

On Friday it was grandparents day at the school, and the 4 cousins had all 6 of their grandparents there! The Powries et al invaded! But it was so bizarre, because Dane’s mom (Dane being Josh’s best friend, and we got his parents to have one missionary discussion last year) phoned me just after it started saying that she saw her aunt there when she was dropping off her parents… She had known that her cousin had moved to Bothasig a while ago, but hasn’t seen him in years, so didn’t know any details, but it turns out that Rohan is her cousin! Wow! It really is crazy how small the world is ;) So Josh and Dane are kind of cousins now, because Amy and Dane and cousins ;) And the Lord is putting lots of members of the Church in the way of this family! But we’ll just keep up the friendship, and see when they’re ready to take it further again…

As our 10th wedding anniversary present to ourselves we recently bought a gas braai, when we saw it on a really good special. It took us 2 hours to set it all up on Friday night! And we’re still needing to get the gas bottle and a cover, and a couple other things, but we’re excited ;) But I will be happy if I don’t have to set up a braai like that again!

Yesterday afternoon Andrew got back really late from church, but while Caleb had his afternoon sleep Josh and Hannah and I played Lego. They are both getting so good at building stuff! Josh is very creative, and he’s good at following the instructions, but he loves just creating things. But I think Hannah is more like me, where she likes to follow the instructions and has the sense of accomplishment from doing it right. She’s come a long way since the last time I did it with her though. And she’s so proud of herself for being able to build the stuff!

So a crazy busy week, and this week ahead is also going to be pretty crazy, but then there should be a brief lull, I hope!

Love you lots :)

Shelly

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