(Picture - Two boys in mine and Meena's class at the school, Picas and Denis)
Hi everyone,
So on Saturday a few of us got up early to catch the public bus to
Kathmandu - one of the volunteers host sister Sabina came with us to
help us haggle and make sure we didn't get lost - a very important job!
The bus journey was certainly a very interesting one! We were all
dreading it because we'd heard lots of stories about it being very busy
and there being lots of pick pocketers; but luckily we didn't have that
experience. The buses are much much much more different to English
buses - there are no official bus stops, just a start point and an end.
There is a boy who hangs out the door yelling in Nepali that the bus
is going to Kathmandu and you can get on if you want. The roads are
pretty bad - we were jumping all over the place! On the bright side, it only cost 12 ruppees for a 30-45 min journey! (123 = 1
pound). Anyway, we arrived in Kathmandu and WOW it was soooo
hot! I don't think I've ever experienced heat like that before - but
that wasn't going to stop us shopping! We shopped for a few hours,
stopped for lunch at "Crazy Burger" who must be making serious money
from some of the volunteers thanks to us all missing english food!
We then continued shopping and decided it was probably time to catch a
bus back. However before that some of us (very stupidly) decided to
risk having an icecream before we left...which I later regretted when I
was ill overnight and for the whole of Sunday :(
On our journey back from Kathmandu to Sirutar we go through slums -
people have built "homes" on the side of a VERY polluted dirty river where people put their rubbish.
We've seen the slums before but we've never stopped in the middle of
them - we were all silent the rest of the journey back. I think in a
few weeks we'll be visiting them too which I'm sure will be a very
emotional trip for all of us.
When we arrived back in Sirutar I put my bag down and Gyanu (my
older sister) quickly told me I'd be walking to Lubhoo with her so off
we went to pick up some clothes that had been made. We came back and
then me and Meena played Ramu and Ben 10 at Badminton - I'm proud to
say that England beat Nepal! Haha.
The following day I was ill so didn't go to work, was feeling a bit
better after tiffin though so went to our weekly venture meeting. Every
week we have a different chairperson so this week I decided to
volunteer to be the chairperson so we had the meeting, I sent the
minutes off to Platform2 and then it was time for Meena, Harriet,
Jamie, Hina, Jahira and I to go to the local school for the first time
to teach/interact! It was so scary. As we were walking to the school
most of the children were outside practicing this march type thing for
a competition, the children and the other volunteers laughed and took
many photos when I decided to join in :) I think I was pretty good at
it too!
We did eventually get into a classroom with the children. Meena and I
were paired together and were so scared! We decided to first all of go
round the class and ask them their name and ages...and they were all
very polite and stood up and answered. We quickly realised we had two
VERY confident 13 year old boys in our class called Dennis and
"Because" (his name is pronounced because but I don't know how you
spell it) who asked us a lot of silly questions, told us we were
beautiful and asked us to sing and dance - oh dear. We taught them
about English festivals because they have a major festival coming up
and then let them ask us questions. At the end of the lesson they all stood up and sung their national anthem to us.
After the lesson we were all pretty much dead so went to the project office and watched a good old girly film!
When we returned home our older sister gave me and Meena a present each
- it was really cute heart keyring that had our name engraved in it -
dunno what the occasion was but it was sooo sweet! After dinner I found
out I could watch Aston Villa on tv at my homestay and was very excited
when I found it on tv...only to be heartbroken when 10 minutes before
kick off there was a powercut - I was not a happy Aishwarya haha! But my host
brother called his friend who managed to record it for me so I watched
that yesterday! :) It's crazy how I'm not that committed to the football at home, but here it's become kinda important because it makes me feel kinda closer to my dad and brothers.
On Monday we had our mid term seminar from 10.30 til 3pm. It was
actually quite fun although each groups presentation was meant to be an
hour long and everyones ended up being about 15 mins long! Woops! My little group were responsible for talking about construction and we (Holly) drew a rather beautiful poster of us all on the work site! It should def. be put in a gallery.
Yesterday we had a full days work again which was pretty difficult
because we haven't had a full days work since Wednesday and it wasn't very interesting at the work site! After work I had a shower - there was the
biggest strangest looking bug in my shower EVER - I screamed for Ganu to
come save me! Her and my little niece Princess laughed at me for a good ten minutes! After that eventful shower, I went to my Nepalese lesson and received post
(thank you to everyone who's sent me a letter - I reeeally appreciate
it!) and then I went home. Jahira came over for dinner which was fun and I think my Nepali family (especially my Ba and Dai) love interacting with the other volunteers.
Today we finally finished levelling the ground! I'm
absolutely knackered! My right hand is covered in blisters from wheel
barrowing so much! We have
even started building the inner foundation wall of the school; we've had some problems though because
the rain keeps causing land slides which are a pain!
Gonna go now because other people want the computer, but I'll update
again soon! Going to the orphanage on Saturday and Maiti Nepal on Monday
which will be emotional!!
Lots of love,
Alyx
xxxx
