The Bad the Ugly and… the Good

The road to Talupani where the hot springs await

This is the wonderful woman, Enu and her dog that I live with

BAD:

I am not sure you can imagine 24 hours of hell but I can tell you about it. Imagine you decide that some students come up to you and tell you they want to go bungy jumping…..I said sure lets do it limit it to 15 people. Well overnight (the day before we left) 15 people turned into 50 and the 3 staff members I was supposed to have come with me turned into zero and I was stuck in the middle of the mountains with a monsoon soaked list of 

names I couldn’t pronounce and 2 bus loads of 15/16 year old students I could not control. There was definitely drinking and I spent the entire 24 hours yelling at people. I quickly realized that making students of a higher cast do dishes for punishment is a culturally inappropriate thing to do (they looked at me with utter shock that I would ask them to do this). I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the overnight and experiencing bad dehydration and stomach problems on top of it all (but when you are the only staff member you don’t have a choice you can not be sick).

 

UGLY:

So has hellish has this trip was on my mental and physical state, I did finally get to experience my first out of Katmandu trip, which I am sad to say was not a good first trip. When people say the roads are BAD BAD BAD they are way under exaggerating just how bad the roads are. So I had to quickly get over the fact that when the buses are too crowded people sit on top of them which doesn’t seem that safe….but on consultation of 

the guide book it recommended to take your pick as when the bus rolls off of the cliff you can jump off the top and survive. There are car accidents everyday here not from fast driving but from such bad roads. I mean driving on these roads (the kids must have thought I was crazy) but I really thought I was going to die. We were cruising on the windiest roads you can imagine….but wait hold that thought….you have the windy roads now had a ton of huge trucks and buses carrying people and supplies to and from the border to China….and oh wait did I mention its monsoon season and this “highway” is made of two feet of deep mud, is a single lane, and has a 800 ft drop inches from the car tire as the trucks blast their horn around every curve. I am not sure my photos do it justice.. Anyway thought I did make it home safe despite walking one section of the road. I guess I better get used to this though I will probably need to do it again soon.

 

The Good:

On a high note I think class went well today. We started our second unit of Poverty this week and I think this is going to be really interesting for the students. I did something I needed to do for a while which was split the students up into assigned seating which cut some of the chatter and the gender divide but we will see if it lasts. I realized that while these kids clearly know what poverty is and how to define it I am not sure if they see it in the lives of the people around them. I think this will finally be my time to get them to think. I think they no what poverty is but not what it is like to feel poverty. We talked a bit about the Caste system today and how they expect to “improve” the poverty situation if people live by 

the caste system. They need to be the generation to overcome this if they want to cause change. Anyway, it was the first time in the A class I got a variety of people talking and some really good conversation. Gave me some hope J