What a Week!

August 3 2007

I have not been able to write for a week so this might be a long one. The main reasons for this are that we have power cuts every few days and also that we are now pretty busy most of the time. Some people have been asking about a typical day in the lives of J&C so I will tell you now..

5.40 - Rise and Shine
5.50 - Go running for 30 - 40 mins
6.30 - Get home have a chiyaa (tea) with our family have a shower and get ready
7.00 - 8.00 Orphanage
9.00 - Dhal Bhaat (yes thats right curry for breakfast!) and get stuff ready for school
11.00 - School and start teaching
13.30 - Lunch (Dhal Bhat in the teachers lounge)
14.00 - 16.00 Free Time!
16.30 - 18.00 Orphanage for our second dose of the kiddywinkles
18.00 - 20.00 Hit the Hut which is the bar we have in our village run by the infamous Drubar - Cool Dude of Pepsi-Cola
21.00 - Dinner at home
22.30 - Bed Time!

So that is a normal day for us, took a while to get used to the early starts but we had to do it in order to run. The roads here get ridiculously busy and also it gets really hot so we need to get up and get moving really early. To be honest until today I have found running really hard. I have no idea why, the altitude (we are about 1300m here), the heat, the curry?? I dont know but it has been such hard work to simply run for 30 minutes. This is from the girl who normally puts on her trainers and heads for the hills for a couple of hours... anyway today we ran like the wind and it was so nice to get my legs back!!

Apart from that I finally made it down to Kathmandu's climbing wall. Climbing is something I have always wanted to try but never really got round to. Anyway it's amazing fun so we are going to try and get down there twice a week. I was too scared to get past about half way up but I think today maybe I will go a bit further ha ha. We went with a little gang so it was a great day out and there is a bar next door that sells great pina coladas ; ) I will get some photos when I can actually get up to a decent height...

During the week we have been perfecting our teaching skills. On the whole the kids are really good and are so excited to be in this "special" class with us. We walk through the school yard and everyone starts souting and running over to try and speak to us.. like being a superstar.. or is it just the choclates!
Some of the kids struggle in class a lot and just try to copy the others and they also get so excited that the classroom can be a bit of a madhouse at times. I find getting strict with them comes quite naturally as many of you can imagine they get a good telling off every so often. Jon is an amazing teacher and I can't believe how great he is with the kids I am so proud of him he is just a natural (seemingly at everything).

So thats another week finished I cant believe next week we will have already been here a month and soon we will be heading to a different area to live. I can't imagine ever being ready to leave but I guess Phokara has a lad to offer (not least a huge climbing wall!).

Thanks for all the comments keep them coming!!

Caroline