Hi all,
Just a little update of all that's been going on this end...
We have one week to go until the end of Easter term and are looking forward to a wonderful holiday with Rachel's mum and sister showing them around the school, spending a bit of time in Nairobi and also spending a week at the coast in Mombasa after a two day safari in Tsavo national park.
This term's been pretty busy with lots of musical events, busy duty weekends, guide camp and cub camp, but we've almost got through it now. We're looking forward to a very strange school event this week called 'Dinky Safari', for which all the children have made cars that they take around the site, through the swimming pool, teachers' gardens, obstacle courses and mud baths... V surreal but should be fun!
We've finally had our positions confirmed for next year and Dan will become Head of Music and we will become house parents for Junior girls - years 1 - 6. We are looking forward to all of these things, though will be very busy. On top of all of this Dan will also be doing a PGCE international at Nottingham University and Rachel will play a juggling act working at Senior School whilst she should also be at Prep school doing house parent duties... Could be interesting!
Anyway, I think that's our main news for now. We're looking forward to catching up with the Blakeleys in Mombasa over Easter, as well as hopefully swimming with dolphins and resting a LOT!
Hope to catch up with you all soon.
Happy Easter and lots of love,
Rach and Dan xx
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Back to school :o)
Hi all,
Hope you're all well and still enjoying reading our news. School restarted this week for the second half of Easter term, which sounds like it will be action-packed but filled with fun too. We're looking forward to taking 25 of our junior choir (years 3 and 4) on a trip to Nairobi to sing in a music festival in just over a week's time. Rachel will be going on another guide camp, and we are also looking forward to performing in the school's production of 'Toad in the Hole'... a version of 'Wind in the Willows' in a couple of weeks, all before Rachel's mum and sister arrive in about 6 week's time. (Please sort out your injections mum and Marian!)
We've had a wonderful week getting to know Nairobi, being proper tourists in the big city. We visited an elephant orphanage, Karen Blixen coffee gardens and some awesome bead and clothing factories. The highlights really though were going to a Vineyard church where we met some lovely people outside of the school bubble and eating out - a treat we cannot really have here as all the local cafes only serve chapatis and tea...
After that we returned home briefly and headed off to the Mara - 5 hours on roads that you'd probably not consider roads in England... The big hotels refuse to re-do the roads as they make more money if you fly in, which a lot of people do and you see planes landing fairly frequently - pretty cool!
We survived the journey though and had a wonderful time with some friends from school. We saw all the big 5 (elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo) and also 40 hippos - cute but dangerous! We celebrated our friend Jonny's 18th birthday there and loved every minute of the safari.
Now we're back to the real world for a bit but looking forward to this term and all the challenges we have ahead.
Hope you're all well and hope to hear from you soon,
Love Rach and Dan xx
Hope you're all well and still enjoying reading our news. School restarted this week for the second half of Easter term, which sounds like it will be action-packed but filled with fun too. We're looking forward to taking 25 of our junior choir (years 3 and 4) on a trip to Nairobi to sing in a music festival in just over a week's time. Rachel will be going on another guide camp, and we are also looking forward to performing in the school's production of 'Toad in the Hole'... a version of 'Wind in the Willows' in a couple of weeks, all before Rachel's mum and sister arrive in about 6 week's time. (Please sort out your injections mum and Marian!)
We've had a wonderful week getting to know Nairobi, being proper tourists in the big city. We visited an elephant orphanage, Karen Blixen coffee gardens and some awesome bead and clothing factories. The highlights really though were going to a Vineyard church where we met some lovely people outside of the school bubble and eating out - a treat we cannot really have here as all the local cafes only serve chapatis and tea...
After that we returned home briefly and headed off to the Mara - 5 hours on roads that you'd probably not consider roads in England... The big hotels refuse to re-do the roads as they make more money if you fly in, which a lot of people do and you see planes landing fairly frequently - pretty cool!
We survived the journey though and had a wonderful time with some friends from school. We saw all the big 5 (elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo) and also 40 hippos - cute but dangerous! We celebrated our friend Jonny's 18th birthday there and loved every minute of the safari.
Now we're back to the real world for a bit but looking forward to this term and all the challenges we have ahead.
Hope you're all well and hope to hear from you soon,
Love Rach and Dan xx
Friday, 10 February 2012
February's update...
Hey all :)
Hope you're all well. We've had a hectic but rewarding half term, and are starting the break today, looking forward to some rest. The weeks have whizzed by with many many competitions, activities and slightly strange events, but the most important one was the Interhouse Song Competition which our house - 'Elgon' won. We worked pretty hard with the kids - learning harmonies and lots of words and actions, so felt very pleased when our kids won the trophy for best house song. If you want to watch the video it's on Rachel's facebook page for those who have access to that.
We're enjoying the dry season here at school at the moment - no rain since just before Christmas means the school is very dry, a bit dusty, and the grass has all pretty much turned to straw. It gets pretty hot during the days but due to absolutely no clouds in the sky, the moon and stars completely light the sky at night and we've had frost on the ground and car a lot, which is odd when you need to layer up the sun cream during the daytime.
We hope the snow's not been too frustrating for you all in England. I think it's caused a bit of chaos with travel as per normal, but I hope you've stayed safe and cosy in the chilly weather.
So it's half term and we're off to Nairobi for a couple of days to go exploring. We're looking forward to getting to know the capital city a bit more and getting our bearings. On Tuesday we return to school for a day at home before heading to the Masai Mara to (hopefully) see lions! We're going with some other teachers from the school and are really looking forward to seeing another part of Kenya.
Afraid we don't have much more to report other than that we miss you and love hearing from you. Thanks for the prayer support and encouraging words regarding changes to our jobs next year. We should find out in the next month what we'll be doing next year so we'll let you know when we know.
Lots of love and keep in touch
D and R xx
Hope you're all well. We've had a hectic but rewarding half term, and are starting the break today, looking forward to some rest. The weeks have whizzed by with many many competitions, activities and slightly strange events, but the most important one was the Interhouse Song Competition which our house - 'Elgon' won. We worked pretty hard with the kids - learning harmonies and lots of words and actions, so felt very pleased when our kids won the trophy for best house song. If you want to watch the video it's on Rachel's facebook page for those who have access to that.
We're enjoying the dry season here at school at the moment - no rain since just before Christmas means the school is very dry, a bit dusty, and the grass has all pretty much turned to straw. It gets pretty hot during the days but due to absolutely no clouds in the sky, the moon and stars completely light the sky at night and we've had frost on the ground and car a lot, which is odd when you need to layer up the sun cream during the daytime.
We hope the snow's not been too frustrating for you all in England. I think it's caused a bit of chaos with travel as per normal, but I hope you've stayed safe and cosy in the chilly weather.
So it's half term and we're off to Nairobi for a couple of days to go exploring. We're looking forward to getting to know the capital city a bit more and getting our bearings. On Tuesday we return to school for a day at home before heading to the Masai Mara to (hopefully) see lions! We're going with some other teachers from the school and are really looking forward to seeing another part of Kenya.
Afraid we don't have much more to report other than that we miss you and love hearing from you. Thanks for the prayer support and encouraging words regarding changes to our jobs next year. We should find out in the next month what we'll be doing next year so we'll let you know when we know.
Lots of love and keep in touch
D and R xx
Monday, 16 January 2012
Happy New Year
Dear all,
We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying 2012 so far. It was lovely to hear news from some of you over the holiday via skype, email or snail mail. We're very impressed that some post arrived here all the way from the UK and USA... sometimes the postal service really does work!
Anyway, we're back at school after a wonderful time off. We enjoyed visiting our friends Sam and Jonny in Mombasa before they finished their time with 'Education for Life'. We spent 3 days with them in Tsavo National Park, being chased at by elephants, entertained by baboons and warthogs, and sadly seeing as many T-Rexs and we did lions, leopard and cheetahs... We had a fab time there though - the animals really were incredible.
We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying 2012 so far. It was lovely to hear news from some of you over the holiday via skype, email or snail mail. We're very impressed that some post arrived here all the way from the UK and USA... sometimes the postal service really does work!
Anyway, we're back at school after a wonderful time off. We enjoyed visiting our friends Sam and Jonny in Mombasa before they finished their time with 'Education for Life'. We spent 3 days with them in Tsavo National Park, being chased at by elephants, entertained by baboons and warthogs, and sadly seeing as many T-Rexs and we did lions, leopard and cheetahs... We had a fab time there though - the animals really were incredible.
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| Three-headed giraffe?! |
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| The elephant was checking us out, trying to work out how to get rid of us as we were in its way... |
After Tsavo we spent a couple of days around Mombasa. It was really insteresting to see a completely different side to Kenya. Mombasa is HOT! We really aren't used to it at Turi - yes it gets hot but it's dry heat and at night it's pretty cold here. We always need our duvet here and fire on at night but in Mombasa we barely slept due to the unending humidity. We loved exploring there though, and are looking forward to going back to the coast with Rachel's mum and sister in April.
We spent Christmas at school with other members of the staff community here. It was different from normal as lunch was served outside in a marquee, but we had a really special day with friends and felt very blessed to be in such a beautiful place. We enjoyed leading the worship at the staff carol service and on Christmas day, and then eating tasty turkey, roast potatoes and even brussel sprouts (£8 a bag...) with friends.
On Boxing Day, Dan's family arrived and spent 10 days with us, visiting the school, Lake Naivasha and Lake Baringo. We re-did Christmas and then had a wonderful time showing them places we've got to know over the last few months. I think a definite highlight was staying in a hotel where you have to be escorted to dinner and back because hippos graze around the cottages. We got very close to them!
We went to Hell's Gat National Park with them, where we enjoyed a cycle safari and gorge walk. It was pretty hot there though and the cycling on the way back - which was all up-hill - was a bit of a struggle for all of us.
Another highlight of the trip has to be New Year's eve, when we were staying at a tented camp which had a Christian disco... V. surreal seeing people dancing to funked up versions of Christian songs, and our favourits lines from one of the songs has got to be 'Shake that booty that Jesus gave you, Shake it in the name of the Lord...'! Not sure those lyrics are hugely Bible based but it was pretty funny!
On Boxing Day, Dan's family arrived and spent 10 days with us, visiting the school, Lake Naivasha and Lake Baringo. We re-did Christmas and then had a wonderful time showing them places we've got to know over the last few months. I think a definite highlight was staying in a hotel where you have to be escorted to dinner and back because hippos graze around the cottages. We got very close to them!Another highlight of the trip has to be New Year's eve, when we were staying at a tented camp which had a Christian disco... V. surreal seeing people dancing to funked up versions of Christian songs, and our favourits lines from one of the songs has got to be 'Shake that booty that Jesus gave you, Shake it in the name of the Lord...'! Not sure those lyrics are hugely Bible based but it was pretty funny!
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| Have you ever seen so many flamingoes?! |
We're now back at school, having had a fairly intense first week back preparing for house singing, ABRSM exams and re-adjusting to boarding life. Our friends who have been working here for more than a year have had to give in notices of resignation or confirmation of them staying now, which has given us more of an idea of whether our jobs will stay the same or change next year. It'd be lovely to know that people in England are praying for us for wisdom of what to take on next year. We'd like to be house parents but it's pretty full-on, so wisdom would be really helpful...
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A pretty cool African sunset Please let us know how you're doing back in England and across the world. We miss our friends and family lots and would love to hear your news. We're already planning our trip to the UK in the summer so watch this space... God bless and hopefully hear from you soon! Dan and Rach x |
Sunday, 27 November 2011
2 weeks to go...
Hey everyone :)
Sorry we haven't updated this for a while, but here is a little taster of what's been going on in the Jones household over the last month...
Life at school has been very hectic. We've had one weekend off so far since half term, which was pretty awesome really - we went to Lake Naivasha and Hell's Gate national park. We had a wonderful time with some friends exploring the place where Tomb Raider was filmed - pretending to be Lara Croft etc - and also seeing giraffes, zebra and lots of deer. But since then school's been pretty full-on. After Orchestral weekend, we began report writing and since then we have been preparing kids for nativity and Christmas carol services, along with and normal teaching and planning which have kept us very busy. We're feeling a little run down and ready for the holidays, but feel we're really getting to know the kids more now and have got to grips more with the day to day life at the school.
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| Deer running across the road in Hell's Gate. |
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| Climbing in the Rocks at Hell's Gate. |
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| Kind of speaks for itself! |
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| Rachel being a monkey... |
Rachel has just returned from Guide Camp at a farm in Naivasha. It brought back many memories of Duke of Edinburgh as we put up tents in the rain, cooked in the rain, went for walks in the rain, cooked again in the rain, gave children medicine at 5 in the morning (in the rain) and wore damp clothes for 24 hours. The girls had a good time though and it wasn't all bad as we were entertained by monkeys, zebra, waterbuck, wildebeest and giraffes roaming wild on the campsite. Rachel's finally learnt the names of all 56 guides now and had a great time chatting and giggling with them.
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| Still smiling after a very wet weekend... |
Dan's been put forward as head of Elgon house and head of the club committee, starting in September. Elgon is the name of the house we're in (all are mountains with the others being Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Ruwenzori). He'll have to organise inter-house competitions such as swimming, music, athletics and other stuff. It's encouraging that he's already being put forward for more authoritative positions. Head of club committee means he has to organise the events for staff on Friday nights. It's where staff let their hair down a bit and catch up. So far we've had a Bollywood themed night, pub games, a jazz night and a pub quiz, but if you have any suggestions pass them this way!
So there's 2 weeks left before term finish, and we're gonna keep ploughing on til the end, with lots to look forward to over the Christmas hols. We're going straight to the coast - Mombasa - to visit Jonny Shaw and Sam Boyes from Dan's church in Nottingham. Spending a week down there on the beach and then on safari in Tsavo National Park. Then back to school for a slightly different Christmas from usual with other staff, eating together and then probs playing ultimate frisbee in the sun or something. Dan's family arrive on 26th and then we're off exploring with them.
We're sad not to be returning to England this Christmas but feel it's too soon and too expensive to do so right now. We have, however, booked our flights for next summer so would love to catch up with as many of you as possible in July and August next year. We'll let you know dates nearer the time but really looking forward to a trip home to see you all.
It'd be great to catch up with people over the Christmas hols though too. We have quite a few free days so will try to keep Skype on and see if we can catch people, and it'd be lovely to hear from you via email or facebook too.
Well that's all for now. We'll aim to update again in the week before Christmas but sending lots of love and warm wishes at Christmas time. Hope you have a fab festive season.
With love,
Rach and Dan xxx
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Back on home soil...
We've just returned home from all our travels and wanted to put up a couple of photos to give you a taste of our half term break. If you want to see more and have facebook, they're on Rachel's facebook page... Sorry is takes loads longer to upload them here! Enjoy
We finished our holiday with some friends on a private island at Lake Baringo called Samatian and it was paradise...
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Uganda
Dear all,
Hope you're all doing well. Thank you for all the lovely messages you have been sending us on facebook and email etc, they are much appreciated. We will certainly respond to them all soon but for now here's a little flavour for what's been going on in east africa...
We are currently in Jinja, Uganda, enjoying the half term break with Rachel's friend from school and Manchester, Nic Samson. We have been exploring the area going to a local rainforest, exploring the source of the nile, looking at monkeys, swimming in a beautiful hotel pool with in-pool bar (a favourite of dan's...) and today an epic white-water-rafting adventure on the nile. It was an incredible, adrenaline-fuelled experience and we will add some photos to the blog and facebook soon. It was particularly scary given that one of the guys we are staying with dislocated his arm doing the same activity just 2 days before but it didn't deter us and we live to tell the tale with nothing more than sunburn as injuries.
For the rest of half term. Tomorrow we will visit and teach a music lesson at the charity which nic heads up called S.A.L.V.E. International before the gruelling 10 hour coach journey back to nakuru on thursday. Then we are going to stay with friends for a few days in nakuru before staying on Samatian on saturday night; a private island on lake baringo we have hired with some of our friends-paradise :-) Then on sunday we head back to school to catch our breath before starting school again on monday morning!
We have had the most amazing start to the academic year; the kids are fab and we're loving the teaching. We made it through an OFSTED - style inspection, without either of us being observed, and the inspectors we're very pleased with the school (partly because they were flown to Kenya from England, wined and dined in beautiful sunshine and then headed home...). A particular favouite of ours is the bible study we run in our house which is such fun and the kids really love, praise the lord. There was nearly a riot when the study had to be cancelled on thursday because of another school event! It's really exciting to see the children grow in their faith, and we have built some deeper relationships with members of staff, who encourage us in our faith.
We would love to hear from you all, it's so nice to hear of all your stories from home, we miss our friends a lot :-(
Sending lots of love to you all,
Dan and Rach xx
Hope you're all doing well. Thank you for all the lovely messages you have been sending us on facebook and email etc, they are much appreciated. We will certainly respond to them all soon but for now here's a little flavour for what's been going on in east africa...
We are currently in Jinja, Uganda, enjoying the half term break with Rachel's friend from school and Manchester, Nic Samson. We have been exploring the area going to a local rainforest, exploring the source of the nile, looking at monkeys, swimming in a beautiful hotel pool with in-pool bar (a favourite of dan's...) and today an epic white-water-rafting adventure on the nile. It was an incredible, adrenaline-fuelled experience and we will add some photos to the blog and facebook soon. It was particularly scary given that one of the guys we are staying with dislocated his arm doing the same activity just 2 days before but it didn't deter us and we live to tell the tale with nothing more than sunburn as injuries.
For the rest of half term. Tomorrow we will visit and teach a music lesson at the charity which nic heads up called S.A.L.V.E. International before the gruelling 10 hour coach journey back to nakuru on thursday. Then we are going to stay with friends for a few days in nakuru before staying on Samatian on saturday night; a private island on lake baringo we have hired with some of our friends-paradise :-) Then on sunday we head back to school to catch our breath before starting school again on monday morning!
We have had the most amazing start to the academic year; the kids are fab and we're loving the teaching. We made it through an OFSTED - style inspection, without either of us being observed, and the inspectors we're very pleased with the school (partly because they were flown to Kenya from England, wined and dined in beautiful sunshine and then headed home...). A particular favouite of ours is the bible study we run in our house which is such fun and the kids really love, praise the lord. There was nearly a riot when the study had to be cancelled on thursday because of another school event! It's really exciting to see the children grow in their faith, and we have built some deeper relationships with members of staff, who encourage us in our faith.
We would love to hear from you all, it's so nice to hear of all your stories from home, we miss our friends a lot :-(
Sending lots of love to you all,
Dan and Rach xx
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