Monastery / Kathmandu

Our last morning teaching the kids was a little sad, I'm going to miss some of them!

Morning lessons finish at 12.00 midday and the guys from the office were due to pick us up after that but they arrived early - 11.30am so we had to finish up our class a bit early. It was so cute, the kids didn't want to finish! At the end of every lesson they sing a song to thank you for the learning they receive during that lesson. We listened to it for the last time then we were on our way. The kids came to the windows of the monastery to wave us off.

Tonight we are spending the night in Kathmandu before we catch the 6.30am bus to Chitwan tomorrow.

It was lovely chilling in the hotel room with no mosquitoes, a TV and a pot of Pringles.

I bought this amazing book in one of the bookshops here - 'Leaving Microsoft to Change The World' - it's about a guy who was fairly high up in Microsoft, who left to set up schools and send books to poor kids in Nepal.

Monastery / Kathmandu

Ad had a bit of a wobbly as he thought some of the monks had taken some of his clothes off the washing line today. All was ok in the end as they had just been moved!

He did start to say that he might like to do a different project for our last week in Nepal however and me and Kris thought this might be a good idea as we could get to try a few volunteer projects rather than just one.

As we were planning to go to Kathmandu today anyway we decided to pop into the office to see Salve and see what else she had available.

Salve had a few options for us but as we had all liked Chitwan we decided we would like to go back there and do some conservation work. BUT only as long as we could stay in the Park Side Hotel again, by this point we all know we couldn't handle a host family stay.

Luckily Park Side could fit us in so we decided to have one more night in the Monastery and one more morning of teaching before we left so that we could say bye to the kids.

Monastery

Saturday today and the kids have lessons until 12.00 midday so we had 3 classes this morning. The kids really are great and they so reading and drawing. Travis went into Kathmandu yesterday and bought a few more reading books so we let them have a look through these. The trouble is they are so eager they are getting through them so quickly and they really need alot more.

Tempo was telling us that the Monastery is nearly entirely funded by overseas investors, seem to be mainly from the US and Spain. They send enough money for the kids to have fruit twice a week and eggs twice a week along side their normal Dal Bhat and Monk Bread.

It breaks your heart to hear them say they have fruit twice a week when we are so used to stuffing down our 5 a day in the UK.

Yet in other areas the Monastery is clearly relatively rich compared with the surrounding villages. In fact there is some beef between the Monks and what they call 'the villagers' as, I guess the villagers see it as unfair that all that money has been spent on the Monastery. Tempo told us it cost $10 million to build and it only officially opened in June last year so still looks relatively new.

After dinner the kids have free time and straight away out came the football. It is amazing how much they love that game and I realised more than ever as I watched them kicking the ball about (with surprising skill) just how similar kids are inside, wherever they are from and even if they are being raised as Monks.

The game got fairly serious and Kris did take a ball to the eye at one point. It looked very painful!

The Monk kids seem to be super fit and spent hours kicking that ball around!

Suman came to visit today to check all was well. Cristina wants to go into Kathmandu tomorrow to try and extend her visa and change her flight so I think we are all going to go along, as it's a Sunday and so there are no classes at the Monastery.

Monastery / Pharping

I finally flipped yesterday and told Ad and Kris that one of them has to swap with me for a class or two.

Actually I did a few classes with them and a few on my own and really enjoyed it! You don't know what you can do until you try and with no lesson plan or anything I found I could teach a group of kids and have fun.

The Monks are so lovely and they really love their English classes. Some of the small one's especially love to draw and the passion of them all seems to be football!

In one of the classes I did on my own earlier the kids said ' teacher is mitro chaa' - meaning teacher is good :-) made me happy to think they liked my classes.

Tonight Tempo took us into Pharping again for dinner. We got the local bus and those things are a nightmare. There is a distinct smell on Nepali buses and I suspect it's BO!

To eat we had something called sharpalap which Tempo recommended and which seemed to be something like a Cornish pasty. They don't eat cow at all here as it's a sacred animal so the meat (shar means meat) was buffalow. They were really tasty.

Again we ended up walking back in the dark but it was quite nice to walk as I was so stuffed after the sharpalap.

Monastery

Worst day ever! I'm so fed up of teaching with Cristina as she never lets me do anything. I hate the bathroom and so much for Tempo telling us we could have it to ourselves, the Monks are constantly in there.

I feel really, really low today and Ad & Kris won't swap with me and do the odd class with Cristina to give me a break.

On the up side, the Monastery dogs are wicked, look at them go.

Monastery

Cristina is starting to try my patience in class. Outside of class we get on great, but when we are teaching she keeps shooting down my idea's and stopping me from teaching the way I would like to. She is a great teacher but I'm here to help to and she needs to give me some space to use some of my idea's.

The bathroom situation is still a nightmare. Cold showers under a tap that at best is a dribble and at worst stops altogether is starting to get to me. Plus I'm drinking almost nothing from the afternoon onwards as I hate using the toilet after dark due to the no light in the bathroom situation. Kristy has resorted to peeing in a bottle and Cristina goes outside.

Evening - Pharping

Travis took us to a roof top resturant that he knew and Cristina and I braved the Nepali toilet. To be fair it is the cleanest I have come across so far and there was even a tap in the room next door that looked like it was used to wash clothes so we could wash our hands. As far as I know washing machines don't exist in Nepal.

The resturant was in fact one set of garden chairs and a table on the roof of a building. The chairs were mostly broken and the place was fairly dirty but we had a nice little atmosphere going on as there was such a large group of us.

Sophie, Jo and Karrem started telling us what they have been up to so far and I really started to realise what a smart guy Kareem is. He's on something like his 4th degree and is over here using his law degree to do some UN type work. He's also really interested in the issues of the countries he visits and really knew alot about the Nepal Government and the many issues Nepali people face.

I had something called Momo's to eat, basically seemed to be like chicken in pasta, was very nice and great to have a change from Dal Bhat!

By the time we finished dinner it was pretty dark and Tempo had warned us not to be outside the Monastery after dark. Apparently there are lots of gorilla gangs in the village and it's not safe to be out there at night. We walked back as quickly as we could but it still took about an hour. Apart from loosing Kareem for a short spell however it was without incident.