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.