TLC Week 3 – Homework!!!

Saturday

Last Saturday we had a nice day off going to The Glen shopping mall. We watched Tron at the cinema and had some tasty seafood at a restaurant called Ocean Basket.

Sunday

On Sunday I turned into technical support and fixed the internet on Pippa’s laptop. I was also taken in the car by Ruel, one of the older boys, who showed me some of the roads and commonly driven routes (e.g school runs) nearby. Josh and Ruel are both 17 and turn 18 soon. They both know how to drive really well but require an adult with them until they pass their driving test when they turn 18.
It turns out I’d be doing a bit of driving this week hence why Ruel showed me the routes.

Heidi had a far more productive day. As well as looking after the Tigers on her own she also managed getting lots of the children involved in creating a welcome banner for a family who was coming to stay at the house for a month. The German family adopted two children years ago from TLC. They are now back to see how TLC is getting on and spend a little longer at this awesome place.

Heidi and some of the children busy creating the welcome poster.

Monday

On Monday we woke up early…very early. Josh, who along with Ruel goes to a private school, had his rugby squad trials and had to be there at 6am. That meant we had to leave at 5.15!! We picked him up and drove him to the other side of Johannesburg, a 35 minute journey. His school is in a wealthy area and all his school mates and their families had very flash cars! The school too was very nice and left Heidi very impressed with the water based hockey pitch and the other sports fields on site.

We managed to navigate back to our guest house where we had a 45 minute nap before breakfast and the start of another day at TLC. Today Heidi helped with the home schooling children in the morning and then with the other children’s homework in the afternoon. Exercise books still needed covering but other normal homework like maths, spelling and reading was done by some children.
I was DIY man again and adjusted some of the foot rests on the Tiger’s chairs whilst in the afternoon I returned to the other side of Jo’burg with Josh so he could pick up some things from his friend’s house.

We resized the foot rests on 6 of these chairs.

Today a new baby arrived at TLC with a similar sad story to all those that came before it. Unfortunately the mother was a 13 year old child living in a children’s home who had been raped and so the baby was not able to be looked after properly. The mother chose the baby’s name to be Holly. She is only two days old.

Holly (Baby A).

Tuesday

On Tuesday, we did another morning run for Josh’s rugby practice then later continued clearing out the library and then it was home work time as usual in the afternoon. I did a bit more driving (for petrol and cooking oil) and some DIY and tech support too.

One of the other volunteers Sarah, gets a bit muddy playing in the puddles with some of the children.

Another new baby came in today! She’s only one day old. The baby hasn’t got a name yet but she will have one that begins with the letter ‘B’, this is because she is the 2nd baby to arrive in 2011. Each baby that comes in has a name beginning with the next letter of the alphabet, so the next baby to arrive will have a name beginning with ‘C’. At the start of the year the names are then reset back to ‘A’. They have had over 750 babies come through the orphanage and the aim is to name them all uniquely! What a task!!

Baby B.

Wednesday

The following story will illustrate how complicated things at TLC can get when things start to break! We had driven home from the orphanage in the blue Polo ready to drop Josh off to rugby at 5 am. In the evening and early the next morning (Wednesday) we had a few knocks on the door! At about 8pm we had a knock from Josh to say that he didn’t need to go to rugby (excellent a later start!) and that the white car had been leaking oil so they needed to take the blue car from us so we could get in to TLC in the morning. So we switched cars. We then had a knock from Jet who couldnt ride her bike in in the morning (its a her compromise she would rather walk in but its not safe) and wanted to know if we could take her at half 6. This was fine with us but it meant that we had to drive the white car which was leaking to TLC at half 6 and then switch the car over to the Polo again. We had to get another car as we promised Rosita who is at Mysty River with us a lift (she is soooo cute; an old Austrian lady!). So far so good……then we got a knock on the door at 7:30 am from Ann (head of the volunteers) to say that she needed the Polo to take a baby to a hospital apointment as the RED car wouldn’t start!!! So we then had no car and Pippa had to pick us up on the way back from one of the school runs. So by the time 8 am arrived we had four different cars!!! Hope you all managed to follow the story!!!

Dog of the Day. This beautiful German shepherd is called Neeboo.

Naughty dog of the day. Barren (featured last week), snoops for food and manages to knock one of the bins over spilling food all over the floor.

Thursday

The rest of Wednesday and Thursday followed like normal. On Wednesday, Pippa flew to Europe on a multi country tour (England included) to visit the registered charities in each country that raise money for TLC. Pippa organises and runs a lot of what happens day to day, so with her gone every else has to do a bit more work.

We for example are helping with home tutoring in the mornings and also doing a school run in the mornings to take some of the children to two of the local schools. Even though they are local schools we still leave at 6:30am! So this morning (Thursday) by 7 am Christian had already done two school runs; taken Josh to rugby training and some of the kids to the local school!!! English children have it easy!

Friday

We were going to publish this post on Thursday (yesterday) but due to a massive thunder storm our power went out and we had to conserve our phone battery!! Today (Friday) is our day off!! BUT…we still did the school run at 6:30am!!! SO much for a lie in ha ha!! It was good fun taking them though and really nice to see where they spend their days.

As it is Christian’s birthday tomorrow (Saturday) (HAPPY BIRHDAY CHRISTIAN) we went out for breakfast, and then to the cinema followed by lunch!

We had a lovely chicken, parmesan, tomatoe, avocado and pestonaise toast for breakfast, yum!

The film was called the Next Three Days…it was really good. We are now back at Misty River just chilling before starting back at TLC again tomorrow.

Until next week here is the next episode from Mighty and Similo’s life lessons.