Our Weekly Routine in Kathmandu

The last month has been wonderful, busy, exciting and exhausting! We have been teaching Monday, Wednesday, Fridays at Mansarovar Academy and visiting the Kailash Home on Friday night and Saturday.  Teaching has been great but a lot more work than I ever would have imagined.  It takes a lot of prep making a power point and or lesson plan each night, but seeing the students' excited faces when I walk into their classroom makes it all well worth it.  

     

We usually teach four periods per day at Manasarover, in grades 3, 4, and 5.  Our classes range from 30 to 42 students.  We've been teaching a lot in the new projection room that we established, and the kids are thrilled when we take them down there!  It is really exciting for them to learn in new and different ways, such as the powerpoint presentations we often create. We also show them science video clips from BBC Earth and Oceans DVDs, and play outdoor "ecology games" involving predators, prey, and lots of running screaming kids!

     

On Fridays, after a full day of of teaching, we ride the bus with the students 30 minutes out to the Kailash Home.  We are like a portable movie studio, hauling 2 laptops, speakers, projector and cords along with us.  We usually play soccer or basketball for awhile with the children, and then the "study bell" rings.  My Dad and I do our best to help the students during their study hall time, tutoring them in ecology, accounting, math, science, etc.  After a yummy dinner, several students carry a screen (...a white sheet on plywood) onto the basketball/soccer court, and we set up the projector to watch a movie.  So far we've watched Spirit, The Sound of Music, The Two Brothers, and Curious George.  

Five years ago when my family spent 4 months in Nepal, my mom established a bird watching club at the Kailash Home.  She has returned several times since then to continue the program and I wanted to help keep this going.  Early Saturday morning, my dad, 12 students, and I wake up before 6am to go bird watching.  I've never really been a good birder or had a desire to continually go bird watching, but spending Saturday mornings with such a wonderful group of individuals my age who get excited about birds, really makes me look forward to it!  We usually hike 3-5 miles, from 6am until 12 Noon, and keep track of all the birds we see.  Several students are really motivated to spot new birds, and they meticulously flip through the guidebooks to make sure their identification is correct. 

We return home on Saturday night, or Sunday morning, to relax a bit and prep lessons for Mondays classes.  It's been a really worthwhile meaningful summer here in Nepal, and I can't believe it's almost over...  There is so much more I still want to do with, and for, these sweet students! 

Soccer, Futbol, and Futsal... I love 'em all!!!

It has been so much fun to play soccer with everyone here in Nepal!!!  I just love how everywhere you look, a little pick-up game is going on and every little boy has on a Messi, Real Madrid  or Chelsea jersey.  I have always loved soccer but these children, so desperate to play every chance they get, are fueling my passion for the sport.  "Miss! Will you come and play futbol with us?" Is my favorite thing to hear.  I noticed that it is always the boys who are playing and it made me sad that none of the girls got out there.  I decided along with Lobsang, the manager of Kailash Hostel, to get the girls practicing then organize a special outing to Futsal, one of the small turf soccer arenas recently set up around Kathmandu.  It was so great to get the girls out there and I think it was a success!  I cant wait to play more soccer with them before I leave!

Midsummer Update - "Can't believe we're halfway there..."

I can't believe I'm halfway through this project.  It seems like we've been here for MONTHS, because we've been so busy... teaching, preparing, working, visiting, editing videos, blogging, etc...  When I first arrived, I was surprised to feel a bit homesick, and I was overwhelmed by all the earthquake carnage, beggers, and depressing stories.  But now, after a few weeks, I am fully immersed in the school and the culture, and understand why I love Nepal so much.  I've become so attached to these wonderful students, both the primary kids at Manasarovar, and my teenage peers out at the Kailash Home.  It will be really difficult to leave in August...

Here are a few highlights from the past week:

Monkey Saliva Sampling at Swoyumbunath - We were invited to join a research team who is doing DNA analysis of "temple monkeys" in Kathmandu. They are part of the USAID - PREDICT project from UC Davis Veterinary School, trying to identify potential pandemic viral diseases before they jump from primates to humans. Brilliant scientists and researchers, doing fascinating important work.  Thanks Dibesh, Tierra, and everyone at the CMDN - Center for Molecular Dynamics, Nepal.

Friendship Bracelets - I wanted to share an arts & crafts project with the students, but knew it was difficult to gather lots of materials such as poster paper, paint, scissors, etc...  So I decided to teach them "friendship bracelets" that only require thin string for weaving.  We searched around Boudhanath at all the sewing shops and Tibetan beading & weaving stores, until we found spools of colorful string. I was mostly thinking to do this as a fun activity with the older Kailash teens, but already the office staff at Manasarovar is asking to learn...  When I pulled out the string at Kailash, the students went bonkers!  They crowded around, each cutting multi-color lengths of string, some waiting for guidance, others just knotting randomly.  A few of them picked it up quickly. Everyone loves making bracelets! 

"Rabbits, Foxes, Leaves" - This is a well-known ecology game that teaches habitat requirements, predator-prey relationships, population changes, and carrying capacity. It's also really fun, loud and crazy!!!  The students LOVE running around outside, chasing & screaming, and they're actually learning too.  We connected it to our oceans, coral reefs & marine biodiversity lessons, by changing it to "Sharks, Plankton, Fishies."  We keep track of each round, or "year," and the populations changes.  Next week we will graph the population ups and downs, and talk about the "balance of nature."  The only problem is that 40 of these kids are REALLY loud. It is so difficult to quiet them down & get their attention after each round of the game... We need a bullhorn!  

Swoyumbunath Quake Damage - When we were going out to work with the primate researchers, we also explored the famous hilltop "monkey temple." The main stupa and tower are fairly intact, but some surrounding pillars, monuments, and buildings were totally destroyed. There are lots of workers busting up broken buildings, and hauling away the debris in baskets. Wooden and metal supports prop up ancient temples and structures.  But in a few areas, workers are already rebuilding brick walls, and starting the reconstruction.  It will probably take many years...  The peaceful and spiritual ambience, however, is still intact. It can never be destroyed.  The hilltop has great views over the Kathmandu Valley, and Hindu religious singers provide constant background music. There is such an interesting mix of religions as well... Hindu temples surround the famous Buddhist stupa. Some of the Hindu shrines actually have Tibetan style Buddhist prayer wheels mounted into their outer walls.  Hindus believe that Buddha was a Hindu, and the reincarnation of Vishnu, so in Nepal there is a lot of overlap among these groups. It's great to see such religious tolerance and respect!

Oceans! - We've been teaching about oceans, coral reefs, & biodiversity this week.  The students are SO excited by sea creatures, because none of them has ever seen the ocean.  I think just one boy out of our total of ~100 students has been to a beach, on the coast in India. We've shared slide shows with them, and some great BBC film clips too. Everything, from plankton to whale sharks, blows them away!  Many kids stay after class begging for more information.... "Please Sir, what is starfish and can it eat sea urchin?"  "Miss Miss, do sea urchin have brain?"  "Why is hammer-shark having eyes so far away?"  "Sir! Miss! How can whale catch oxygen if under water? Is it using gill or lung?"  They are SO Hungry to learn!!!  It's been really fun... and also exhausting.... 

A New Projection Room for Manasarovar School

One of the most practical “gifts” we will leave behind when we depart is the new projection room at Manasarovar!  So many donors supported my Nepal project, that we have some extra funds left over to spend.  We decided that a new LCD projector would be a good thing to bring to Nepal, and so we bought one before leaving California.  Our idea was to have movie nights to just excite and entertain the kids.  We would also use the projector for showing educational videos, and teaching in a more engaging style.

But we quickly found that a nice projector by itself is not at all functional.  Some classrooms have no electric outlets, and no one has a screen or blank white wall.  There are many nice windows for natural light, but that poses a problem for darkening a room during presentations. Daily unpredictable multi-hour blackouts, called “load shedding” here in Nepal, play havoc with electronic teaching. And the constant set-up and break down of equipment would have  driven us crazy hauling cords, laptops, powerstrips and the projector from room to room.

So we proposed, cleaned, customized, and have now COMPLETED a dedicated room for the projector!  There were old bird nests in all the window-screens, and years of grime to deal with. We had to locate and purchase an 8-foot wall-mount screen, and transport it across Kathmandu tied to the roof of a tiny taxi with twine…. Until a monsoon downpour began, and the screen would only fit inside if we drove with the tailgate propped open. We worked with a super-handy local electrician to get new multi-plug outlets installed in the room, complete with connections to both the normal power-supply and a portable generator. Dad helped measure and drill to install the screen. We bought power-strips, Bluetooth speakers, and installed old curtains to cover the remaining window.  A local shop owner, when he heard about our mission, re-wired and donated a pair of external speakers that plug directly into the wall outlet. Thanks Sushil!

It took a lot of effort, but the students are now absolutely thrilled when we say, “OK class, today we will go to the Projection Room!”  They leap to the door, and eagerly line up to march downstairs!  It gets pretty hot in there, with several devices plugged in and 35 steamy kids filling the floor… but it’s worth it. We’ll get a fan set up soon to move the stuffy air around.

We’ve already presented power-point slideshows on the Solar System, Eclipses, and the Seasons. Dad just did his weekly Wednesday “teacher talk” for the staff on Plate Tectonics and Earthquakes. The teachers asked so many questions, loved the colorful images and projected graphics, and were very happy to get some background on this pertinent subject!  We’ll share a watered-down version of that show with our students on Friday.


The school recently got a bunch of tablets donated, but they are rarely used due to power outages and lack of training. We did NOT want our donated projector to just sit around gathering dust like that. So another of our goals next week is to train the teachers on how to use the tablets, how to prepare presentations, and how to use the projection room once we are gone.

It’s all really exciting, and feels like a tangible user-friendly package that we will have provided for this wonderful school and its staff.

Birding with the Kailash Bird-Watching Club

When we lived in Nepal in 2010, my mom Karen started leading bird walks with students from Kailash. These walks blossomed into the Bird-watching “club,” with an emphasis on celebrating Nepal’s amazing biodiversity, developing group leadership skills, and discussing conservation issues.  Karen has returned several times, bringing donated binoculars and hard-to-find birding guidebooks.  Several dedicated students have kept the club sporadically active over the years, but a fresh infusion of enthusiasm and regularity always helps!

My Dad and I are spending weekends at the Kailash Home, especially so we can get a really early start each Saturday morning for Bird Walks!  I have to say, it’s tough after a week of lesson planning, teaching, and homework to get up at 5am each Saturday to go out birding… and I’m not even that good at it!  The summer humidity and heat can be brutal, and the walks are quite long, but the excitement of spotting colorful birds is pretty amazing. The students are really enthusiastic, and several jot down every species we identify. Electric blue kingfishers, colorful Barbets, and 2 hard-to-spot woodpeckers were highlights on our first weekend!  We identified over 30 species.  The students know so much more than me, so I feel like I’m mostly learning from them… but they wouldn’t be birding regularly if my Dad and I weren’t here to volunteer and make it happen each week.

The birding club has helped raise their awareness of environmental and conservation issues.  We walk and talk about birds, but also about the polluted rivers, rapid home construction, and loss of habitat.  A few students are now considering studying forestry, or natural resources in college thanks to their time with the birding club.  Over the years, students have said things like “I used to only know crow, sparrow and kite… now I am amazed that Nepal has such beautiful bird life.”  Another told my Dad, “On school bus I was always bored or sleeping. Now I watch outside looking for every bird I can spot.”

Hopefully our brief time re-invigorating the bird-watching club will be beneficial and inspiring for these students!

The Kailash Home - Background and Information

We are spending weekends out at the Kailash Home, about 20 minutes from Boudha on the road to Sundarijal. This fantastic facility is sponsored and run by HCF, the Nepali Himalayan Children’s Foundation, with major funding by US-based Himalayan Youth Foundation. They have created a happy & healthy home for 100 children, with the primary focus on providing them a high-quality education through grade 12.

Young kids come from remote villages of Nepal, primarily in the high mountain areas of Solu, Mugu, Dolpa, Langtang, Rasuwa, etc. These villages have no access to a quality education. Students may walk several hours a day, on difficult trails, to attend sub-standard schools. Often the schools are closed for a majority of the year due to winter snows, seasonal harvesting work in summer, or lack of teachers. These remote villages, with under-educated families, are frequently targeted by child traffickers. Families sometimes “sell” their own children to middlemen who promise good jobs and a better life. In reality these kids end up in the sex industry in India, or in virtual slavery as child laborers.

HCF identifies promising students, and offers them a new life… Through word of mouth in these villages, and home visits with former students, they have become a trusted organization. There is a waiting list of families hoping to get their child into the program. If selected, the students move to the Kailash Home, where room & board is provided, and their school fees are paid by Nepali and International sponsors. Students attend various schools in the Boudha & Jorpati area, and have daily study hall time back at the Home. Due to the expense and time required, students only return to their home villages to visit once every 3-4 years. They do have parent-selected guardians identified in the Kathmandu area so that they can spend holidays with relatives.

These students work hard, study hard, and know that there is a lot of pressure and expectation riding on their shoulders. To provide a well-rounded life, the staff at Kailash also provide many opportunities for recreation and extra educational activities. They play sports, organize game nights, go on hikes and excursions, and grow vegetables and rice in their own gardens. Their “baker training program” has a dedicated group of students who bake 30 or 40 loaves of bread each week for use in their kitchen.

This program really functions like a huge family. Everyone pitches in and helps each other, the older students mentoring and assisting the younger ones. It is an honor and a pleasure to work with these wonderful students, who are being well-educated and launched into a brighter future.  

Feeling GOOD about my teaching!

My Dad and I have been teaching the students about poetry and today, I decided to teach class 5 about symbolism in poetry.  Before the lesson, we were teaching class 3 and asked the class if anyone knew what a verb was.  All 40 students shouted out, in unison, a paragraph-long definition of a verb. It was as if they were all reading a textbook passage aloud.  

My dad and I were amazed by this long chant, and couldn't help but laugh at how impressive it was that they had memorized it.  I think this style of teaching by rote memorization, though, is why it is sometimes difficult for them to think for themselves.  I also became worried that it would be too difficult for them to comprehend symbolism and metaphor.  

We started off the lesson by drawing the Nepali flag on the chalk board and asking them what it represents.  After some confusion, we brainstormed what this symbolic piece of cloth represents. Is it actually Nepal? No, but it is a symbol of all these ideas you have shared...  That seemed to make sense to most of them.  

     

We then moved on to talking about examples of metaphors.  They especially enjoyed when I said "During lunch, Sir Paul is a pig", but I then explained how by using the word "pig", one can imply a number of characteristics, and that is why we use a metaphor for comparison.  They were a little confused when I introduced them to the saying, "Life is a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get", but I think most of them vaguely understood the bigger meaning behind it.  

After a few more examples like, "Eliza's brain is a computer"(not true) and, "Life is a roller coaster", we moved on to how you can use symbolism in poetry.  My dad and I had quickly composed a Haiku that morning to use for this lesson, (Life is a River. Striking rocks along the way. We keep flowing on.) because we had previously taught them about Haikus.  I think this really helped, and a few boys in particular really understood and shared how we crash into obstacles like a river runs into rocks but we flow past them. Several of them made the connection about the recent Nepal Earthquake being a "rock" in their path, but we have moved past it and continue living. Even the teacher sitting in on our lesson raised her hand to answer one of our questions!  

With all this prep, we then introduced, "The path not taken" by Robert Frost to them.  It is a difficult poem to understand, especially by children who's first language isn't English, so we read through it slowly, helping them understand what was going on.  The last stanza is the most substantial and quotable, so we wrote that one on the board and analyzed it.  We had to explain that it is not actually about a man walking on a path and going on an adventure, but that the choice he makes symbolizes the way he lives his life.  After lots of explaining, I think they were able to comprehend this idea and see what the poem is actually about.  We discussed examples of people who follow a "different path" in life. My Dad suggested how Gandhi refused to follow the norm and took his own path, and that is why he did great things.  The people who choose their own path in life, the path "less traveled," are often the most memorable.  

I really think this lesson, although difficult for some to comprehend, got the wheels turning. It meant so much when the teacher sitting in on our lesson approached me to say, "That was very interesting lesson Miss Eliza."  The fact that my dad and I impressed another teacher with a subject neither of us has ever taught, was very reassuring.  Hopefully the children found it intriguing and inspiring as well.  Thank you Mrs. Dobson ;)

My First Teaching Experience

I just finished my first lesson at Manosarovar school; teaching a poetry class.  I was very nervous at first, not being a teacher and never having taught a class before.  I was lucky enough, though, to have my Dad team-teaching with me.  It ended up flowing very well, and the students were so intrigued by what I was teaching.  

While explaining Haikus and Limericks, I remembered that this is the reason I am here, to feed these children's hunger for knowledge.  

The majority of what they learn is copied straight out of a textbook.  To encourage them to think for themselves and write their own poetry is confusing at first, but will hopefully get the wheels turning.  I can't wait to teach more lessons, because with such enthusiastic students, the teaching flows naturally.