Planning!!!

Sorry, this had to come at some point! Bear with me, it might not be too boring.

I got chatting to Les the other morning about the house, which he built himself. It took him six or seven years and included six months of crippling injury when cement got into his shoes as he was laying the foundation (which only needed to be 1m deep for a large two storey house!) and prevented him from being able to remove his shoes and socks. As a result he couldn't walk for those six months.

The planning system here seems to be similar to home, from what I can tell. You draw up your plans, the application process is the same; neighbour consultations, objections, committees etc. The authorities are free to decide an application on its merits whether there are objections or not, much like in the UK.

A teacher told me another story about a local shopping centre that is proposed to be constructed on a wetland area. The Government has granted an equivalent to outline permission, with the locals up in arms due to the destruction of the habitat and the fact that there are several other shopping centres in the area. This particular teacher believes there to be money changing hands somewhere, and his view was very much that bribery is at large in the South African planning system.

You can probably tell from the subject of this post that it has been a quiet couple of days! I was supposed to be coaching the girls football players after school today but it has started to rain and I'm now free for the afternoon. I continue to split my time among the classes, helping with maths, English, musical theory and sports. I'm even invited to a ballet class on Friday so there should be a post on that but definitely no pictures!

I had another class on my own this morning for an hour while they worked on English. The same kids cause the problems each lesson and I find it very hard to explain to them certain spellings as they expect every spelling to be as it sounds. The other usual problems include noise, cloth ears and 'ants in pants' syndrome.

Hello to the new blog followers, welcome aboard!

Bye for now.

Pauley (as Lecia now calls me)