Hello!
Part 1: Food
The portion sizes of food in the village are the largest I've ever seen! Definitely larger than my 1st, 2nd if not 3rd servings in Australia put together. Bikini body, you may be a year late! We eat Dahl Bhat for breakfast and dinner with various vegetables from the Subedi's field. Rachel's favourite addition to Dahl Bhat at the multiple beans. We all claim she has a seperate stomach for Nepalise beans and she has but no choice to agree.
Another favourite are the tomatoes, but my favourite are definitely the potatoes (aloo) mixed with spices, chilli and crushed sesame seeds. Sometimes for dessert, Bee, Jane and I are lucky enough to receive rice, sugar and either the goats or cows milk, which is the closest we'll get to our Aussie lovers weetbix and milk.
Also do not underestimate Nepalise Chai tea. Deelish! However, I'm not sure how the Nepalise people have escaped diabetes, the tea is stacked with sugary sweetness - we have it anyway. It seems Chai tea and Dahl Bhat have become our comfort foods when we arrive home from a weekend of being in Bhaktapur, Nargokot or Kathmandu.
A not so favourite is the goondrook, ("Its absolutely rank and theres a big bad down there!" (esther)) a dehydrated root. If you are already a massive spinach hater, you may need to run from this side dish. Heres how to avoid this splendidly detested side dish:
1. If unsuccessful in achieving to claim a small serving of this delicious root, please be aware there are other plates AKA your room buddies to subtly place the root on.
2. If unsuccessful in your secretive manner and a quarrel results, try to refuse to take it back.
3. If you utterly fail and end up with two servings (possibly 3), starta chewin! no leaving food on your plate!
4. Chew some more.
5. possibly add rice to assist in a smoother texture.
6. When cheweing fails, swallow.
7. Eat a large portion of beans, tomato, potato, or all of the above in a massive handful ( oh and did i mention we eat with our right hand?We're all pro at this now)to be rid of the back of throat after taste .
8. Next time be more secretive in your dealings.
The Orphanage Part 1.
I am currently sitting on a mountain top in Shivapuri's National park's children orphanage, marvelling over a view that can only be described as picturesque. The buildings and houses are tiny lego pieces thathave been placed in a magnificently formed valley. The first look through the orphanage window and I was confused as to why what i thought was a water painting, was raining.
I admit, writing blogs is showing me how frustrated it is at the lack of a laptop for editing. without the assistance of a coputer and as i say " right click synonyms and ill be fine" is proving a challenge to my brain vocab! The girls and i have discovered Nepal is definitely technologically disadvantaged either through ignorance or research.
(the rest will come soon its just this computer keeps freezing so i will type all my blogs on nicoles laptop this week, and you will get about 5-10 new blogs vnext weekend when we get wireless or when i plug the usb into a comp in bhaktapur or kathmandu)
Part 2 of orphanage:
I admit writing blogs is showing me how frustrated I am at the lack of a laptop for editing without the assistance of a computer and as I say “right click synonyms, and I’ll be fine” is proving a challenge to my brain vocab!
As I ponder I think about how the view of these children’s Lego and is quite juxtaposed to today’s awakening at apr. 5:45 am. The tranquility of the children voices (more so or less) became shouting as time progressed.
We help the children each day with math and English homework. I sometimes found it frustrating when the children answered “yes” when I wanted them to answer whether the top number of a fraction was a numerator or a denominator. What Esther and I found for one girl in particular was to work out a math problem by a methodical step by step approach. What we also realized quite early on was that she did not know the angle sum of a straight line was 180 degrees, when working out the angle sum of a complementary or supplementary angle. This, we found was a major flaw in the Nepali education system. After establishing that, we found that she understood each question fairly easily.
They provide the children with movies and television during the day while not playing soccer in their outside area or volleyball. (The volleyball net was later
The amount of food each child has is absolutely ridiculous! We also enjoy our Carlo chai tea in the morning. One morning Esther was lucky enough to get 4. She had a grin on her face most of the morning.
Teaching at the school in the national park about a 10 minute walk uphill from the orphanage was absolutely blissful. The teachers gave us great advice to work on English pronunciation and conversational skills. It was hard however to convince some of the teachers that J.K Rowling is not a feminist, just a female writer. “She has strong woman beliefs, no?” We also had quite a serious conversation with the male teachers about the war on terrorism due to stumbling on an Obama article in the daily Nepalise newspaper. We simply explained the situation for Bush’s choice to immediately initiate the sending of troops to Iraq, and Obama’s steady call to bring them out. We spent many a day sussing out certain articles in the paper – one being international kissing day. As we were asked by many male teachers “Why you close your eyes when kissing?”, we merely glanced to each other, shrugged and chuckled.
In our lessons, we taught various classes such concepts as nouns and adjectives (by pointing to a door and explaining that it was blue or brown), vowels, animals, favourites, colours, clothes and body parts. Rachel and I taught a lesson on vowels. To start we wrote our names on the board alongside the day and date. We then underlined the printed heading ‘Vowels’ and printed the letters of each vowel underneath. We would then pronounce the letter and to have it pronounced back to us, would hold out our ear. The alphabet would then be printed on the blackboard and we would have the children come up to the board and circle the vowels. They would then copy this into their books. A game would then be played to end the lesson. In this case the children stood up and from one end of the class to the other, would recite the alphabet. As soon as they came across a vowel they had to sit down. Last one standing would receive a sticker. Another very useful game is hangman, which the children understood almost immediately. When teaching prime numbers, a form of bingo would be played.
Another most successful lesson was ‘Favourites’. In this lesson I drew a mind map on the board with 4 different sections for festivals, books, movies and colours. After a massive brainstorming session with different children coming fourth each time to contribute their answer, the class we had quite a few names for each section. The children copied this mind map into their work book and wrote out sentences I had written on the board with spaces left for their own personal favourite answers. In groups, they would introduce themselves in English and read out their sentences of their personal favourite things. Each group would then come out and recite the exact same thing to the class. I felt this lesson incorporated had great benefit to the children as it incorporated many different techniques the children were not used to, and thus, learnt. However, the listening concept was a struggle for us as the children would write down absolutely everything written on the board, even if we didn’t want them to.
It’s a definite shame that our teaching time was such short lived at this school, especially as there was so much to be taught and painted around the classrooms. I’m sure our time there was spent well and the children got out as much as we put into our lessons. Our presence however was warmly welcomed and well respected.
Full Moon: Part 1
“I feel like I’ve won the lotto” pronounces Bee to Jane and I in our tree-house-like room. We feel very much at home with the Subedi’s and the three of us just click.
We also adore our family. The previous night our family decided to give us Nepalise names to feel more welcomed into the family - as if being called ‘daughter ‘ and calling the Subedi’s ’Booba’, ‘Mummy’, ‘Bai’, ‘Bhahini’ and ‘Didi’ (Father, Mother, Younger brother, Younger sister and Older sister) wasn’t enough.
I have been christened the name ‘Purnima’ (Poonima) which means ‘Full moon’. Bee is ‘Jundooma’ which means ‘Moon’ and Jane is ‘Tara’ which means ‘Star’. This is because they admire our white skin. We have told them countless times that we love their darker skin and in Australia we admire tanned skin. Sabina (Bhahini) merely shook her head, held my hand and said “beautiful white hand”. Pradip, (Bai) named Esther the nepalise name for a butterfly because she is like a butterfly in her dress.
Our family goes out of their way to make us feel happy. We play games at night, sing, dance, make us tea give us biscuits, offer us seconds for dahl, aloo, or bhat. One thing (I am proud to say) is they have become obsessed with the Harry Potter movies. We have had a few H.P. marathons.
Unitil next time - Jen
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