Sunday 17 February 2013

Okhaldhunga



Okhaldhunga 


I spent the last week, mon-fri, at Okhaldunga school.

I like this school a lot, the village in situated in a remote hill area, it is one hour jeep ride on the road then two and a half hours though the hills then a 40 min walk. It is a proper beautiful area though. You can go trekking in any direction from the village, either though jungle or along the top of the hills, now I’m saying hills, as that is what they are called here, but they’re mountains really. It is just in Nepal it has to have snow to be a mountain.

Unfortunately, mostly for you Phoebe, the camera I have been using courtesy of my sister, has stopped working. It has been getting worse for a few weeks but now the battery will not hold any charge. So no photos this week, well I did get a couple before the battery went for good.

I did go Monday to Friday but due to travelling time that means I only get three days teaching. Here’s what I got up to:
Tuesday
·         Yr8 X2 – Twinning letter, describing and drawing the village and school;
·         Yr9 – discussion and dialogue about jobs and plans for the future e.g. move house, get married;
·         Yr7 – Bingo and countdown numbers game;
·         Yr5 –prepositions.
Wednesday
·         Reception/nursery – playing with the toys I took, face paint, animals, blocks, balls and musical instruments;
·         Yr1 – Animals and face painting;
·         Yr2 – Shapes, colouring and face painting;
·         Yr3 – Fruit and veg and face painting;
·         Yr4 – Fruit and veg and face painting.
Thursday
·         Yr6 – bingo and hangman with a animal theme;
·         Yr5 – Bingo and face painting;
·         Yr4 – prepositions.
Now I know that is a lot of bingo and face painting but once the word spead they kept asking for it, and the bingo really helps with number name. The face painting is just fun. Actually even the yr8 and 9’s did a bit of face painting in the evenings, only the boys though and normally very make-up based face painting.

They did have dancing programmes every night but as I was ill with a cold, and the nighttimes are freezing there, they stopped about half ten. They had three with Nepali and Hindi pop music, I’m not that much of a fan of these as I don’t like the music, and I think that everyone that knows me knows I don’t dance. The other night, Wednesday I think, they had a Nepali programme about Holi, now if you don’t know Holi, it is the one where they throw paint at each other. They did use tikka powder here instead and not so much throwing but it is two people and they put the tikka on the head like normal and then throw a load at each other, then the people change. It was really fun especially as I got to tikka other people. I think my shirt is now ruined though but it was a charity shop special so it’s expendable.  Also on the last night two of the kids who came to the evening programme asked to play bingo, then I had to go inside for some quick food and I came out to find only 7 out of the 40ish children still outside. The rest were playing bingo upstairs.
Next week Mahchap again, stay tuned for the update.

Sunday 10 February 2013

Bagnas



Bagnas

So I got back to Bagnas this week. It is a very small school around 55 children; however, there couldn’t have been 40 there on any day I visited. The teachers told me that often children have to stay at home to do work, mainly farm work I think.

Day one
Year 1, 2 and 3
We did some animals names and posters, preposition games using animals and mini posters, matching and memory games then had a bit of bingo. Now on my own with these guys it was rather difficult to get them organised, as they really crave praise for their work. So i’d be talking  to one kid on how to improve their poster and have swarms of others around me shouting that they had done their work. I can tell them to sit down in Nepali but as soon as I moved to someone else it just happened again.

Year 4 and 5
I got the twinning letters sorted which discussed the Nepali festivals of Tihar, Dashian and Teej. Then they wanted to play some bingo, these guys put old women to shame with their enthusiasm for bingo. The children are great in this class their English has come along a lot since my first visit in October and most of the time they could understand what I was after. Although I am still fighting a losing battle against not just copying the text of the information sheets I gave them, but then when you spend most of the time copying or repeating it is rather innate.

Day 3





Nursery and reception re-caped parts of the body then played body games and sung body related songs. Then I got them to drawn round each other on A1 paper and colour in and label parts of the body and clothes. Finally, we did some face painting which was proper funny, although I demonstrated on myself and let one of the kids have a blast with my face (the picture only shows what I drew with no mirror). They teachers did remind me to wash it of but I needed to rush back and plus I had a motorbike helmet on; however, I forgot and went for a wander round town for a while looking like a nutter with a green coloured on beard.
pre green beard

Day 4
They had a celebrated today as the school is in its 26th year. However, it was on Nepali time so instead of the 10:30 start it was 12:30, but I spend the time teaching some of the children to skip backwards and to cross the rope over in the air, two skills I never knew I had, and I also spent some time failing to play badminton. It was only a short ceremony with the usual speeches and dancing, then all the children who had performed in the tops three in different subjects/years/gender/and some more categories were presented with workbooks and pencils. I think everyone ended up with something. I did see one girl with 8 books though.
"I'd rather eat my book"

It’s been a good week.