happy birthday dear friend

yesterday was my last day teaching at the school. taught them 5 values since its my last class:

1) Dare to Dream
2) Never lose hope
3) Don't ever judge a book by its cover
4) Nothing comes without hard work
5) Stay true to yourself

Didn't expect to teach them these..it was quite spontaneous coz when i stepped into the class, felt that teaching from the textbk was quite a boring way to end my last class with them. so figured it might be more useful to teach them something not frm their books. thankfully their teacher was sitting in for this class, so he translated the meaning of the values into nepali for the kids. they sounded really interested in hearing what it was about. well...i guess thats my 5 cents worth of contribution to educating the children here. they were really nice kids, bought some sweets for them and gave some pencils and notebooks to the grade 4 class.

to my surprise, a few of the boys came up to me to give me some flowers. and one of them gave me a plastic flower he brought from home which said 'well wishes'. and this boy is one of the quieter ones who i barely gave much attention to in comparison with the louder kids. he was really sweet. took lotsa pictures with them and eventually had to say my goodbyes.. some of the kids asked me for my phone number in malaysia...hmm..was i really such a nice teacher? i doubt myself sometimes.

anyways, just been spending most of my time at the orphanage. this morning, sugandha brought me on his motorbike to a tailor to make my kurta - nepali dress. i love motorbike rides. especially now the weather's cool and the wind on your face is just a nice feeling. i had a friend who once told me he wanted to buy a bike, i never understood why he would spend all his money just to buy a bike when he's still in debt. and i never understood his love for riding on the bike. but maybe now i do...

something's been bugging me...some of the kids in the orphanage have been slowly becoming more attached to me...sometimes i question if this is such a good thing coz eventually i would need to part. in particular this young boy called suzan. he's a bright kid, very hardworking and very nice to the other children. always wanting to talk to me. yesterday while tsering lama (lady running the orphanage) was just chitchatting to me whilst the kids were doing their homework, she was telling me bout the history of some of the kids.

den she just teased suzan (with no harm intended) coz he had ran away from the orphanage 3 times. on one occasion even bringing 2 other boys with him and once they reached his parents' house, he gave them some money and told them to go back to the orphanage.

his parents live about one hour bus ride away from kathmandu. father's a diver and mother runs a small hotel. they sound quite well-off to me. but when this topic was brought up, suzan suddenly became very quiet and refused to lift his head up from his book. i wanted to ask why then was he in the orphanage but i figured i'd better skip the topic coz i could sense that suzan was feeling very upset bout it. the rest of the evening, he didnt utter a word and at certain times, i could hear a soft sniffling from him. i felt so horrible coz i tried to speak to him but he'd turn his head away. never saw this side of him coz he always looked so cheerful and lively. guess its tougher for kids who are about 8-11 yrs old coz at least the 5 yr old still do not know whats going on and just have a good time playing with each other. i don't understand why some parents know that they can't even feed themselves, but want to have a dozen children and make these children suffer. and for those who can afford, what for have kids if you don't intend to bring them up anyway. sheesh...

anyways, a proud accomplishment is that i'm almost done with reading my book "The tale of Murasaki" and only in 4 days!! usually i take months to finish a book. quite proud of myself!

alriteys, gotta head to the city to reconfirm my air ticket and will be heading to the orphanage after that.

to end this entry, dedicating it to a special friend:

happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday dear friend
happy birthday to you...

if only you were still around...