Don't Angry Me

The new year has passed and it's now officially the year 2072 in Nepal.  That also means a start of a new school year.  The children who are ready will be heading off to government school, where they will hopefully stay for the remainder of their educational years.  I'll be sad to lose some of the strongest little singers, but the younger ones will rise to the occasion.

Over the past five months I've compiled a list of some of the more hilarious things that come out of these kid's mouths.  Kids are basically the same no matter where you are on earth.  So here's a list of some of the best moments:

"Fighting, miss?"
"No, no fighting."
"Miss, DON'T ANGRY ME!!!!"
Commence fight sequence.

"Yaahh miss? No..." - when something is bad or they don't want something.

"Krisshh 3!!!" - favourite movie

"NamaAaste, miss!"

"Game off?" - time to stop playing

"Ke garne?" - "what to do?" a common Nepali phrase.  The kids will use it sometimes to pretend they                         don't understand and couldn't possibly do what you've asked

Here's a video that gives you a bit of an idea of a typical morning at Sanga-Sangai.  They act a little weird when they know I'm filming but you'll still get the gist.

Other exciting news!  My father is brilliant and brought along a roll out keyboard.  It obviously doesn't have the action of a real piano, but it's the best we can do taking security and space into consideration.  The kids are delighted.  I got them to do their absolute best singing and presented them and then they couldn't stop giggling.  So now every day they ask for "piano" and start shaking when I bring it out.  I'm glad I waited until now to at least start them as they didn't have enough of the basic skills needed back in December.  I needed to prep them first.  We don't have a lot of resources, so we write out most of the songs by hand so everyone has a copy (and practises their notiation).  Most of the time that means "miss" has to do a lot of the writing.  They can read the basic notations and rhythms quite well now.  We are having a lot of fun with this.  I am so proud of these guys!

I've been doing my best to teach them about life on the west coast of Canada.  We've watched a few videos and looked at a bunch of photos.  I told them some First Nations stories and we did some work with totem poles and other First Nations artwork.  They love hearing all the stories, and especially love anything involving the ocean and its animals, which they have never seen.

We spend most mornings reading books in English and Nepali, so we all get to practise our words.  I feel that just speaking with them in English really makes a big difference.  They have their favourite phrases as well.

We've been enjoying the completed grounds at the school.  We now have concrete over the full yard.  Now it stays dry when the rains come, and the kids can play football more easily.  It's been getting so hot now though that it absorbs and throws a lot of heat.  There really are only two seasons in Nepal.


We had a fun sidewalk chalk day and the kids went nuts "decorating" the entire grounds.  Check out the photo below for secret messages and tiny children climbing motor vehicles!  Safety first :D

Some new adorable students have joined at the start of this new year, and over the next month or so more will come as families figure out where their children will be going.

Yard puppy.  Still haven't figured out who he belongs to.

Boys being cool.

Still haven't understood this pose.

Girls being cool.

Playtime - Peaceful

Sad...

Just kidding!

Bye for now!

Kathmanzoo

There is a zoo here, believe it or not.  The habitats were better than I had expected, and they supposedly do some conservation as well.  I generally feel conflicted about zoos, but couldn't really say no to take a group of the neediest kids in the city.  It turned out to be a great day!

Ready to go!

Since there's no such thing as permission slips or waiver forms, we basically counted the 21 kids there that day and then hit the road.  We had to take the city bus to get to the zoo area.  The Nepalese all act like brother and sister, so we had some "strangers" holding onto our tinier charges.  The kids thought the ride was hilarious and had a really good time.  We probably could've ridden the bus for an hour and they would have been as happy as going to the zoo.

Insanity.

We saw many kinds of deer, rhinos, hippos, tigers (those habitats were a little small), tons of little birds, hyenas, storks, cranes, bears, monkeys, and we sort of snuck into the red panda area and saw one poke his little head out.

There was a play area with slides and tubes for the kids to go in.  There's also a huge pond with boat rentals in the middle, but we didn't have the money or courage to do that with all the kids.  They still had a great time watching.

The kids taught me a lot of the animal's Nepali names.  I can't remember any.

The slide queue waits for no one.

Rhinos look like Kinder Surprise toys.

Can't stop laughing at this one.

Cool, but kind of sad.

Stork

Insisted on climbing.

With one of our newest little ones.

We enjoyed a take out lunch of MoMos and chow mein, which was a really big treat for these guys.  It would be fun to be able to do this more than once a year.

It's also the beginning of the new Nepali calendar, so the oldest children will be going on to their government school.  Sanga-Sangai provides some sponsorship for their school fees, and also provides ongoing support to check in on attendance and progress.  You can contact me for information on how to sponsor a child's school fees for a year if interested.

We played ball and other games until it was time to go home.  It turned out to be a really long but worthwhile day.  The weather is really heating up here, getting up to the high 20's in the afternoon, and not really cooling off in the evening.  There are flash thunderstorms and rains.  I can only imagine what monsoon season is like.

Lumbini

Lumbini is the birthplace of the most recent incarnation of Buddha, Siddartha.  The humid, garden city is located about 300km west of Kathmandu, in the plains area of Nepal.  Lumbini's main complex is a long, rectangular waterway, surrounded by roads that connect all the monasteries.  There are maybe 15-20 large and small monasteries from different Buddhist countries around the world.

I got to enjoy a sickening bus ride through the mountains for 10 hours.  It's a very slow and jerky ride, sometimes with terrifyingly close calls to the edge when another vehicle is coming the other way.  The bus stopped a couple hours in at a random lunch stop with all the other buses.  There was actually a pretty awesome buffet lunch for a cheap price.  It was a few more hours through the mountainous terrain, and by this time I was feeling pretty sick.  I get motion sick fairly easily in vehicles, expecially buses lurching through curvy roads.  Eventually the road straightened out and we were in a much flatter terrain.  It was also noticeably hotter and humid.  The bus stopped on the middle of the highway to let everyone out into the bush for a bathroom break.  This is how it's done here.

Good times.

The bus arrived in hot and sweaty Lumbini after 10 hours driving, in the late afternoon.  We were dropped at the gate to the actual garden, so there was still a bit of a walk into the main complex.  It looked small on my map, but I wasn't to be fooled by distances in Nepal anymore.  It took about an hour to walk in and secure a room in one of the monasteries.  I went with the Korean temple, as another volunteer friend had stayed there before and had good things to say.

Korean Monastery

At first I thought they gave us costumes for some reason and was really excited...

then I realized they were mosquito nets and I was even more excited.

The room was actually quite large - I stayed in a common dorm room with three other girls, sleeping on the floor.  It was like an exciting sleepover where no one spoke the same language.  We had three amazing vegetarian meals a day, and even drank tea in the heat.

In the morning the bell rang at 5:45am for breakfast.  We went down for more rice and vegetables, then I hit the trail right away, knowing it would just get more hot and humid as the day went on.  First stop was about 15 minutes south, to the Maya Devi temple and garden, the very place the most recent Buddha was born.  The main site is about 2500 years old.  No photos were allowed in the temple itself.  Other sites within the Lumbini complex are said to be places where previous Buddhas achieved enlightenment.  It is a very peaceful place.

I wandered out of the inner complex and into the town of Lumbini.  There's not much there, and all the businesses are there to cater to the tourists and pilgrims coming to visit.  I was able to secure a bike rental for the day, so I'd be able to go up and down the area much quicker in the heat.

Outskirts

Bikes!

I biked around the west monastic side and east monastic side and saw pretty much all the monasteries.  The bike was a very good idea.  Distances in Nepal are always deceiving.  The monasteries vary from very basic to the extravagant, and they are all stunningly beautiful.  You see many monks going about their daily duties, and the young novice monks will say hello.

  

After lunch (it was about 37 degrees with humidity at this time) I figured it was only going to get hotter into the afternoon, and there would be even more mosquitoes if I waited until the sun went down a little, so I rode north a few kilometres and visited another World Peace Pagoda, the Lumbini museum, and rode along the crane sanctuary.

I got back in time to have dinner outside with everyone, while mosquitoes ate our ankles.

Now because nothing in Nepal is simple, I decided I really, really, really didn't want to take the sickening 10 hour bus ride back home only two days after the first, so I decided to get a flight back to the city.  The man who ran the travel agency and hotel in the town offered to drive me to the airport, which is one town over.  So, the next morning I walked back into town and hopped in a car with an entire family I had just met, and they kindly drove me into Bhairawa.  We hit a huge traffic jam and found out that two motorcyclists had been crushed between two buses when they tried to fit in between on the tiny bridge.  It was a pretty grim scene.

We arrived at the one plane airport with 20 minutes to spare before the flight, but as it turned out it was delayed by an hour anyway.  I was still very grateful not to be on that bus, and also wasn't really feeling well anyway.  It was a 35 minute flight back to Kathmandu, and was unfortunately very foggy and turbulent.  I'm always weirdly happy when I arrive back in this city.