The post continues to be a bit erratic here but at least things seem to be getting through. We’ve spoken to our line manager again about it and college seem to be sending someone daily to check – well they have for the last few days anyhow! This morning we got three editions of the Guardian weekly - March 10, 17 and 31^st. The inbetween one we got last week! Hopefully it will settle down and they will come weekly? Mike got the DVD he ordered thro Amazon – seemed to take over a month so we think the man who collects the post at college has sat on this stuff for a while – apparently he’d had an accident and that was why no-one had collected the post. Post takes on huge importance for us here. Today I also got a slip asking me to go to the Post Office to collect a parcel – real excitement. It was the promised minty smelling parcel from Helen – now we have more variety in our teabag collection – that should keep us going for a while. Also got a birthday card from mum – a bit mean I thought as it had pictures of chocolates on the front!!!

Had a great birthday do – I thought that since people don’t have much money here it would be good to do a meal for everyone so we asked Fiona’s maid Almos if she would prepare food for 15. I invited the dean and vice deans from college, the other VSO’s and Fasil, our landlord, and his family. Almos did enough food to feed about 50 people I think – it was lovely if a bit over the top. It seems to be the way it works here – I guess not having enough food is a sign of poverty so people go to the other extreme. We gave loads of left-overs to Fasil and to Almos so I think we’ve fed two families for a day or two. Anyway I ended up feeling really bad as everyone brought presents – adopting our English tradition. I got a gorgeous Ethiopian bag and scarf from the dean, a t-shirt with the Amharic alphabet on from our line manager, another Ethiopian scarf, cakes, chocolate and a garlic press from the others – I wasn’t expecting anything. Another thing I have to confess – it seems you can get birthday cards here - I was presented with several, very flowery birthday cards. So grovelling apologies to mum!

My Higher Diploma group did some of their microteaching the other day – they were brilliant! They’d had a week or so to prepare a ten minute teaching activity using an active learning method either individually or in small groups. For me one of the most successful methods was Jigsaw groups – you divide your group/class into groups of 4 or 5 and give each group a different topic or part of a topic to read about, becoming experts in that area. Then you form new groups with one person from each of the original groups and each person has to “teach” their topic to the rest of the group. We were given a chemistry topic to work on and it really made my brain work – trying to understand the information in order to be able to share it later. I had to sit and mark a pile of their work today – normally something I would find tedious but it is quite inspirational really. Candidates are working in English, which for some of them might be a third or fourth language and you will remember that very few of them actually wanted to be teachers – however, they are all really enthusiastic about what they are doing, trying out new methods and reflecting critically on their practice. It is very humbling to work with them.

First slightly dodgy gut problem today so I stayed home this morning – phone calls from the Dean and vice dean to check I was ok! They are looking after us so well.

Things are grinding to a halt at college – very few students in today. This weekend is Easter so Friday is a public holiday and the college is closed – but just for the long weekend. We are struggling to understand it – there are no students and they don’t expect most of them back till next Wednesday. A lot of the staff have also said they won’t be there Thursday or Monday. Why don’t the college just declare those two days as holidays too? Easter is the biggest holiday here I think and everybody goes home – journeys that could take 2 days so it would make sense to have a long holiday.

Power has gone off for the third time today so I am writing by candlelight and battery power....