fifth day

Fifth day until today (12/9)

Tansen, the green area at the back is rice paddies and it is the second largest flat space in the entire Palpa district.

I have spent the last few days at Mahendra’s house in Tansen, relaxing mainly and getting used to living with the family. I have had a short class in basic Nepali, which is easy and hard at the same time. Easy because none of the words resemble English so there is no way to get them confused. It is hard though because it is very difficult to distinguish the individual phonemes in the words and many of the words are used in different contexts, or there is lots of words for the same thing, for example three different ways for saying yes, depending on the context (saying yes to someone calling you, saying yes to doing something and saying yes to having something). I’m slowly getting the hang of it though and should be more fluent after visiting the villages where there is far less English used.

I’ve also had a motorbike lesson yesterday, with a very friendly and nice chap; however, he could only speak very little English, strangely though I managed to understand the controls and what to do and it went very well, I never even came close to falling off. He even felt comfortable enough for me to give him a seater some of the way home, until I the roads became more confusing and directions would have been a problem, also from my point of view – the traffic.

I’ve had a little explore of the place and it seems very nice, I’m just about to go and have another look around now. So I’ll stop rambling on now. I will try to update how progress in schools went on Saturday, which should hopefully not be as much information as this and more relevant to the school programme. 

For some reason my pictures won't upload, but I'm giving up now. I'll try again another day.