I wanted to take a little break from village stories to do a little Australia Day post today. I was thinking of everyone back home in the rain - I hope you managed to celebrate in style despite it. We had a really good day here. A few of us Aussies took the opportunity to go and visit The School of St Jude. Some of you may have heard about it as it's been featured on Australian Story (ABC) and Sunrise (Ch 7) quite a few times. It is an amazing school here that has been set up by an Australian. It is only for the brightest and poorest children (they have requirements that must be met for both these criteria) and is run on donations, mostly from the Australian community. It was so much better than I had expected. Truly inspirational. I have forgotten all their amazing statistics about how fast they have grown and all the students' achievements, but if you want to read more you can look them up at www.schoolofstjude.org If you have some spare cash lying around I would highly recommend throwing some their way. I thought it was a great environment with excellent staff and a really worthy cause.
We got to peak in on a few classes. This is 2A english.
And art class.
I was so excited to find Australian flags painted up around the place and even a cardboard kangaroo!
'Stuck in the mud' must be a universal game.
Brushing up on a bit of anatomy.
One of the libraries.
At the end of the day we got to ride home with the kids on one of the buses. Being in such an amazing school with all the kids being very polite and orderly and dressed neatly in school uniforms it was easy to forget that these kids come from extremely poor families. We quickly realised it again though when the school bus suddenly crossed the railway tracks and we began hurtling through the slums. It must be so hard for the kids to go between two such extremes. I wonder if it creates a divide between them and their families. Our guide had said that even in the older students who board, there can be a lot of tears on a Friday when it comes time to go home to see their families. They just don't want to go.
But what an opportunity they are getting though.
The night ended with a BBQ (of course) and we counted down the top ten for Triple J Hottest 100. It was a pretty decent effort for an Australia Day I thought. We Aussies held our own but we had to work pretty hard. There was only 5 of us...
...and then a whole bunch of Poms. We have become quite a big crew all of a sudden!
Till next time x
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