Thursday 4th October
Liam's turn again
Hoooooooo, I woke up last night, bladder full to bursting. It was annoying because the day before I had tried to keep water intake to a minimum as to avoid this somewhat 'sticky situation'. It was around twelve o'clock I think as I clambered out of our secret pit, scrambling over Nicola like an sas assault course; over the arm, past the tummy, across the slab of wood that they call a mattress and through the mosquito net, celebrating by walking through the door like completing the 100m sprint at sports day in first school. I was abit naughty really because I didn't actually go to the toilet... But we'll keep this between me and the blog.
I was too tired and lazy to enter the room of spider doom to wizzle, so I ended up finding the nearest bush and giving it a cool refreshing drink of my warm urine.
After returning to the room I saw it. A massive black blob. At first I thought it was another giant spider so half fell backwards in fright but upon closer inspection, saw it was one of the bloody cockroaches that keep lurking in our room. Without hesitation I took off my flip flop and tried to whack it. They are clever little buggers as it moved at the last second, scrambling away from me. Whack, this time I got the little shit square on the back, condensing its height by half. It was still wriggling though so I gave it another 'pat on the back', grabbed a near by box that we use as a bin, emptied it's contents onto the floor, rubbish going everywhere, and covered it like Rolf Harris might in animal hospital. I returned through the assault course and back into bed. 'I got the cockroach' I whispered to Nicola, whom after flailing for a few seconds finally awoke saying 'what... They release their eggs upon death when squashed...'. I can never do anything right.
A few hours later I was awakened by what I at first thought was the sound of a giant train rumbling past the house. After a few seconds I realised that it was the rain rumbling off the tin roofs. It gave me a nice warm feeling as I love the rain, especially big, thick, warm and heavy rain that soaks you after a few seconds.
We woke at the usual hour of around seven, again bladder full to bursting... For f... Sake. We both used the boggy crapper and returned to piticus sleepius continuing to doze for an hour.
Nicola complained of her head hurting again, me putting it down to lack of vitamins and minerals that we usually get from varying foods. I suggested having some of the powdered revitalising stuff that we have for treating diarrhoea to get a top up of salts and minerals as its occurred to me were not getting the usual salt and co we're used to, maybe a small amount from snacks we keep sneaking. She scurried off for a shower, leaving me to watch a small fifteen minute portion of a classic stargate atlantis episode I like. It didn't take her long and she returned after ten minutes before moaning me out of bed. I chucked the last of my clean garments on before exiting the room and breathing in a fresh bucket full of mountain clean Nepalese air.
We sat outside for half an hour before bibas arrived carrying his grass for the animals. After being greeted by his cheerful little face we received our morning chia and biscuits from Sita. We scoff these down like pigs in a troff though. It's our favourite part of the morning and nothing beats a good cuppa to start the day. As we finished our beverage we notice for the first time Sita sprinkling what looks like ash over a small mound of mud. It comes to our attention that this must be the shrine they use to worship for Hinduism. We then took some photos of it and engaged in conversation with bibas about Hinduism and what they do around the home for it. We learned that there 3 primary types of hidiusm. Brahman, something and something else. To be honest I don't remember much about religion. Really with me it just goes in one ear and out the other, its just hodge podge of nonsense crap. Its not that i find it boring, its just that i really don't believe in any of it. I just don't retain the information. A man of science me. We do learn more about the dashain festival though, which is the biggest major festival in Nepal. Every year they have lots of friends over and generally have a good time. They also sacrifice a goat and pig out on it for a week. It involves killing the goat by cutting its head off with a sword and then they eat all of the different sections. Apparently they even eat the blood by 'making an omelette out of it'. F... Me.
We joked around for a while with bibas mentioning in the past he's lopped four goats heads off, with one of them taking three smacks. His impression and sound of the goat after the first whack is hilarious. We scramble inside for our daily dose of dhal baht continuing the chatter and hearing the occasional 'fatty bum bum' from the family that we've taught them to say, giggles galore. As usual I eat all mine, for some reason it goes down all right although ,jees Louise, we are bored of the same meal twice a day now. Nicola struggles to finish hers again. We head outside, dump our dishes and then rush to scrub our teeth as we realise were running late. Even though after the brushing we decide to take a picture of bibas cutting my head off. It goes down a treat with the family and we bungle off into the jungle for our now regular trek to the school and medical centre. On the way to the school we bump into two of the teachers and proceed to walk with them for the remainder of the journey.
Upon arriving Nicola heads off to the medical centre for the morning as I go into the staff room to complete the ritual of namaste to everyone and chatting to the english teacher about football and what we did the night before. I teach 8 classes, c2 to c9, so with any free time I've got between them its usually spent researching the text book and coming up with ideas for the class. I teach class 8 first which is my favourite and I'd said to them previously that I'd play games with them on Friday. They are about 12-14 years old and all of them are pretty good in class and are fun to teach. We had reached the end of the unit we were at in their last class and the final thing to do was a quiz about the whole unit after checking their homework. I took the opportunity to use this as the moment for the game and was going to turn the quiz into a fun activity. Most of the children come from poor family's who really don't have any money and everything needed for school must be bought by the families, so I spoke with the english teacher who agreed it would be nice to visit a shop that's next to the school and buy some notebooks and pens as prizes plus some sweets for everyone for taking part. All in all costing me about 75p....
After buying the goods we went to class and told them about the quiz. They immediately perked up and started to get involved. The whole unit was about Australia so i split them into 4 groups of 3, the rhinos, the koalas, the kangaroos and the emus. I picked the team captains and sorted the groups separating them into corners of the class room. The rhinos ended up winning 3 points to the others 1 and we presented them with there prizes. Everyone clapped and we handed out one sweet to each student. It was a great lesson and there were lots of positives to come out of the class. It was also very beneficial for the teachers to learn new ways of the teaching the kids as 98 % of the time we see the them teaching the classes in a very monotonous way, listening to the teachers, writing the answers and repeating what the teachers say. Nicola and I are both very surprised at how often we get told we are creative and have great ideas for the classes so it's great to not just help the students. After teaching classes 7,9 and 4 we stop for lunch, or 'tiffin' in Nepal. Nicola returns from teaching class 3 after the medical centre looking really tired. Still, we scoff the food which is always really nice and sit enjoying a cup of chia readying ourselves for the afternoon. There is one boy in the school who we think is fair to say is the school weirdo, our code name for him is big head as his head is massive. Well, you know those horror films, mostly the horror comedies, that whenever the main characters (the ones in trouble look around scared) and there is always the main bad guy standing there looking at them wide eyed and the music makes you jump, he does exactly that. If anyone knows of 'slender man', thats him. Whenever we look around, in a window, through a door, he is always standing there watching us. Its hilarious for us but so creepy. I teach him in class 7 and he's actually one of the best students I teach.
We laugh and joke in Nepali and English for the rest of dinner, our Nepali is coming on really well, before going back to class. Nicola disappears to her classes and I complete classes 5, 2 and 6 before the bell is chimed at 4 signalling home. We meet again in the staff room before leaving and heading off to walk home via the shop for some more delicious orange cream biscuits at sickeningly dirt cheap prices. After leaving the shop we notice there isn't the usual rabble of children who walk home with us, with who's houses are along our route. It's a welcome site as Nicola and I never get the chance to walk home alone at our own speed. A few minutes along the route we see one of the teachers and her family waiting for us outside their house and they proceed to invite us in for a drink. Apparently this is a big deal in their culture and if we had declined would of been considered a great disrespect to their family. Good job we said yes then! We figured this is why there were no students waiting for us as the teacher probably mentioned that they wanted to invite us in.
We walked up to the house which was actually extremely big for Nepalese standards, comparing it to the other houses around. We we're invited to sit down, which we did, parking our asses on the usual piece of wood that looks like a table. And then it comes.... Two big glasses of nasty ass stuff that they call curd. It's exactly that.. Curd. Or turd as we all call it. It tastes like animal fat mixed with gone off milk with sour lumpy bits. We were give it the first night we stayed with bibas family, one glass to drink and a little bowl to dip our food in. We didn't eat it then and now it was round two, only this time we felt forced to drink it because how do you turn down something after being invited into someone else's home? Nicola sipped first explaining that it was nicer than bibas' version. It made me feel better so I took a gulp. Why Nicola why. I was nearly sick over all of the family who were watching with wide eyes and big smiles, I actually had to look behind me as not to spew. I nodded at them in an almost 'mmmm so tasty' way, like off a Hollywood comedy. Nicola did the same but she was a lot more tolerant than me. They asked if we wanted some sugar with it, so we tried that to see if it was any different, but it wasn't. I took another gulp and couldn't bare it, i just had to tell them and said 'mitoso chyna' which means not good taste. They were very good actually and didn't seem offended so that was a relief.
Some now Nicola finished hers, it's fair to say I wouldn't give her a kiss all night, and we sat for a little bit trying to talk to them in English. There were the teacher, her 17 year old daughter, her 10 year old son and also her two year old daughter. Apparently their dad was working away in the city so that's why he wasn't there. After a little more chatter, a lot of giggling from them and some photos we upped and left to start the rest of the trek home. One we were past the rest of the houses and were out of site of people we started munching the biscuits like naughty school children and taking some photos together and of the scenery.
We finally returned 'home' and slumped down to enjoy a breather and a cup of panni (water).
