Arwen in Gasa: Football and Kookaburras

Happy T’eo’s birthday for yesterday! I celebrated the day by doing a listening activity with my year 7s on a My Little Pony episode which had Spike as the main character which they thoroughly enjoyed. Or, at least, almost thoroughly because they still had to answer questions on it. My year 6s sang Happy Birthday as loudly as they could to try and make sure that he heard them. I’m sure the classes around us greatly appreciated that. Since I had to cancel my p.e. lesson with them on Friday, I taught them two games which were both called ‘cat and mouse’ but I re-named to be ‘dragon and pony’ and ‘dragontrap’ making it very clear that the dragons were doing the trapping, not being trapped. The first game was the one where most of the kids hold hands in a circle and let the mouse or pony through but try and stop the cat or dragon. T’eo should be pleased to hear that the dragon got the pony every time. The other was another tag game which the kids didn’t quite understand or play properly but they still had fun running round and making up rules as they went along. Perhaps I could start a Calvinball tournament.

I couldn’t quite manage a cake so instead I had a woolworth’s Christmas pudding given to me by Mark LaPrarie. It wasn’t exactly Delia Smith but wasn’t too bad and I didn’t even burn myself getting it out of the container after boiling it. I refrained from lighting it with methylated spirits though. I hope Bill doesn’t mind (See The Big Six).

One of my students even gave me a gift which I’m sorry to say, I couldn’t quite keep. One of my year 8s came and told me, ‘There’s one like a kookaburra in the class!’ I assumed a bird had flown into the classroom and was probably surrounded by shrieking students. However, this was not the case. One of my students had caught a bird the day before and thought I might like it as a pet. I would like to take this opportunity to say that the bird in question was not injured in any way. It was a very beautiful bird, which really didn't look like a kookaburra, and I thanked my student very much but explained that wild animals would be unhappy as pets and it would be nicer to let the little guy go. Fortunately, he seemed to understand and did not appear unhappy or insulted. I carried the little guy back to Samdinkha in its improvised carry case (a cardboard Druk lager box) so I could let it go near where it was found. I’m not sure was species it is but it stuck out a very long tongue and kept pecking at the box so my wild guess is some sort of relative of the woodpecker. For now I’m calling it a geleytenzini in honour of its finder.

Awwwww! I would like to stress that I washed my hands very carefully after the little one flew away.

The final thing I have to report is that the boys' football is over. Sadly, Raven House lost the crown (which is a bit of a pun if you know about the Bhutanese kings) and came fourth but still played very well. Cypress House was victorious and I continued my tradition of taking photos of people’s backs and ones that would be fine if they just weren’t so blurry. Perhaps Pete and Dick could give me lessons (The Big Six once again).