Wednesday 3rd October
We didn't have chocolate lastnight, we polished off a few biscuits whilst watching the big bang theory, then we watched about 15 minutes of stargate then about 5 minutes of lee Evans....we won't have anything to watch in a couple of months if we keep it up! The big bang theory is good enough to rewatch episodes though and we have quite a few films on each iPad so we will be ok.
I dreamed about home again, I often dream about my friends, I've had a dream with my grandma in the other day. Liam had the same dream as me lastnight, we both dreamed we went home for a few days from Nepal before heading back out to Vietnam. He dreamed we bought a house and we had to rent it out for us going away again, and i dreamed I was trying to eat as many jammy dodgers as i could before we left!!
We awoke to more bits of wood and dust on the floor from the termites. You hear them at it all the time and if you have a good night the wood goes on the floor, a bad night and it falls through your net onto you or the sleeping stuff. The smell of the room is starting to get to the both of us when we wake up, it smells like a lumbermill all the time and everything's always musty and a bit damp!
I'm craving rice pudding, we had some the other day for tiffin and I loved it. I keep saying I want some more but they got it from another house and aren't allowed to make it themselves as part of their restrictions from their grandmother dying earlier this year. After Dahl baht I had a bit of rice with some buffalo milk thinking it might be similar but it was nothing like it :(
Same morning routine as all the other days, apart from we cant see as much today because of lots of cloud. Its quite nice though because it feels like youre really high up- which we are I suppose! We headed up for the 20 minute trek to the school. I decided to sweep the medical centre because I've never seen them do it and there was all sorts on the floor;I got loads of stuff up. They have a cleaner, I said to bibas that the floor was filthy and asked why the cleaner hadn't swept it...no answer really. I said that the bucket of waste including blood soaked bandages and needles had not been sorted in 3 days and explained how unhygienic it was. I cleaned the utensils as well, all within view of the staff. I told them that in England they clean medical centres and hospitals all of the time, and that it shouldn't be any different here because people were still sick. I'm going to buy them some hand sanitiser when we go to trishuli but said I would only get them cleaning stuff if they promised to use it like I show them and not let it all sit in a corner gathering dust! I cleaned up a gash on a mans head today and redressed it, took some temperatures, blood pressures and gave out a few medicines. Again I showed my disapproval of them giving antibiotics to a lady who came in complaining of what sounded like a cold but I've learned it falls on deaf ears now!
We have some really nice biscuits in the morning that I've mentioned before, so I got bibas to take me up to another shop to see if they had any. Nobody has any left until the next delivery in a few days time :( I asked about the price of other biscuits....and I heard the lady clearly say 10 in Nepali, then saw bibas whisper to her before she increased the price from 10 to 15. When bibas told me 15 I said to him that I'd heard her say 10, he tried to make out it was because she was looking at the better quality biscuits. But this had happened before a few days ago at another shop where they've once tried to short change us by 100, and upped the price from 10 to 15 on a product. I made it clear that I knew what he'd done and that I wasn't buying. It's put me in a foul mood! We've learned some basic nepali and get the gist of a lot of conversations which I think they forget. It got me thinking back to the Internet cafe on the weekend, they overcharged us by about 80 rupee for our Internet use, and we noticed and said but suddenly nobody quite understood what we were saying. We left it because it's really not that much money at all to us but after it happening a few times that's not the point!
I did the 5 classes again today, I try to be quite interactive and getting them up moving around but I'm still not sure they understand half of the stuff. There's only 2 teachers that have good English the rest don't really understand to help translate. I had some up teaching them head shoulders knees and toes today, and a science lesson with a bucket of water with various objects teaching them sink or float.Liam had a boy throw some stones at him today, he dragged him to the teachers office expecting him to be told off but the teacher started slapping him really hard across the face. I think Liam feels a bit bad about it. But he also told me today that he's started doing what the other teachers do and when the children havnt completed their homework throwing their book at them and 'tapping'them round the head! But I've seen the teachers and they don't tap, they slap, and they pull their ears and stuff. I think he's getting a bit power mad! He loves all the attention he gets at the school from the children and the teachers. He says he likes making them laugh, I watch him and he always goes out of his way to get their attention and get a laugh from everybody!
After school I got Liam to go up to the shop and ask for the packet of biscuits that had been upped to 15 earlier in the day. A different person was serving and and they suddenly went back down to 10! Confirmed my suspicions from earlier! We walked back with about 8 students who were hanging back for us to follow us and giggle. The girls seem to like my bag but I've noticed most people in Nepal seem engrossed by it which is weird because I bought it in thailand so it's not particularly western. Maybe it's just because I'm wearing it.
We sat watching the household stuff going on whilst secretly munching on our new 10 rupee purchase, feeling a bit naughty for not sharing with the family and also because I never finish the food now so I shouldn't be eating in between. But im still annoyed at bibas so tough titties! We had some noodles or sucka in Nepali for tiffin which was so good, I ate all of it and really wanted more. Just shows how hungry I actually am but it's just the constant samey samey food and the smells putting me off eating any of it! We've recently taught them to say 'fatty bum bum' which is so bloody funny. Bibas says it a lot when people are eating and understands what it is. His dad however just says it at random moments and it's really funny. We were eating today and the electricity went off again, and as we all sat silently in the pitch black we heard from the corner 'fatty bum bum' which set Liam and I off into a fit of giggles. We played a card game very briefly before bibas showed us a nepali card game that we played a few times. We've made a bit of a game of catch the cockroach too, I keep seeing them in our room so I wait until its dark then go in with the torch and scout them out for bibas to try and catch. He caught one today, I really don't like them! One less to worry about when sleeping.
