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.

08.09.09 - Afternoon - Pharping

We caught a lift on the back of a truck into Pharping this afternoon, me, Kris, Ad, Travis, Cristina, Kareen, Jo and Sophie to get some dinner - not Dal Bhat, yahhhh!

The views around here are amazing! Lots of hills and miles and miles of rice fields. It was a bit hairy on the back of the van as there was so many squashed in and I had to keep a death grip on a bar to stay aboard.

08.09.09 - 12.00 am - Monastery

Our 1st lunch in the Monastery was to set a precedent for all future lunches and dinners. Dal Bhat is the local dish here and they eat it sometimes 3 times a day. Here at the Monastery you eat it twice - at 12 for lunch and at 6 for dinner. Dal Bhat can vary slightly from place to place and although it can be very nice, I was already finding it wearing, having to eat it so often.

Our last class of the day is 2.00pm - 3.30pm and afterwards a few more tourists turned up at the Monastery to stay for a night - Jo from the US, Sophie from Oz and Kareem from Canada.

08.09.09 - 6.00am - Monastery

Breakfast starts at 6.00am here but I wanted to have a quick shower beforehand.

It was terrible. The whole bathroom smells of pee and we couldn't get the showers to work, instead we had to use a tap and always here the water is cold.

The whole thing put me in a terrible mood and to top it off Tempo hadn't locked the joining door to the Monks dormitories and the risk of Monks coming in was high. To get back to our room from the bathroom you have to walk through a corridor which has a floor of dirt so we must always remember to wear our shoes.

Breakfast is monk bread and very sweet tea. The monk bread comes with butter and jam and tastes really nice. Apparently, Travis was telling us that it's a really simple recipe, just wheat flour and water but it's twice cooked, baked and grilled we think.

Our first class was at 8.00am today and Ad and Kris wanted to do one together so it left me and Cristina to do the other. Cristina was a trooper! Her parents are English teachers back in Spain and she teaches English also on the weekends so she had a real flair for it. She had also bought along a load of worksheets which I was so grateful for as I had no idea what we were going to do and you are given no guidelines, just told to teach what you like!

07.09.09 - Morning - Kathmandu / Monastery

We set off for the Monastery and our new home for the next 2 weeks at a fairly respectable hour today. It takes about an hour in a taxi and things get alot more rural as we climb higher into the mountains.

Our first glimpse of the Monastery is amazing, it's brightly coloured and looks lovely.

We arrive and are met by a guy called Tempo, who is sort of the administrator of the Monastery (not a Monk) and who calls himself a 'jack of all trades'.

Beds are set up for us in a small stone room, there is no other furniture and for the first time we are introduced to really basic accommodation.

We will be sharing a room (Kris & I) with a Spanish girl called Cristina, who is here with the same volunteering organisation as us and arrived on the same day also.

The only other volunteer at the monastery at this time is an American called Travis. He comes down to meet us but seems a bit distracted and doesn't want to leave his class for long so we are left to settle in.

We are told not to walk around with little clothes on and to make sure we take our clothes and change in the bathroom, not walk back to our room in only a towel.

Tempo tells us that one of the bathrooms will be closed off from the Monks and will just be a girls bathroom as all showers etc. are communal.

The first look at the bathroom, which is down the hall from our bedroom, confirms our worst fears - it has a Nepali toilet.

The bathroom situation will be one of the hardest for me. A Nepalese toilet is basically a hole in the floor and as a rule they don't use toilet paper, they use their left hand! then manually 'flush' the toilet by throwing a bucket of water down the hold. AHHHHH!