My first lesson

Greetings and salutations!

Since I last wrote on this blog, so much has happened... last Friday I taught my first maths lesson at Lords Meade which was TERRIFYING!!! Patrick, the official teacher for the class, left immediately, leaving me to quickly decide how on earth I was going to educate and entertain 80 expectant faces for the next hour and 20 minutes! They all call me "teacha" and "suh" which is very strange, seeing as I only just finished my A-Levels last summer, and I still consider myself to be a student. I'm very glad I decided to teach the Senior 2 because I think I would've had a heart attack if I had to teach Integration to the A-Level candidates... I'm actually doing homework myself to try and brush up on all the topics I've completely forgotten! How bad is that? Or good, whichever way you look at it. I'm looking at these things in the long term, so hopefully by the time I get home I'll be pretty tight with my maths again... all in due time so that I can forget it before I go to Oxford in October!

So... after the completely petrifying experience of teaching, I was READY to hit the weekend. Friday evening we were invited to a "dinner party"... at a local primary school. It was hilarious; the Ugandans never pass up a single opportunity to make lengthy speeches, and lo and behold halfway through my posho and beans there was a ringing of a bell and... It was an interesting party, to say the least. We moved on to town afterwards, straight to the "Nile View Casino". Joe immediately lost 30,000 shillings on the roulette table, a wound which Dom rubbed salt into by doubling his winnings in just 2 deft bets. I abstained, but the poker tables were very alluring and I'm sure we'll be back before long! The rest of the night was spent in a nightclub renowned for it's cheesy 80s choices... it's reputation certainly held true, and there were some quite embarrassing moves pulled by many of us to Madonna's "Like A Prayer". What goes in uganda... well, probably has been documented and will soon turn up on facebook!

In other news... Thursday I played rugby for the first time in my life, training with a team who are actually part of the Ugandan Premier League!!! Or "Guiness Super 8" as I think they call it. I scored a try, which was an ACHIEVEMENT, but bottled it when they started playing contact because of my specs. The fact that there was a mexican guy who looked like he could eat me in one bite and have room for dessert did also bear some influence over that decision... On saturday we went and watched our team get slaughtered 33-7, apparently not too bad for the "Jinja Niles" as they call themselves. They were playing the "Kampala Kobs", which I personally found hilarious, as I believe a kob is either a male swan... or a particular type of sandwich. In celebration (???) we went and watched the England Wales match at a local restaurant, where I had the lushest dish on the menu: chicken coconut curry - highly recommended. After gorging ourselves we went out to celebrate an actual victory by our boys back home at Twickenham - somehow we landed up at a party with a live white band, with almost exclusively white guests, all drinking stereotypically white drinks. It was completely uncanny! I'm going to have to wrap this up now as Sophie and I are getting quite hungry, but we basically had a great weekend.

Tomorrow is going to be the first day of LMVC choir, and this afternoon we have to give a speech in front of the entire school! Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrgghghghghghghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! WISH US LUCK

Yours truly,

Miles