Continuing With the High School Play . . .

For myself there has been a bit of change within the dynamics of the play. My role has been switched from Lady MacDuff to the role of Ross. Although there are a lot more lines to memorize I am actually quite happy with this change as I feel I will have more opportunity to push myself to learn more about the stage and acting on stage. This past week I have been learning the basic blocking for Ross'  various scenes and trying to more fully understand my character. All in all this past week has been quite productive for me when it comes to the play.

Horseriding - 14th Sept

Today I had another horse riding lesson after a two week hold up in my lessons. We didn't do much more than trot, but my trot is getting much better. We tried to try a canter today but it seemed as if the horses were a little bit too unmotivated to go much faster than a trot. But at least I feel like I'm making a little progress.

Cheleta Reading Group

Today we went on our first trip to the Cheleta Primary School. We are going to this school in order to help tutor the younger children how to read. There aren't many people in the group that I actually know, so it's a bit awkward but hopefully as the year goes on I'll have the opportunity to get to know my fellow students better. The school itself is actually quite nice compared to some of the other primary schools in Kenya. Once we got there, we got about six children to teach how to read. The majority of them were in second and third grade but there were a few first graders, which made it a little difficult, but overall the event went quite well. Supposedly for further on into the year, we will be given the first graders to teach. This makes me worry a little, as the first graders speak very little english compared to the higher grades and I'm a bit confused as to how we will teach them how to read if we cannot communicate well with them. But that's a problem to be dealt with later. All in all, the first trip was successful and hopefully it will continue to be.

Book Club - Agent ZigZag

Book Club - Meeting 2

On the 9th of September, we had our second book club meeting. We had all met to discuss the first book we read, The Housekeeper and the Professor. It was interesting to see everyone else's different perspectives and opinions on the book. The majority of us really quite liked it and enjoyed reading a translated work from another less cliché culture. After we had eaten and discussed the novel, we decided on the next novel we were planning to read. We chose the true life biography of Agent ZigZag, written by Ben MacIntyre. The biography is the story of a man who worked as a double agent during the second world war, and is about both his personal life and his professional life. So far, I am really enjoying participating in book club, and hope that I continue to enjoy the books as much as I am now.

Stage Fighting

In the week of the 5-11th of september, I didn't have any actual acting rehearsals but we did have a couple of our stage fighting workshops. For the play's war scene we're going to use wooden staffs and hand to hand combat techniques in order for the audience to understand the scene. These first couple of rehearsals, our instructor Miss Riley, taught us a few basic stage fighting moves. These moves will help us to seem as if we are actually fighting without having to harm each other. I'm actually rather enjoying these workshops, and it's giving me the rare opportunity to learn combat with staffs and stage fighting. So I hope all goes well.