Opening2Life

I'm still at Marigold school. This morning, I woke up really early, around 4 am, probably because I went to bed around 8.30 pm last night. I had considered going to Besisahar with a few volunteer colleagues, but decided instead to spend a quiet Saturday here (we don't work on Saturdays). Since my last post, a few things have changed. School started about a week later than planned, and during the first 2 days, some of us had the possibility to cover for absent teachers. In each class, 2 volunteers worked together - I ended up teaching 6th-grade math (11-12 years-old kids) with Joe, a 19 year-old volunteer from England. It turned out to be more challenging than expected. Apart from one particular engaged student, most kids weren't paying much attention. I suppose math isn't the most beloved subject anywhere in the world. The language barrier didn't help either. Firstly, I never taught math in English before and struggled with the right terms. Secondly, although the sc...

I've been volunteering at the New Marigold Secondary School for 10 days now. I left Kathmandu on the 1st of April and took a bus towards Besisahar, but got off a bit earlier in a place called Udipur - around 165 km covered in about 7 hours. Yeah... that says a lot about the roads here. Traveling by bus in Nepal is an adventure in itself: very bumpy, with loud Nepali music. At first, it was funny, but after a few hours I just felt like getting off as soon as possible. In Udipur, I waited for 2 hours for a second bus that took me up to the school. The road is quite steep, so the bumps were even worse - and, of course, we couldn't miss the same type of music. I was the only tourist in a full bus. One guy sitting next to me started speaking in Nepali, thinking I was local - he later told me I have a similar skin colour. I must really look like one, because not even my big backpack made him think I might be a foreigner. Well... if that helps me avoid tourist prices in shops, I'm...