June 22 2009

June 22, 2009

Today was such a busy day. Uma’s niece is getting married this week and so she was having a Puja with her family and Nabina had to help get ready for that. I woke up at 7 and made the vegetables for the children’s breakfast. I also fed them breakfast. There was so much rice I didn’t know how much to give them. They ended up with plates filled with rice in the end. I am surprised how much the children eat. After the kids were ready for school we ate breakfast of Nepalese sweets. Me and Josh then headed to the day care where there were 19 children under the age of 2 or 3. They were pretty upset this morning and were all crying when we got there. I played with a baby that is 10 months old mostly today. Her name is Christina and she is so adorable. After she went down for a nap I helped put a few more children down for their naps and Josh, Shir, Emily and I went to lunch. We went to KCQ which has a large menu with lots of Continental items on it. I had chow mien (which is a new favorite of mine I eat it almost everywhere we go) butter naan and a cold 7-up. As we were walking to go get ice cream from the Sweet Cave (they have all kinds of Nepalese sweet and amazing ice cream for super cheap) we noticed that there were police stopping traffic for a Banda. All the shops were closed down and there were no cars on Kalimati (our main street that we walk on everywhere). As we turned the corner there was a large group of people carrying signs and they were shouting as they walked down the street. (We found out that a student from the area was killed, I think from a hostage situation, from the area and they were protesting her death). When we got to the Sweet Cave it was closed but there were several men outside the gate and we asked if they were closed and they said no and let us in.

At the school we taught 2 library classes with Danny (a volunteer here with a Jewish Group, I can never remember the name of it but it is based out of Israel). We taught grades 2 and 5 today. In grade 2 we read them a story and had them draw a picture of their favorite character from the book. In grade 5 we read them a story but we stopped with a few pages left in the book and had them talk in groups about how they think that the story should end. It was really fun. I had no idea was the story was about or what their answers were but Bishnu (a local who comes and helps us with classes) told us that their answers were way better than the actual ending of the book. After classes we had a meeting to discuss how we are going to teach the teachers at the school how to use the library to enhance creativity in the children. We will be holding a teachers training meeting hopefully on July 6^th if all goes as planned.

Danny invited Josh and I to go to an International Music Festival that was held at the French Culture Center in the area where we are living. It was so funny. It was several different Nepali groups going rap and hip hop. A lot of it was in English I don’t know if they knew what they were saying or not but it was really fun. There were several different people from the Jewish group all there (we have been saying for over a month now that we are going to get together outside of the school sometime). We had a really fun crowd of Israeli, Nepali and Americans out with us. We also met some other Americans that are here studying Buddhism. They also told me about activities that are going on in the country on the 4^th of July for Americans who will be here so we should be meeting up with them to celebrate. It was so much crazy fun dancing I am so tired now but I hope that I have many more days like this coming up.

We have been invited to Uma’s nieces wedding this week on Thursday and Friday. I have also been invited to go to the Jewish groups big Friday night dinner so it should be a fabulous week very very busy.