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Hello :) sorry for being such a late blog but its pretty busy here and settling into a routine has made day to day life feel almost normal which it hasn't been for a good few months!! I maintain the view that Kathmandu is completely craaazy but once you get used to it it's great fun and I've started really enjoying the hectic taxi rides, manic streets and beautiful but dusty temple towns!
As I've said I've settled into a routine which is nice but as the timings are so weird here (up at 6:30 for teaching and in bed by 9:30 because of the black out and curfew) I think my body is still on Chinese time!! In the mornings I get up and have some breakfast which is usually some toasts d a banana, and then have a couple of hours to kill before lesson planning. We each have a sheet to fill in for our lesson and look at our workbooks and decide what we want to teach the children and how we want to do it. I take the advanced grade 2 class (aged from 6-9) who are very sweet and good at English but the book we're teaching from always seems too easy for them! We (veronica and i take the class together) use conversations where they have to come up to the front of the class in pairs and read it through as this is something their teacher never has time for. We also go through vocab by drawing pictures on the board and they have to copy and complete the words. They love the pictures so we make an effort to make them as innovative as possible! Only problem was my snake yesterday was a little too exciting it seemed and they all wanted me to go round doing it in their books..they settled for their own squiggly line in the end :) it's very funny how the girls make everything so neat, do everything as soon as its on the board and want you to approve their work every 5 second whilst the boys need a nudge and and reminder of what they're supposed to be doing all the time..some things never change ;) it can be pretty crazy in the classroom with all the children yelling 'miss' 'miss' 'miss' all the time but we've now got a sense of order established. The children are very sweet and all really want to learn English. We also paint in the school in one of the classrooms before class and that's coming along nicely with lots of quotations to inspire them..some of them don't quite make sense to me but oh well :) it's very funny being the only English person in the project as I notice things and pronunciations that others don't such as sometimes people say 'tie' for 'thigh' because of their accents and the students copy :) I'm surreptitiously slipping my English in when I can...like in the spelling of aeroplane and pronunciation of 'H' but I've been told I have to teach a 'G' with a longer tail which is weird..oh well! The children all love chanting so we do a lot of that and singing (the good morning and good bye songs are great!) oh and we have some good hangman sessions to finish the lesson :)
We then take our tuktuk (it costs 11p per journey, you slam on the roof when you want to get out, you throw the money at the driver whilst they're driving and they squeeze everyone on top of eachother..crazy.) back to camp for some lunch which is usually rice, vegetable curry and a chapati. We have some free time then for exploring or going to buy fabric..I'm obsessed with the tailors as they're so sweet and can make anything you want..loving my new Nepalese outfits and planning on getting a Saari next week!! My new trousers are soooo comfy!
We then plan our teaching session for the afternoon at the carpet factory- what and how we want to teach the women and what we want to do with the children. The class is held in a tiny corrugated iron shed in the factory (its absolutely boiling in there!!) which is made up of a few other similar small buildings and all the workers live in these little rooms surrounding the factory. They work really hard but are very quick to throw down their yarn and come to class when we arrive :)
As it's difficult to teach everyone because they're all of such different abilities and we've now split the class up into 3 groups. I teach the newbies who are just learning how to write and say our letters and I must say it was very difficult at the beginning going back to basics and teaching them the difference between capital letters and small letters. They still get rather muddled with their little a's b's and d's and I think I confused them further on my first day by going all the way through the alphabet with look, cover, write, check and following the dots but leaving them no time to memorise them..oops! Also when I was teaching on my first day, I taught them how to sound out the letters and said 'yup' when they got it right.. this wasn't a great technique as they copied me saying 'yup' thinking that was the correct way of saying it..oops again! I've now got my teaching technique down (YEY!) and we've got all the way to 'H' by memory now!! So happy as they couldn't remember Aa-Dd a few days ago. I also give them exercises where they have to join 'D' to 'd, 'E' to 'e' etc which is good for helping them understand that the letters are different but still have the same sound. The women I'm in charge of are so sweet and we have a laugh when we can't understand eachother and we're just left gesturing. They're quite shy and nervous but are progressing well. We have also taught them 'how are you?' with 'I am tired/happy/sad' rather than just 'fine' all the time and 'how old are you'.
We then play with the children and play educational games such as a version of bingo and they had to match up the word to the picture and say what it was. We also start this lesson with the 'hello' song and finish with the 'goodbye' song..voice being put to the test :) the children range in age from 2-9 and are really sweet and their English is much better than their parents'. They loove UNO but so do the children at the orphanage where other volunteers go so we bought another copy and a new pictureka game the other day which they enjoyed. Yesterday we were taught a Nepalese game by them which was kind of like red rover and crazy and noisy and you have to yell 'gobbledygobbeldygobbeldy' and dive on the floor..! The whole carpet factory crowded around to watch us make fools of ourselves so that was fun :)
Last weekend (Friday and Saturday..weird I know) Rafael and I went to Bhuktapur on Friday and we all went to Patan on Saturday. Both of these provinces of Kathmandu are very nice and have beautiful temples covered in dust and being climbed over left right and centre. The people who live there sit and chat or watch the world go by and every temple building surface is packed! I'm not gonna lie..I'm feeling rather templed out after 4 months so am looking forward to this weekend where we're going to a hotel pool for one day and spending Saturday souvenir shopping...it's addictive and there's just so much to buy! Wish I had endless funds :):) my house would look very cool. We've also done yoga, a cooking class where we watched our supper being cooked and helped with the momos and a Nepalese class.
Anyways that's it for this update, miss everyone!
Lots of love, Flo x x x
- comments
Caroline Baldwin Gosh. They do put you in the deep end but so lovely to see their faces light up when they get it. Enjoy this weekend. Take care x
YKW This is my favourite blog by far Floey! Can totally picture you with all the children, I imagine you are brilliant with them xxx
Mum I've always said you would make a great teacher !:) it's all in the snake drawing , its got to be fun, a must with children! A wonderful experience and so worthwhile , missing you and take care on this the last stint , much love , mum xx