Thursday 31 July 2014

Day 7 - KTS, biting things and ATMs.

Woken early as usual by the temple goers. The unfortunate thing is that the temple bells sound like my alarm clock! Up and breakfasted on bread and marmite and a cup of tea. Walked to school and signed in as usual.

I was hoping to spend the day with class 5 but they were starting with Nepali so I went to class 4 instead. There I was able to help out with the maths lesson - a tortuous foray into brackets. After this was a Nepali lesson which I could not understand but I spent the time trying to learn some of the alphabet from my phrase book. the lesson was taken by a trainee teacher who is at the school for 1 month's teaching practise.

After Nepali was social studies all about people who are "lame", deaf or blind with the textbook informing the children that they had to treat such people equally. I was able to help a little with an explanation of Braille. It took the form of the children reading a playlet in turns. I'm not sure how much of the English they really understood and discussion and explanation was at the end of the lesson. 

Then science about deforestation - the textbooks in English have quite an archaic and technical vocabulary - and I explained about planting new trees. Then the English lesson which the children were very enthusiastic about. The Himalayan Times has a children's section every Thursday. One child collected 5RS from everyone and went out to buy a class set of papers. The children then cut out bits they found interesting (mainly football related!) and stuck them into much prized books. I was able to chat with them about this and it was a very enjoyable and relaxed time.


Lunch time arrived and I was due at Kiran's house for lunch at 1pm. However, today is the rice pudding festival (I kid you not!) and as I was chatting in th library a bowl of rice pudding with potato curry arrived. It sounds unlikely but was delicious. the pudding had spices and bay leaves in along with dates and fresh coconut. The curry was HOT. Nepal is no place to be on a low carb diet so I just enjoyed the meal and crossed my fingers. I then had to hurry up the stairs to Kiran's sister to explain that i had had rice pudding and could not eat any more!

The start of the afternoon was taken with loading Pivot Animator and Logo onto the computers. I then joined a very joyous music lesson where I was treated to all sorts of Nepali songs and dances
then joined class 3 in the library where I read a book to the children before they took it in turns to read to me.



At the end of the day I went to class 4 to help them with their homework(more brackets) then to sign out. I walked home slowly and had a lot of water.

I sat a read for a while then had a message on Facebook from Harihar who is a teacher trainer in Nepal. We arranged to meet tomorrow for a talk. I am looking forward to this and discussing teaching practice with him as he has had training from the UK too so can tell me what will be the most useful - I hope!

I then went to the ATM and finally persuaded it to give me some more rupees. I wasn't feeling too great so went to the Cafe Pagoda for dinner. I ended up with mixed fried rice (buffalo!) and a fresh lemon soda and spent about an hour and a half reading. The night fell and there was the sound of drums coming from the temples along with the ringing bells.

On returning to the apartment I found Camille and family about to watch Ratatouille.They asked me to join them but I decided not to and retreated upstairs where I smothered myself in anti-bite lotion and wrote the blog. I plan a restful evening, preferably with very little on as it is pushing 30 degrees even now and I am dripping with perspiration - you really wanted to know that didn't you!!!

4 comments:

  1. Keep these enjoyable reports coming, Gerald

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope you are feeling better Jane. Enjoying the blogs.x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Jane. It's marvellous to or how you are getting on in Nepal. It seems that you are doing a brilliant job in the classroom as always. I hope your Nepalese is improving so I car test you later.
    Keep up the great work.
    Stephen

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hope the bitey things leave you alone. The classes sound really interesting.

    ReplyDelete