Thursday 2 July 2009

Emotional Goodbyes in Nepal



Written by Stephanie Rae - GapBreak 2009, Nepal

I’m back in Kathmandu. This arvo we are moving in to an Orphanage for the last couple of weeks which is quite exciting :)
Don’t really know what to expect but I am looking forward to it.

It was really sad leaving the village my host mum -who cant speak English and we cant speak Nepali- came into our room the night before and said in Nepali that we are always welcome and we can stay as long as we want for free (and I understood it! ). Junu 0shes the daughter-in-law in our family, told us that we have been here so long that we are family to them now. Upon our farewell we were given big red tikka's on our foreheads and flowers around or neck.

Then we went to Bindabarsini - the local school that we taught at. We pretty much knew all the teachers and students there cause they all live in our village and we had a whole farewell ceremony where they danced and gave speeches and we were given certificates and more tikka’s. We were also expected to each give a speech. I cracked and had to cut mine short cause I started crying. It didn’t help that Prajur (3yr old in our family) was sitting right opposite me. After giving everyone hugs, we were off in the jeep. The kids surrounded the car and gave us flowers before we drove off. That was our last day in the village. I spent my last class playing hangman. I was so proud of the students because they actually understood how to play, which was initially quite hard for them. In my other class I got the students to draw pictures of Australia, which was really funny -they just drew massive blobs on the board and wrote Australia. I also took photos of them and gave them lollies and stickers -a very educational last lesson in other words.

Now on to the orphanage!

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