LEAF-go-VSO
Our House
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Our House |
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Welcome to
Freda and Edie will take you on a brief tour of our flat in the Leaders' Block within the grounds of the campus (see Satellite Images page for the view from above!). First of all, here are the girls relaxing in our bright and airy living room. To the left, in the other half of the room, is the front door, our shoe rack and a wee semi-broken chest-of-drawers full of hats and bags! For some reason we don't spend a lot of time here. Most of the playing goes on in the Home School/play mat area in the central hallway and when Ali and I have time to relax it usually involves flaking out on our bed with Freda and Edie sandwiched in between reading books or writing letters! On the right is the 'flaking out' room. The bedside cupboards were full of cockroaches when we inherited them from a previous volunteer at the college. It's taken me 3 months to use the cupboard and to open the door without having a dustpan and brush ready...
This is our kitchen (below). Splashing water certainly isn't a problem in here - unless it's onto the sockets of course, which already send out a few sparks every now and again. We cook all of our food on the white hot plate in the left of the picture (using the wok mostly), especially since I set the microwave on fire trying to grill a scone-type-bun. Along the right hand wall (just out of the picture) we have a food cupboard, sterilizer (for dishes, cutlery etc), fridge-freezer and drinking water dispenser.
These are the views from the kitchen windows: Firstly, the view north-west (across the running track - very handy!) and secondly the view east (to the other accommodation blocks). From the kitchen we can also see part of the playground where we observe morning and evening exercises of varying sorts: the usual basketball, volleyball and badminton as well as tai chi and walking backwards. This is our central hall way looking towards our wee dining room, which leads through to the kitchen to the right ...
... and these are Freda's (left) and Edie's (right) bedrooms. What luxury having a room each! In Scotland they kept each other awake at night and one woke the other in the morning. These days they each get about as much sleep as they need and have separate 'quiet time' (usually a nap for Edie and reading for Freda) in the afternoon. Despite having separate rooms Freda and Edie are devoted play mates and share toys and storage space. We have wood floors in the bedrooms, elsewhere is tiled.
The tour of the house wouldn't be complete, however, without pictures from the loo! I think these pictures speak for themselves. The only important items you can't see are the automatic top-loading washing machine (what a surprise that was!!!) and the shower pipe with water from the solar powered tank. We have a couple of days a month with no hot water due to all-day cloud cover!
Oh, and we're fortunate enough to have a study with a phone and computer. This is one of the most used rooms in the house - Home School, lesson-planning, first aid treatment and keeping in touch with the outside world. See below for some Home School related archive diary entries... Nini's bedroom
Nini is the daughter of our friend Hou Wanxia. Families in China, even the relatively well-off, generally live in very cramped accommodation with very little in the way of furniture (we are very lucky to have so much space in our flat). In the rural villages, children would, more often than not, sleep in the same bed as their parents. There's more affluence in the towns and cities but families still have very little space. Note the heroic posters of Chairman Mao and the proud display of certificates on the wall. Freda won her own prize certificate at nursery recently for being strong, healthy and growing fast (they get measured every so often!). We all had to turn up at a local hospital to collect her prize - a towel made from 65% bamboo fibre and a free photo shoot at a local photographer. Welcome to
September 2006 We are focusing at home on English reading and writing. She is currently enjoying Macmillan R&D Level 1, kindly sent out to us by Alastair's Auntie Christine. She is also tearing through the small supply of Oxford Reading Tree Magic Tree reading books, now on Stage 9. These have included Chinese Adventure, in which the children visit China to replace Granny's cheap broken vase with a Ming Dynasty one! Have you read it? If you come across any secondhand reading books we would REALLY appreciate topping up our supply. We can't get any suitable English reading books here.
Last week's project was building a wooden house (above) for the girls' 'playmobil', using 'roll boards' removed from Freda and Edie's beds. It has two floors, doors, windows and curtains and occupies Freda and Edie so well that we get an extra hour in bed at the weekends. On-going projects include animals (we now have a microscope to look at insects), art and crafts (including book binding, of course), story-writing as well as countries and flags of the world. A friend recently sent us a fabulous world jigsaw and reference book, which we are currently studying. We also make a point of having fun time outside, either with our bikes, badminton rackets or simply to explore.
November 2005 Freda recently helped Lesley illustrate her Chinese homework - a story about a little girl called Mei Xiao Fei. This is the first draft of the short story - limited Chinese vocabulary and complicated characters necessitates being concise!
(1-2) Once there was a little girl who lived in Simao. Her name was Mei Xiao Fei. (3-4) It was holiday time and Mei Xiao Fei was fed up. She went outside. (5-6) She met a little butterfly.
(7-8) The little butterfly asked her: "What's the matter?" Mei Xiao Fei replie: "I don't have any friends. I'm unhappy." (9-10) The little butterfly said: "For me, one day is a lifetime. Our life is short..." (11-12) "... let's play together." ************************************************************************************** September 2005 The home school term has got off to a flying start and our classroom is slowly taking shape. The main school hours are Monday to Friday, 9 am - 11.30 am. There are also additional activities for Freda in the afternoon, while Edie sleeps, such as reading, writing and maths. With only two children in the school, taking the register in the morning is, as you can imagine, very quick! We then sort out the day, date and month as well as the time and weather - choosing the correct cards and pictures on the calendar. Edie is good at doing the weather part. It's usually "cloudy" but later in the day the sun comes out. This is good because it warms up the water for our shower! Our project at the moment is China. The topics include: People, Language, Money, Food and Animals. Studying these is great fun, especially when we go on trips around Simao and into the countryside. After we have been on trips we draw pictures at school and talk about the things that we saw.
Bye from us and we hope to see you again soon!
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