Sunrise/ Sunset

I feel as though I have been so flat out the last few days and haven't fully caught up on sleep yet, so I apologise for the delay in getting this latest entry out.

After teaching again Thursday and Friday, we were lucky enough to have a day off to ourselves. After finishing at the school on Friday we had a couple of cars come and get eight of us to head up to the mountains. We were headed for the village of Nagarkot, some 2000 metres high with breathtaking views of the Langtang Himalayan Ranges. The drive was fun (any driving in Nepal is fun; CRAZY fun!) and we got to see a piece of the countryside for the first time since we got here (we also literally saw a chicken cross the road but did not stop to find out why). We arrived at the hotel in Nagarkot with only minutes to spare until sunset, so we raced like mad up the stairs to the roof of the hotel to see one of the most stunning sunsets I have ever witnessed. After this we had dinner (a delicious Nepali buffet of Dal Bhat Tarkari and sides) and then chilled out having a few drinks.

New friends, good food and beautiful sunset at Nagarkot.

We were all kind of excited that we had somewhere nice and quiet to sleep for once compared to the constant noise at our Hotel in Kathmandu; the downside though was that we had to be up at 6am to see the sunrise. Words cannot describe how amazing the sunrise was; suffice to say it was completely worth the early wake up. The sunrise from Nagarkot looks over the Himalayas, so the light reflects off the snow capped peaks in a way that invokes feelings of awe and wonder. Awe that these peaks are almost 3 times the height of Australia's tallest peak (the tallest I had seen before) and wonder at how anyone could ever get sick of looking at them.

Sunrise over the Langtang Himalaya Mountains, Nagarkot.

On our way back from Nagarkot we headed further out to the "village" of Panauti (pronounced Pan-ow-tea); I would almost call this place a small city rather than a village though. Panauti is the village that Bec Ordish from the Mitrataa foundation calls home and is about an hours drive outside of Kathmandu. When we arrived, their was a victory celebration for the Communist Party (who must have won the local seat in the election) so there were people everywhere and a big procession. We had to pull over for a bit to let it pass. After this, we meandered down to the river where we saw local women washing their clothes and bathing. It was a hub of activity and it was interesting to see this facet of Nepali life. What struck me most was that people will drink and bathe in the water, yet they do not think twice about throwing their rubbish in there. I thought quite a lot about why the people here in Nepal have no problems littering and why they do not try to promote trash collection and proper disposal. I imagine how Nepal would look if people made more effort to keep their cities and towns clean. If anything, this makes me realise how much we take trash collection for granted back home.

The sights of Pinauti

Saturday was our only day off, so we were back at school on Sunday and Monday. Since Sunday, we have got to teach our classes on our own which has been fantastic. Planning lessons has been a little different to how we would do it in Australia but I have made do with the time, resources and equipment I have. One thing I have learnt is that if you give a stamp to one class, you have to expect that the entire school will also want one (my dragon stamp was the choice for boys and the butterfly one for girls); even my teacher wanted a stamp. This is something so simple, yet giving the students a stamp was a big deal for them as they do not seem to get many 'things'. It was a real novelty and it was so gratifying seeing how happy they were to show their 'ink' off to the rest of the school. I even got mobbed by the grade 3 and 4 kids at lunch time because they wanted one.

As a teacher, I am learning more and more about my teaching style and how I would do things differently in Australia. For example, most Australian classrooms are at least double the size that I have to deal with here; this means that it is harder here to do anything other than sitting at a desk. I enjoyed taking the grade 1 children outside to learn about division today rather than just taking notes from the board. In Australia as well, there is not as much pressure as there is here to teach to a test. This can be frustrating because you want your students to be free thinkers and embrace different types of challenges. I want to teach in a way that is student centred and encourage higher order thinking; I don't want to just stand at the front of a class and tell them what to learn because it is going to be in their end of term exam; I want to encourage discussion with them and allow a level of freedom to learn at their own pace. I feel like the pace of learning here is not suited to a large percentage of the students.

The rest of this week will be spent at the school and on Friday we fly off to the city of Pokhara to chill out on our last few days in Nepal; I can't wait.

Playground shenanigans, Riviera International School, Chabahil, Kathmandu