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The end of a loooong weekFeb 6, 2009
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| Today marks the end of a long week! The school week here is 6 days, with only Saturday off. So everyday I've been teaching about 5 classes per day (anywhere from 2nd to 9th grade). My routine has been to get up around 7am and head to the public restroom. I'm only inclined to shower once every few days b/c its so cold in the morning, the bathroom is so stinky, and the water gives me brain freeze. Usually we have electricity until about 8am, so if I time it right i get to blow dry my hair (oh the things we took for granted at home!!) The bell rings for breakfast at 8:30am and we have a huge plate of daal bhat. For the kids, this is actually their "1st lunch", as they get up at 6:30 for what they consider breakfast. I have no idea why they basically eat 2 breakfasts, or how on earth they pack it all in without becoming monstrously huge. These are big portions, folks, and usually they have seconds at each meal :-S After breakfast, er, or 1st lunch, I'll head to my room to review my lesson plan for the day. Its about this time that I hear the morning effort to get the school bus started so they can pick up the non-boarder students. The bus sits in our little courtyard, which is maybe 100 or 200 feet square. Its about 2 bus lengths. Most mornings the bus doesn't start, so the driver honks the horn, and the older kids who are boarding at the school run down to help. First they push the bus backwards into one corner of the courtyard. Then they get behind the bus and push it forward while the driver tries the popping the clutch trick to get it started. But there's not much space to roll forward to get it going, so they will push the bus back again and then push it forward again. This will sometimes go on for 5 or 10 minutes before it finally starts - much to everyone's great joy. If you ever saw the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" with their bus problems, this is 10 times funnier to watch. :) Anyway, by 9:25 all the students have arrived and they have Assembly, where the students do some strange, half-hearted Japanese-like group calisthenics for 5 minutes, followed by singing their national anthem, and then they hear a few announcements from one of the teachers. Finally they head to classes at 9:40. Here each grade stays in one room and the teachers roam from classroom to classroom with each 50 minute period. So I'll have my schedule of which classes to teach and I'll just go from class to class teaching pretty much the same lecture to a different grade level. This week, aside from my introductory lesson on Seattle, I did a lesson discussing cleaning up the trash in Nepal, a poetry lesson where we focused on identifying syllables and ryhming patterns, and a grammar lesson on common mistakes with prepositions. Some of the kids are good students and pay attention, but there are definitely those who goof off during class and have to constantly be disciplined to be quiet. At 1pm, we break for 2nd lunch, which usually is something other than daal bhat (maybe curry veggies with fried flatbread or beaten rice), then we start classes again. Classes end at 3:45, at which time there is yet another snack/3rd lunch (which I usually skip) and tea is handed out to the teachers. I'll usually hang around the courtyard and watch the kids practice their karate or dancing between 4 and 5, and then I'll run errands or head to the internet cafe, which is about 10 minutes down the street. At 6:30 they ring the bell for dinner (always more daal bhat), and after that I'll head to my room to prepare the next day's lesson plan. Lights often go out at 8pm, so its reading with a headlamp until I fall asleep at 9:30 or so. So things are pretty routine at this point. Everything is pretty comfortable and relatively nice, except (I must continue to repeat this point!) how icky the bathroom is. Actually, the hygiene situation in general is icky. Realize that there is no TP in the bathroom, which is fine - use water to clean yourself, then wash your hands, right? Wrong. No soap is ever present in the bathroom. So now I carry TP and purell around with me at all times. Which is all good and well for me, but what are the kids doing about cleanliness? I was trying not to think about it, and then I realized the other problem - the dishes. After eating, the kids bring their dishes back behind the kitchen to 'wash' them. It is really only a rinse I found out - in cold water of course - and then they just re-stack the dishes for the next use. Hmmm.... yeah... Let's just hope that all those shots I got before I came here are doing there job!! |
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