Christmas

Christmas

I got back into Pokhara in the afternoon but went to Rim’s family house first (Mahendra’s wife). It was really nice there she even had some balloons, Christmas beads and a little Christmas tree. O yeah and a really tasty cake, which I appreciated a lot, as I love cake and cake in Nepal is, well, perhaps awful isn’t quite a bad enough word. It was a really good evening though we had drinks on the roof and ate cake and pasta. The pasta was awesome instead of pasta sauce Rim fried the pasta and veg in soy sauce. I’d highly recommend it. After that I went out to some of the bars in Pokhara with Rim’s brother Dhan. It was a good night. 

Form Christmas day I spent the day on a very long and slow bar crawl spending most of my time reading. However, in one place there was a group of American girls who said I can’t spend Christmas alone, so invited themselves to sit down. They were nice and, bizarrely, had Cluedo with them. I stayed with them for a while them went for a Christmas dinner of a very tasty vegetable burger. I wasn’t very hungry because when you drink in happy hour you always get something free, like popcorn, crisps, chips, nuts, etc, so I was rather full all day. The good thing about Pokhara is that there are always a lot of tourists to chat to. I spent the evening going on another tour of bars and meeting the Americans again. Then in the tradition of Christmas went sleep about 10 o’clock.

Anyways I’m back in Tansen now but schools closed again for another holiday. But I’m of India after New Year to renew my visa, which should be good.

Fishtail on Christmas eve evening

Batase

Batase

The school

I finally managed to get to Batase School in Ghurkha district. It was originally meant to be the first school which I visited in Nepal but due to monsoons other things, well just monsoons actually, it had to be delayed. Now it took a long time to get here mainly has we had to travel and stop over night in Pokhara then get another two busses, so it was, in total, a wonderful 34 hour round trip on busses. Through very eerie fog, it was like being in bloody Silent Hill. I’d highly recommend it if you love being absolutely squashed for hours and hours.

I dunno what I'm doing here

Playing the 'bracelet game'

They can't wait to learn here
I'm sure they had their own lesson to go to though

I did eventually get there, albeit rather bruised, and it is a really nice place, I enjoyed it a lot. Contradictory to what I was expecting, after Mahendra had told me that everyone who visits never wants to go back. However, I was a little concerned about the large number of leopards and ‘aggressive monkeys’ that are in the surrounding jungle. They said that they rarely come into the village but the children who walk to school in the morning have to walk in large groups, hopefully with large sticks, to keep them away. For this reason they are planning on investing money into an illuminated pathway to keep the children safe.

Making a book for the twinned school

I didn’t get a lot of time to do lessons, apart from the 4 sessions I spent doing the twinning lessons, I managed one hour with Year 4 and 5 doing songs and games. Also, I wandered down one morning at 6am to see the college classes (as they run from 6am-10am) and ended up doing some teaching there for an hour or two. That was it on the teaching front, but you know what do you expect when I was only there for one day, I had to get back to Pokhara for Christmas Eve.

Today's pictures are brought to you by Purna Magar, MCWFN photographer and the Number 5. 

Congratulations

Congratulations you lucky devils, I have very kindly uploaded some photos for you on the previous few posts.

Bhalebass

Bhalebass

The school entrance

I think the lack of teaching recently was making me really miserable, as I feel so much better after taking some classes there. I always did find when I wasn’t teaching at home I got really bored and very lethargic.

I only had one and half days there but I managed to teach all the children. I know you’re on tenterhooks to know what I did, so:

The 'White Lake', it's when the clouds in the
morning fill the valley

·       Year 8 – The teacher was having concerns about how to teach Australian animals, so I offered to have a go. The chapter in the textbook had pictures of four animals, Koala, Echidna, Platypus and Emu, with a short description. Before they knew what we were doing I made them put the textbooks away, then described the animals and read the description. They then had to try and draw the animal from the description and the notes I had scribbled on the board. The Echidna’s were all very good actually, the rest not so much. Well apart from the children who cheated and looked at the textbook on the sly. I only had 5 mins to think of the lesson, but I think it went well.

·       Year 7 – we played the number game from countdown, they are very good here at mathematics, but not problem solving;

·       Year 6 – We played a proposition board game;

·       Year 5 – we made individual preposition posters, by drawing an object and sticking a foam animal sticker in the correct place, e.g. next to, inside, on top;

·       Year 4 – preposition games, using toy animals to be the first child to place the animal in the correct place in relation to their body, e.g. in their pocket, on their heads, under their foot;

·       Year 2 and 3 – we looked at different animals then draw pictures to take home;

·       Year 1 – we used mud to write name and paint pictures on a wall;

Some of the little chickens doing mud painting

·       Nursery – we used mud to do hand prints and generally colour in the wall.

Also the food at Bhalebass is amazing! The dude who owns the cafe went to India to learn to cook, so he makes proper curry, stir fried veg and salad. I miss salad so much here.

They also gave me a very fancy waistcoat made from Palpa fabric as a leaving present.

The waistcoat just makes you pose like this

 

Week off

Week off

A real life mountain leopard!

Model of a Yeti: tilt to view

So for the ten days off I went to Pokhara for a week and had a few days in Tansen. Mainly I went to Pokhara because Barbara was leaving and was spending a few nights there on her way home and also to spend a few days hanging out with a some foreigners. After she left it made me realise how much you miss having people from home to talk to, I hadn’t actually noticed before. It is rather difficult though. I miss Christmas too but hopefully I’ll be in Pokhara then, depends on the timetable really. Anyway, I spent the rest of my time in Pokhara just dosing around and talking to tourists who were also travelling on their own, it was good. One day I went to the mountaineering museum which was actually really interesting, it shows the history of mountain living and hiking over the years in Nepal and also contrasts it with other mountain communities. For example, the Germanic groups who lived in the Alps 50 years ago, the photos where almost identical. It is bizarre. I tell you what if you’re getting the local busses in Nepal be careful of subterfuge. Firstly, I asked a taxi driver to take me the bus station but he decided against that and took me to a regular bus stop and insisted it was the station, it wasn’t. Then the bus conductor swore blind that the bus was going to the station, it didn’t but it did go to where I wanted to go.

View from the hotel

One more thing, a big sorry to the avid fans of the kinder egg but Nepal has vastly improved on its design. They have unfortunately lost the egg that you eat; however, it is now a plastic egg, one half with the toy and the other half filled with smooth kinder chocolate flavoured moose (not the animal but I can’t spell it right, you know what I mean). You also get a spoon.