Tuesday, February 11
Home, 18:50
Today was my first day of teaching. Naa and I got up at 7:00, concluded we needed ten more minutes to get two people out of the house in time, and caught a (much) later bus that we intended.
I met the first year for the first time in the morning and we finally began the XML Foundations course. Everyone was attentive and the session passed smoothly. I had the first block set up on Its Learning and nobody was more confused than usual.
Lunch was uunimakkara, which I love. The sauce and the endless mashed potato make it like being a child again.
I spent the afternoon in the second session of the Social Gaming course. This was slightly trickier. Jutta had led them last week in a session of Twister, Uno and Alias. I explained for forty minutes about ways in which we could categorise games and then showed them Dead Simple RPGs. I had printed out the one-page sheets of rules, game master hints, and the background to the first adventure. The class divided into teams and each team went off to do action research. Their task was to play the game for at least ninety minutes, think about it and write it up. I will see the results on Friday.
Now I am home, where Irma has been taking flowers that are wilting and arranging them in bowls of water. This one is being used by Sunshine as a drinking bowl. We are not sure whether the flowers are flavouring the water, or whether it is just finding a big bowl of water in the living room irresistible.
I will have a shower and go to bed early. I have been waking up at 2:00 or 3:00 and finding it difficult to go back to sleep. Tonight I will attack the problem from the other end.