Grace, Janpaul and Andrew are busy organising a “going out” in school. A “going out” is a small group excursion to answer a particular question, for example, going to the aquarium to learn more about starfish, or interviewing an expect to learn more about what they do.

A large part of the going out learning process is the planning of the excursion. There is a list of things that they need to organise, including a chaperone, directions, any costs that may be involved, food, etc. – everything needs to be carefully planned and documented before they go, and they need to action it on their own.

They are planning to go to Vergelegen which is a wine farm just next to Lourensford where the school is. They have wonderful grounds, with old trees and rich historical grounds. According to Grace, they are, “going to find out about old things and old trees.” Grace has a question about how the very old yellowwood’s canopy has grown together with the other trees.

So today they phoned Vergelegen to find out about costs. Janpaul (who is very well spoken and extremely polite) made the call and got the information about entry costs and the cost of the tour of the grounds. Grace tells us about this and adds, “And we nearly booked breakfast! Janpaul was booking breakfast but we told him not to.”

Apparently at some point the conversation went something like this (I imagine from how I’ve been told):

Vergelegen: “Would you like to have breakfast here?”

Janpaul: “Oh, that would be lovely.”

Vergelegen: “What is your phone number? And would you like to have a wine tasting too?”

Janpaul: “I’m only 8! I can’t drink wine and I don’t have a phone number!”

At some point Grace and Andrew realised he was booking breakfast unknowingly and realised that was probably out of their budget, so cancelled that booking.

I just love it, and would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see both sides of that conversation.

All in corner putting up a heater for Adam – how many of us can squish in there?