Day 2 starts off with Birthday surprise for Spindler. The lovely hotel manager, Mr Jawad, and his staff had organised a huge cake shaped like a burger for Archie's birthday. After a hearty breakfast we dispersed to JTR and Ballanta for another day of teaching.
On the way, the JTR bus had to make a speedy tire change on the side of a main road. We arrived late but most importantly alive and raring to go. We had two 1 hour lessons at heats of around 30°. French was taught by Mme D, Archie and JJ while Sophie, Edson, Josh, Chris, Mia, Madi, Flo and Elsie played some fun games with the extremely energetic 9-11 year olds such as dot to dots, anagrams, Mr wolf, splat and even taught some Spanish lessons, thanks to Mia!
At lunch we all walked once again to Ballanta to eat our pies and get ready for the afternoon outreach concert. After the Murraydeen concert the whole gang trundled to the cultural village 5 minutes away. At this point we were convinced the locals, somehow, had harnessed the power of the sun as we went through a 1 hour recital of a ritual dance in the melting heat, consisting of feats ranging from amazing acrobatics by huge athletes, to some pretty dodgy moves by the kids.
It's fair to say by now we were spent and what else would be a better end to a great day than the news that our flight back home would be cancelled. We would be staying in Africa for 2 more days!! The group jumped in the pool in celebration. We are now playing cards around the pool, after another fantastic meal at Papaya. Round 3 ding ding ding!! (Josh)
Hiya folks Hector here. Day two of teaching at j Ballanta is at a close.
At Ballanta Grace took on the task of teaching a large group of brass players and she did an excellent job and they sounded extra good.
Hector taught guitar to a smaller group of people, Marni taught viola, Theo ran a drums master class as always, Connie taught clarinet, Adam taught singing , Oskar taught piano and Alix, with a slight wardrobe malfunction, taught dance. After a successful morning of ripped trousers, struggling to fix guitars and of course working our musical magic on some very keen and happy students, the JTR lot came and bought us our lunch on a silver coated polystyrene platter and we ate probably the most spicy African pies in Salone.
After lighting fires in our mouths, we got a wiggle on to Murraydeen primary school and played a concert for one of the happiest bunch of bambinos I have ever seen. We played various group pieces including Adam and Alix playing a tear jerker of a duet, Mr Coward and Walton and Grace playing a few brass songs. And the big band performance where we played: Get lucky, uptown funk and September. Special mention to the unmusical gang stepping up and singing Wellerman with all of us!
The crowd went nuts and teachers lost total control of the hundreds of children dancing to our tune!
It was a great day, all in all, not even dampened by the bombshell of the cancelled flight!
