Covered in ice cream!

Hello again! I’m sorry I didn’t get chance to write an update last week, the school found out on Friday afternoon that the government were coming in to inspect on Monday, so the time I would usually spend writing my blog was spent deep cleaning the kitchen and organising the sports cupboard.

Since my last blog, we have had two fantastic cooking classes with the pupils. In the first one we made ice cream the old fashioned way of mixing ice and salt in a container around the cream. This was inspired by our visit to Usaquen (mentioned in my last blog) where we saw some people doing this in metal bowls. We adapted this slightly to use 2 sizes of zip lock bags. Our test went really well with just plain vanilla ice cream so we decided to add some flavourings. Unfortunately this dramtically slowed down the freezing process so the first class didn’t get to eat theirs until the end of the day after we had put it in the freezer. From then on we went back to plain vanilla and let them add flavourings like fruit pulp (super common here – it’s sorta their version of squash) or crushed biscuits at the end, like a sundae. The kids loved doing this, although some of them were surprised it was cold and one person even tried to put it in the microwave! We didn’t quite understand this, because ice cream is fairly common in Bogotá so it’s not like they’ve never seen it before… Most weeks we seem to be covered in flour from our cooking lesson, so we figured ice cream would be less messy. We forgot that ice melts, and a couple of people managed to split their bags, so not only was there a mini flood at the end of the lesson, we were also completely covered in cream and salt. Being covered in cream or flour does make a difference from being covered in cement in Tanzania!

In our other cooking lesson we made mini scones with them, and gave them the choice of raisins or cheese to flavour them with. It was roughly a 50/50 mix as to which flavour they chose, but everyone put jam and cream on the top, regardless of the underlying flavour. Cheese is often combined with a type of guava jam called bocadillo or put into hot chocolate (both of which I have tried this last week), so I’m not entirely sure the Colombian’s have worked out that cheese is savoury!

The teachers at the school kept telling us how jealous they were of the kids’ cooking lessons, so we organised an after school lesson for them 2 weeks ago, in which we made a Bakewell tart and mini egg custards. They absolutely loved it, and it brought out their inner child – I think more flour was thrown in this lesson than any lesson with the students! It was definitely an unforgettable lesson, as half way through the Bogotá weather hit and a very heavy hailstorm followed by torrential rain led to the upstairs of the school flooding, so we had to pause our lesson to go and sweep out water for about an hour!! This week they repaid the favour and taught us how to make empanadas (the Colombian version of a Cornish pasty) and a layered dessert of biscuits and a creamy lime filling. Delicious!

We also had a day of incredibly successful music lessons two weeks ago. Patti, the director of the school, wanted us to try and increase their awareness of vibrations, so we used this as our focus for the lesson. Due to one thing and another, we had no lesson plan 5 minutes before our first lesson, and we just prayed for inspiration, and God told us to stop worrying and that we would be given the ideas as and when we needed them. Which he did! We started our first lesson and the ideas just came and it went so well. We used the bass drum with some rice on so they could see the vibrations and sat them round it so they could all touch it and feel it. We then made them take their hands off the drum and see if they could feel it through the floor, which they could. A lot of the advice we were given/found said that it’s best if they take their shoes off, but here in Bogotá they think you will get sick if you don't have shoes on, so that didn't work for us. They were really good at remembering where they had felt vibrations before and telling us what made those vibrations. It was a great lesson, they were really engaged and we learnt a lot too.

Another special lesson we did this week was a social studies class with grades 10 and 11. We spoke to them for about an hour on life in Britain, what our home cities/village look like, what some British traditions are etc. and then they had so many questions to ask that it continued for at least another 45 minutes. They were so interested to find out about Britain. They learn a lot about America here, but not so much about the UK. They were fascinated by the loch ness monster, and they couldn't get over the fact some people might eat pheasant from time to time, but to them it's perfectly normal to eat guinea pig!

The school inspectors were meant to come on Monday, hence why we had spent Friday night tidying some rooms. They phoned up on Monday to say they couldn't come and eventually turned up on Thursday for a grand total of 8 minutes... Patti seems to think it went well, so we are all just praying for the license to come through in the week after Easter.

In our weekends we have done a variety of things. We went to see Bogota club, Millionares play football at their home stadium which is just round the corner from us. The atmosphere as great, we won 4-0 and Josh really enjoyed having something more manly to do (He is very good at putting up with us three girls!!). On that Sunday we stayed at the pesian restaurant where church is held for a delicious lunch after the service. The following weekend we met up with all the other Latin Link missionaries in Bogota and went into the centre of town. There was an amazing carnival going on, and the costumes of all the percussion ensembles made me think that SYPE (Shropshire Youth Percussion Ensemble) never tried hard enough with our outfits! We then went up the Colpatria tower, which is the tallest building in Bogota and has a spetacular viewing platform at the top where you can look out over the city and the surrounding mountains. We finished the day enjoying a lovely tea in an amazing Colombian cafe. On the Sunday we went to church, enjoyed a lunch together at Crepes & Waffles (this really needs to be introduced back home...) and then Felipe, one of Abi's friends, came over to give us a salsa dance lesson. Although I was very self concious at first, it turned out to be a lot of fun! This weekend just gone we had a very relaxed couple of days. We spent Saturday wandering around the centre of Bogota, exploring the artisan markets (where I bought Mum's birthday present - ooh look she's all excited now!!!)  and on Sunday we went horse riding up in the mountains around Bogota. It was great fun but I was minorly terrified the whole time. I had a stroppy horse who didn't want to do anything she was told, would try and bite any horse that got too near, and would stop to eat whenever it fancied. But the scenery was awseome and it was a cool way to see it. This week is Semana Santa (holy week) so there are no kids in school. We are going to use this time for some planning, to visit some of the other Latin Link projects in Bogota and also to relax and rest after a very busy few weeks.

Sorry this has been so long! As usual, Blipfoto has been updated, and I've now added a link at the top of this page :)

Prayer requests:

• Team Health - Josh has had a bad stomach bug and is just finishing his antibiotics, so prayer that he would make a full recovery quickly would be great. I've also been very tired recently, so prayers for energy would be fab!
• School License - pray that this would come through and the government wouldn't keep dragging their heels over this
• Final few weeks here - pray that goodbyes wouldn't be too difficult and that we wouldn't be to apprehensive about moving to Santa Marta.