walk walk walk....

today's such a long exhausting day. this morning, me and chase walked wif the kids from the orphanage to their school - a one hour walk which the kids have to do everyday. however, the good news is, the couple running the orphanage managed to raise funds to move their home to a house nearer to the school so the kids don't need to walk so far anymore. thats why today we walked with the kids to their school so that we could see where their new home will be. the new home is indeed a much better house because at least this is a proper house where the kids have a garden to play in and they don't need to walk so far everyday. they will be moving this saturday, so from sunday onwards, i'll be taking a bus to the orphanage in the evenings to play with them.

suzan also brought us to our school placement this afternoon. it was also another long 30mins walk from our house. we met the principal who's a really nice guy but the school is not really in the best condition. We sort of arranged the classes i'll be teaching - 4 classes a day (Grade 3,4,5 and preschool). the school's really weird, they don't really seem to have any system and we were just thrown into a class and the teacher just told us we could teach anything we want since this is the first day. obviously me and chase were quite lost, so we just spoke to the kids a bit, read the textbooks, and basically just spoke with them in English.

After that class, we went to observe a preschool class, which was so boring....the nepali teacher just basically made the kids spell out all the animals in the textbook one by one and had a spelling test after that. I can bet with you that the kids probably didnt even know what they were writing. and the lady teacher also looked like she couldn't be bothered to teach...sighh....apparently i'd have to take over this class from tomorrow onwards also. sheesh...anyone got any good ideas on how to teach preschool in a more fun manner??

i think for the next couple of days, my day's schedule should go something like this. teach at the school from 10am-2pm, go home to rest for a bit, take a bus out to the orphanage at 3 and come home at about 6. its quite packed, but i think i should do alrite.

sylvia just left for bangkok this afternoon, she looked really pleased to leave and finally get some hot showers. i think i'd probably be feeling the same when its my turn to go. me and chase will be moving up to her room coz its on the third floor and its not as cold and noisy as the room we're staying in which is on the ground floor.

yesterday was a really good day, we brought all the kids out for an outing. the original plan was to go to swoyambunath (some temple place) or to the museum, however, in the morning, there was a strike happening in the city so the roads were closed and we couldnt go out. so we changed plans, and brought the kids out to a hillside where they could run around and play games. they looked kinda disappointed when we told them we couldnt go out as planned, but kids being kids, they were ok once they started running around and playing games. it was really great coz the kids were having so much fun. we also made lots of jam sandwiches, bought cookies, fruits, etc. even though it was really exhausting bringing 35 kids out on an excursion...but when we saw how much fun the kids had...it was such a great feeling.

might try to arrange to bring them out to the museum or swoyambunath another time...will see how the timing goes. one thing we've observed also is that the kids here love taking pictures. everytime we take out our camera, they will want us to take pictures for them. and loads of it!!. even at the school, the children were asking us to take pictures of them. after a while, just had to tell them no coz it was getting out of hand.

anyhows, gotta go soon coz need to head back to the orphanage, they should be done from school around this time.

more walking.......