Me putting on my basket to get some water at the tap
And then there was this guy with a fancy camera who took some pictures of us, which I gladly stole from him. When you click on the pictures they *should* get bigger, if you want to look at them more closely.
The adventures this week, as concise as possible because as always no time and I have to write before there is another power cut-a race against the clock:
#1 Dora was sick all week-and she still is. She was yellow, very very yellow and has now been spending at least a week at Manjil's mother's place in Damauli with some sort of liver infection, unable to move or to eat. She looks like a Simpson, except also her eyes are yellow.
#2 With Dora being sick, we had to all think of what to do with the 25 children who were usually under her care (the monkey class and the hippo class), I did this together with Tilu, Kim and Sekuntala, which was great and exhausting at the same time, especially on the days that the children wanted to climb out of the window.
#3 In this class there are children ranging from 3 to 7 years old, and it took a week before Amen (a 3 year old boy) stopped crying incessably in class-or anywhere really-poor boy:)
#4 I gave a singing class to the simba class, and when the song proved to be a bit too difficult to them, Kushal suggested 'you sing, we dance, ok?' so this is what we did. I love these kids.
#5 Twelve new kids arrived from the East Maya school, which also is under threat of being closed down. They will now also live at Maya school for the next three months while Manjil and others are trying to save their school. Maya school also adopted two boys from Kathmandu. For ever. Such a strange thought.
#6 The new kids from the East school had very very veeeery many lice, like their hair was some kind of squirmy black grassland, so we had to cut the hair of some of them quite short-which looks actually elegant on the girls. Maybe I should cut my hair too, because the lice are building a nice village on my head as well. SHAVE IT ALL OFF! Bald Weike, what a sight.
#7 Then we jokingly told the girls who were already living with us that we would cut their hair too (in their sleep), which resulted in a lot of girls crying literally all afternoon and at night they all went to bed with a towel around their hair, haha. Childhood traumas in the making.
#8 One night all the volunteers practied parts of the New Zealand Hakka (some kind of aggressive dance they perform before a football game) until 3 'o clock in the morning, and the next morning for the morning games we did the dance in front of the children, and we won the game for the first time in history-they were so impressed, ahem. These kids are very difficult to beat though, in our defence. 'Kamata Kamata Korre Korre, Timata Timete Hurre hurre. A Hupane, a Hupane, A hupane hupane Mafasa Fitere Fititera!'
#9 I am finally managing to have very short and shallow conversations in nepali. But when I go shopping and I ask 'Koti paisa ho' (how much is it) and when they answer in nepali I usually get a little lost and just give them a big bill so that they won't notice that I actually have no clue about nepali numbers above 20. I love screaming HOINA (no!) when the children are naughty, with the meanest intonation I can come up with. Nepali is such a beautiful language :)
#10 Not only am I learning nepali, my English is also nepalizing. I catch myself saying 'eeschool' instead of school, and 'same same' and just generally speaking with the kids intonation. So bad, but funny at the same time.
#11 For the next weeks the weather forecast is 35 degrees celcius every day so I hope I will survive until the next blog post. Fortunately in the shop next to the downhouse they sell burraf, which is frozen milk mixed with sugar and massala, a very strange yet refreshing mixture.
# 12 Wanting to buy burraf but having no money is very sad and problematic but because my sweet sweet daddy was playing with my internet banking my card is now blocked so I didn't manage to get any money out last week. Fortunately now I tried with my credid card and that still works. Stop looking at my bank statements Theo, I still have enough money!. Don't worry-money doesn't move very fast here. One burraf popcicle is 5 NRs. Which equals 5 eurocents. Party time.
# 13 At full moon I couldn't sleep all night so I spent the night staring at the moon, walking to the uphouse though the jungle, trying to sleep on the balcony there, failing because of musquitos, waiting until sunrise and then walking back to the downhouse to try and sleep some more. Sleepless nights can be very exciting with animal sounds in the forests and mist covering all the mountains.
#14 Those musquitos are an adventure in themselves. Those bloody, bloody musquitos. Die.
With this cheerful ending I will end this post, write you guys next time!
And then there was this guy with a fancy camera who took some pictures of us, which I gladly stole from him. When you click on the pictures they *should* get bigger, if you want to look at them more closely.
The adventures this week, as concise as possible because as always no time and I have to write before there is another power cut-a race against the clock:
#1 Dora was sick all week-and she still is. She was yellow, very very yellow and has now been spending at least a week at Manjil's mother's place in Damauli with some sort of liver infection, unable to move or to eat. She looks like a Simpson, except also her eyes are yellow.
#2 With Dora being sick, we had to all think of what to do with the 25 children who were usually under her care (the monkey class and the hippo class), I did this together with Tilu, Kim and Sekuntala, which was great and exhausting at the same time, especially on the days that the children wanted to climb out of the window.
#3 In this class there are children ranging from 3 to 7 years old, and it took a week before Amen (a 3 year old boy) stopped crying incessably in class-or anywhere really-poor boy:)
#4 I gave a singing class to the simba class, and when the song proved to be a bit too difficult to them, Kushal suggested 'you sing, we dance, ok?' so this is what we did. I love these kids.
#5 Twelve new kids arrived from the East Maya school, which also is under threat of being closed down. They will now also live at Maya school for the next three months while Manjil and others are trying to save their school. Maya school also adopted two boys from Kathmandu. For ever. Such a strange thought.
#6 The new kids from the East school had very very veeeery many lice, like their hair was some kind of squirmy black grassland, so we had to cut the hair of some of them quite short-which looks actually elegant on the girls. Maybe I should cut my hair too, because the lice are building a nice village on my head as well. SHAVE IT ALL OFF! Bald Weike, what a sight.
#7 Then we jokingly told the girls who were already living with us that we would cut their hair too (in their sleep), which resulted in a lot of girls crying literally all afternoon and at night they all went to bed with a towel around their hair, haha. Childhood traumas in the making.
#8 One night all the volunteers practied parts of the New Zealand Hakka (some kind of aggressive dance they perform before a football game) until 3 'o clock in the morning, and the next morning for the morning games we did the dance in front of the children, and we won the game for the first time in history-they were so impressed, ahem. These kids are very difficult to beat though, in our defence. 'Kamata Kamata Korre Korre, Timata Timete Hurre hurre. A Hupane, a Hupane, A hupane hupane Mafasa Fitere Fititera!'
#9 I am finally managing to have very short and shallow conversations in nepali. But when I go shopping and I ask 'Koti paisa ho' (how much is it) and when they answer in nepali I usually get a little lost and just give them a big bill so that they won't notice that I actually have no clue about nepali numbers above 20. I love screaming HOINA (no!) when the children are naughty, with the meanest intonation I can come up with. Nepali is such a beautiful language :)
#10 Not only am I learning nepali, my English is also nepalizing. I catch myself saying 'eeschool' instead of school, and 'same same' and just generally speaking with the kids intonation. So bad, but funny at the same time.
#11 For the next weeks the weather forecast is 35 degrees celcius every day so I hope I will survive until the next blog post. Fortunately in the shop next to the downhouse they sell burraf, which is frozen milk mixed with sugar and massala, a very strange yet refreshing mixture.
# 12 Wanting to buy burraf but having no money is very sad and problematic but because my sweet sweet daddy was playing with my internet banking my card is now blocked so I didn't manage to get any money out last week. Fortunately now I tried with my credid card and that still works. Stop looking at my bank statements Theo, I still have enough money!. Don't worry-money doesn't move very fast here. One burraf popcicle is 5 NRs. Which equals 5 eurocents. Party time.
# 13 At full moon I couldn't sleep all night so I spent the night staring at the moon, walking to the uphouse though the jungle, trying to sleep on the balcony there, failing because of musquitos, waiting until sunrise and then walking back to the downhouse to try and sleep some more. Sleepless nights can be very exciting with animal sounds in the forests and mist covering all the mountains.
#14 Those musquitos are an adventure in themselves. Those bloody, bloody musquitos. Die.
With this cheerful ending I will end this post, write you guys next time!
Walking around in rainy Damauli
Parvati, the perfect student
Me and the Monkeys doing our morning ritual of goodmorning songs
Deinora smurfing the stones to smurf some steps
Neville looking like a smurf
Headmaster with no shoes-talk of the village
'Eating time' -me running to my breakfast of Dal-Bhat