Spiderman! Spiderman!

48 badges for our Spiderman team! A lot of card, glue, safety pins and sore hands. I hope the SISP kids want to wear them (the kids next door are wearing theirs!).

The last few days have been exhausting, partly because of doing the posters and decorations on the team's blackboard, which have to be changed every day first-thing in the mornings. The theme for a few days was "AIDS" and now it's "Christmas". I made another Spiderman poster and have made various informative displays. My team's captain made many of the AIDS ones, which had to be written in Malayalam, and he did a nice job. But somehow the other teams have nearly always done something brighter, bigger, wilder and more eye-catching. And many times I've turned up early to find that those who promised to help didn't come, or didn't bring any materials. I think that Monday will be the last day and, to be honest, I'll be very pleased when it's over.

Part of the team games is a chess championship. Now, the last time I played chess was 40 years ago so I expected to be thrashed. Nevertheless I managed to win the first game on points (games are limited to 30 mins) against the school bus driver, who was meant to be a bit of a handy player. My heart was pounding over that game and I was quite pleased to win because he's got a bit of an attitude problem - thinks he's something special! But in my second game yesterday, I was trounced! I was playing against a sneering little so-and-so too! Bitter and twisted? Moi? I'm trying hard to forget this beating but secretly plotting my revenge!

The days have been long and intense too, with kids from other schools turning up early, sometimes before lunch, having done exams and coming to us for tuition. Meanwhile we have our own exams going on and those children not capable of the exams, or not timetabled to do them, have to be given lessons or tuition or, basically, just kept quiet. This is where I come in. And because of the exams I haven't been able to take Tuesday and Thursday afternoons off to recover. All in all I'm somewhat knackered!