You...Baby...Come?

We just got in from school and we went to say hello to the children. The first thing Sangmu did when she saw me was poke my belly and ask “you…baby…come?” That is the second time I have been asked since we have been here, last time was the day that the baby birds were born. The same question was asked then they made a baby coming out motion and a whoosh noise. It was really funny. I guess that I am not using my best posture oh well.

Today I taught my first English class at the school. We were learning about where things are in a room, for example front, back, middle, in-between, to the right of, to the left of, outside, inside. I also taught the lesson on climate. It was about the monsoon weather in Nepal and how it makes Nepal a good climate for growing food. It difficult to teach when I don’t understand what they are yelling at me. The class was insane. I had to try and describe what a walnut, millet, barley, and tobacco was. The Headmistress of the school sat in for the class and wanted me to draw examples of them. Overall she said that I did a fantastic job teaching and see liked the lesson a lot. I was kind of hoping that she would think that I did a bad job so that we would not have to teach any more.

There is a separate volunteer group at the school that is a Jewish program and they work with the students teaching dancing, drama, singing, and are doing projects to better the school grounds. We are trying to start working with them so that we do not have to teach any more English. We are ending up just doing the teachers jobs for them and they do so much better because they understand everything that the students are saying. They do a fabulous job most of the time. Some of the sentences that they and the book come up with are hilarious. In class today for homework they had to answer the question “The boy had the cobbler …… his hair (cut, to cut, cutting). She is very cruel she….her children to polish them (made, make, to make). We sit in class some of the time and just try to resist the urge to laugh at the teacher and the book.

We are doing really well here and adapting to everything. Today as we were walking home from school which takes about 25 minutes, about how we are not afraid of the busses taxis, and motorcycles that are coming full speed right at us. We just kind of step out of the way and expect them to swerve away from us. It does not faze me at all anymore. We walk to school in the morning go home for lunch and back to school after lunch and occasionally we will walk somewhere in the evening so we are doing tons of walking and getting used to the traffic. The traffic as well as the dogs that are sleeping anywhere they want to, the trash on the streets, fruit people everywhere, meat stands with whole chickens, bowls of chicken feet, and goat heads. We still have not figured out what the goat heads are for they kind of look like shrunken heads if you know please tell me.

I did my laundry for the first time here 2 days ago. It really makes me appreciate my washer and drier ,and now that I am wearing my clothes, my fabric softener. I did it with a bar of soap and lots of water and then hung them on the roof to dry. I did my laundry in the afternoon after class so the sun was starting to set by the time I had finished so in the morning when I went to go and get my towel it was still sopping wet. I had to dry off after the shower with wash clothes.
Anyway all is going great. Can’t wait to share more experiences. Let me know if you have any questions..Miss you all

Namaste

Amanda