School visits, Wednesday 26 October, Trip Day Six

I’ve just waved off Ed and Tom. They’ve gone with Hannah and Holly’s host, Mike, to meet up with the others. This morning’s programme involves two school visits and there is really only space, both for transport and other logistical reasons, for eight of us to participate. So I’m staying behind to work on the blogs and the budget instead.

Mike himself is a primary school principal locally. He’s kindly taken Ros, Tom, Hannah and Holly with him, while another member of the Cathedral congregation, Ntuku (a female head of department at a local secondary school) has rounded up Helen, Ed, Millie and Ruth for a morning with her. Not much has been planned, but it’s clear our team can make a useful contribution in the area of English language and culture, talking with pupils at the two schools and engaging in discussion with them, perhaps also doing some reading in English with them, one-to-one.

I’m sorry to be missing out and can’t wait to hear how it’s gone. But I shall spend the morning in the office of my host, Peter, getting our blogs up to date and reconciling our budget. The next 24 hours will be the most expensive of our visit, without a doubt, and I’d like to be clear how much we’ve got left in our kitty!

The plan is for us to drive up to Regensburg this afternoon, a few hours to the north, to get to within 30 kilometers or so of the gamepark. There will be 16 of us, I think: several of our hosts, including the bishop and the dean, are coming with us, which will be lovely. We’re booked into a motel there overnight, and in the morning we expect to take part in a guide-led drive on safari. It’ll be a desperately early start: the best sightings in the wild usually happen before the sun is hot, so we’ll hope to be on the tour by 6am at the latest – the sun rises at about 5.30.

I thought I’d write today’s blog in prospect, rather than in retrospect, because I’m not sure when the next internet access will be available. It could well be that the motel tonight will have wi-fi, but if not it could be Friday, at the airport, before we can bring our blogs up to date. It seems crazy to be focusing already on the end of the trip, but the next 48 hours will whizz by.