Hey gang, it's been a while. As it is, I'm squeezing this in between the insanity of Parent's Day and the hectic-ness of Term Tests. I'm busy in a good way, but still wanted to get an update posted while I had a quick minute. I haven't been getting much sleep lately because the Tibetan community down the hill has been keeping drums going for 12 days straight, which is standard for a wedding or a death in the community. It's beautiful, but not so great for getting shut-eye, even with ear plugs :)
The pictures attached are from the big Parent's Day program that my students pulled off this past weekend; I don't think I've ever seen a school take something so seriously, even the magazine sale for all you IC alums. It was incredibly fun, but I feel like I haven't actually taught English in ages. Sirish Maharjan is on the right, the star of my English Drama, "The Tricky Fox" which was equally a blast and a total disaster (should have known better than to include a live chicken). The girls in the picture with me are a couple of my class 6 girls. I promise that Archana on my left smiles 99% of the time; we were just caught in the midst of Parent's Day exhaustion. She's also not 7 feet tall... I'm sitting. Within the next couple of weeks I'll be posting a whole slew of pictures from the weekend and the past couple months, which is way overdue.
As difficult as it would be to miss the beauty in a typical day here, I find it even more difficult to describe. Any given rainy Tuesday is a full day... a day of running to homeroom with six girls crowded under my umbrella... of leeches and monsoon showers during 3rd period (and 4th, and 5th and 6th, you get the idea). It's a day of 47 deep breaths after the bell, of inadvertantly brilliant answers, of "Miss, you're so tall!", of tying the shoes of restless boys on their way to lunch, of mountain peaks and rushed daal bhaat with the staff, of class after class after class after dress rehearsal. It's a day of tiny flippers in the swimming pool, of seeing Ashish make an effort, of the twins in 3A holding hands all day, of "Miss, have you been in love?" and monkeys on the roof during 4th period. I chase the boys up the slide, help the Class 9 smarties with questions before some test, and go off on tangents in the classroom that leads to shouting Shakespeare at my confused 6th graders. In accordance with Nepali culture, we stop quite often throughout all of this to drink tea.
I hop home like a lunatic in my futile attempt to avoid leeches. Chris is studying Sanskrit with a teacher from school in the kitchen and Denise has gone to the store to buy more onions, which we never have enough of, while I throw the frisbee with the kids who live downstairs. Sambid attacks his father with a bamboo stick and they disappear past the gate. Kagendra Sir fires the frisbee too hard and Sampada (in class 9 and one of my basketball girls) clings behind me for dear life. Kagendra's wife leans against the porch post in a beautiful picture that's not being taken. She laughs every time I make the throwing-up motion when we talk about her morning sickness. It's every morning these days as our strange little makeshift family expects a baby any day now.
Buddhiraj Sir has escaped Sambid's attack while his wife is pulling the spinach apart for dinner and telling me I'm not fat enough. I could never eat enough rice to make Nepalis happy. I tell her once again that if she'd cook for me every night, then maybe we wouldn't have a problem. Another frisbee throw cuts me off mid-sentence and I yell and swear at Kagendra Sir in Nepali even though he's my superior at school and speaks fluent English. When it gets too dark for frisbee and the mosquitos come out to join the bats, we head inside to make dinner, tell classroom horror stories, do impressions of our students, and fall into bed exhausted. And then it's Wednesday.
The pictures attached are from the big Parent's Day program that my students pulled off this past weekend; I don't think I've ever seen a school take something so seriously, even the magazine sale for all you IC alums. It was incredibly fun, but I feel like I haven't actually taught English in ages. Sirish Maharjan is on the right, the star of my English Drama, "The Tricky Fox" which was equally a blast and a total disaster (should have known better than to include a live chicken). The girls in the picture with me are a couple of my class 6 girls. I promise that Archana on my left smiles 99% of the time; we were just caught in the midst of Parent's Day exhaustion. She's also not 7 feet tall... I'm sitting. Within the next couple of weeks I'll be posting a whole slew of pictures from the weekend and the past couple months, which is way overdue.
As difficult as it would be to miss the beauty in a typical day here, I find it even more difficult to describe. Any given rainy Tuesday is a full day... a day of running to homeroom with six girls crowded under my umbrella... of leeches and monsoon showers during 3rd period (and 4th, and 5th and 6th, you get the idea). It's a day of 47 deep breaths after the bell, of inadvertantly brilliant answers, of "Miss, you're so tall!", of tying the shoes of restless boys on their way to lunch, of mountain peaks and rushed daal bhaat with the staff, of class after class after class after dress rehearsal. It's a day of tiny flippers in the swimming pool, of seeing Ashish make an effort, of the twins in 3A holding hands all day, of "Miss, have you been in love?" and monkeys on the roof during 4th period. I chase the boys up the slide, help the Class 9 smarties with questions before some test, and go off on tangents in the classroom that leads to shouting Shakespeare at my confused 6th graders. In accordance with Nepali culture, we stop quite often throughout all of this to drink tea.
I hop home like a lunatic in my futile attempt to avoid leeches. Chris is studying Sanskrit with a teacher from school in the kitchen and Denise has gone to the store to buy more onions, which we never have enough of, while I throw the frisbee with the kids who live downstairs. Sambid attacks his father with a bamboo stick and they disappear past the gate. Kagendra Sir fires the frisbee too hard and Sampada (in class 9 and one of my basketball girls) clings behind me for dear life. Kagendra's wife leans against the porch post in a beautiful picture that's not being taken. She laughs every time I make the throwing-up motion when we talk about her morning sickness. It's every morning these days as our strange little makeshift family expects a baby any day now.
Buddhiraj Sir has escaped Sambid's attack while his wife is pulling the spinach apart for dinner and telling me I'm not fat enough. I could never eat enough rice to make Nepalis happy. I tell her once again that if she'd cook for me every night, then maybe we wouldn't have a problem. Another frisbee throw cuts me off mid-sentence and I yell and swear at Kagendra Sir in Nepali even though he's my superior at school and speaks fluent English. When it gets too dark for frisbee and the mosquitos come out to join the bats, we head inside to make dinner, tell classroom horror stories, do impressions of our students, and fall into bed exhausted. And then it's Wednesday.
I see myself very clearly on days like this, except it's through the eyes of the people around me, particularly my students. I see myself as they see me. From class 1 to 10, I think the consensus is the same... older, taller, whiter. But most of all, I see what they see... that I love it here. It's not perfect and it's not easy, but days like this one are real, and the view from their eyes is certainly a good one. As always, thanks for being there to hear about it. It means the world to me to hear from so many of you as often as I do. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading. --Sar
