My Quest to Watch the Super Bowl

                The No Fun League lived up to its name the other morning.

                For Super Bowl Sunday (my Super Bowl Monday morning), I rose in time to catch the 2^nd quarter, ran downstairs and turned on the tv hoping to be as lucky as I was for the baseball playoffs. But it was not to be my day.

                The gods were not on my side. 3 stations, I repeat 3 stations, were playing the same British cricket replay from the previous night - 1 in Hindi and 2 in English…  ESPN, was digging so deep in their programing that I kid you not, they had one of the hobbits narrating the best English Soccer Premier League saves of all time!

               

I turned to my last chance, the BBC, hoping by chance that I would find refuge and that there would be some cross cultural exchange going on. But as I feared, it was just the news. I proceeded to watch the ticker at the bottom wanting to find out at least what the score was. I waited through the endless riveting Premier League scores of 1 – nil, 2 – nil, and nil – nil, then the cricket scores from the night before only to discover that America’s biggest holiday was not even to be mentioned.  Obviously someone is still holding a grudge after the Revolutionary War…

               

                Although this was a major setback, I had prepared a backup plan and dashed out of the house with my emergency backpack in hand. 

                I sprinted down the hill past my neighbors doing morning prayers. Past the Gurkha soldiers practicing their marching. Past the two-size, too-small Angry Bird t-shirt wearing bus conductor who has to this point yet to realize that the pin stripped suit wearing white person he sees every morning and yells at to go to Kathmandu actually lives here and is not modeling off some new North Face formal trekking wear.

                Just as I arrived to the hotel, sat down, got out my laptop and was ready to watch the game, the all too familiar grown of the shutting down of electronics and the quick fading of the lights occurred.  As previously described in a blog post, this is one of the more inconvenient things about Nepal, but I was prepared to wait it out.

                When the power finally came back on, it was well into the 3^rd quarter and I scrambled to find a feed to watch the game.  I  navigated the labyrinth of a website and enrollment process NFL.com has just to watch their “free feed” passing their Terms and Conditions page which resembled in size more a West European County’s constitution than a disclaimer telling me they would sue my ass if I reproduced any of it.

                After all that, my dreams of seeing the red and gold were abruptly crushed when I was informed that only two levels of quality were available, 3D and IMAX. Or, at least with my bandwidth connection, they might have well as been.

But all hope was not lost. I could still listen.  I repeated the labyrinth of a registering process, but this time for the radio broadcast.  By this time a good deal of PTSATD (Post-traumatic SAT Disorder) was setting in. When I reached the end of the forms a pop up appeared asking me for my credit card for the $14.99 fee! With a subtitle stating “includes all playoff games live!” Does it include a time machine? With only one quarter left in the game, no guarantee of actually being able to work, and unemployment looming 3 weeks away, I passed on the splurge.

               

                For some reason SFGate would not load and for some even more inexplicable reason I chose as my back up the LA Times’ live game summary. Whoever was writing it was obviously a Dodgers fan and hated everything about the bay area. They made the 49ers triumphant comeback sound as interesting as the time one of my co-teachers read a passage about the beauty of Nepal to the class spelling out each letter as he read: “T-H-E ,The  B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L,  beautiful…” Acting as if the scoreboard was just malfunctioning.

                I do not need to relive what happened in the game next, but as I sat there in anguish and disgust the manager of the hotel, a friend, and whose kids I teach, approached me, asking me if I wanted to try some new tea they just got.

“Sure” I said, “What type?”

He replied, “English Breakfast.”

“On second thought,” as I began to pack up, “I’ll pass.”

Justly confused he asked, “Why?”

“They know what they did to me.”

                In other news... After seriously considering skipping school, I dragged my body down to the campus only to find that the majority of my students had red powder covering their faces and most of their clothes. Were they all 9ers fans?

No.

It was actually the last day for the teachers in training and the students were giving them tika to give thanks. I only realized this when I entered my 4^th grade class to teach them time telling when I was surrounded and pinned to the wall as they attempted to spread this powder on anything that was mine.

I can only imagine what will happen when I actually leave. Two weeks left….

 Tomorrow I head out to a village, about 5 to 8 hours away depending on how harsh a toll the recent rain did to the roads, to conduct a teaching training for a primary school that is switching to English medium. 

  

The lil' man throwing up the gang signs has better dance moves than you.

The teachers in training. I have, no exaggeration, over 50 variations of this photo.

School

3rd Grade

The classrooms here are barren.  When I arrived, besides the last remnants of chipped paint dolefully remaining since its last coating 60 years ago when the school was founded and the white board nailed on top of the old black board, nothing covered the brick walls of my classrooms. 

                A few months back I started coming to terms with the fact that this posting was temporary and that eventually, whether or not I wanted to, I was going to be forced to leave. The countdown is at three weeks now…

 Although I have helped facilitate some improvement in both my students’ and co-teachers’ English, I wanted something that will last longer. I began looking for ways to create a positive impact in my students long after my visa had expired. I immediately wanted to combat the bareness of their rooms while providing them exposure to English outside of 40 minutes I see them each day.

To do this, I stated making posters of topics which we had covered. ‘I – am, She – is, They – are etc.’ ‘days of the week, months of the year. For 4^th grade, who somehow struggled more with distinguishing between months and days than 3^rd, I created a chart of 60 seconds = 1 minute, 60 minutes = 1 hour all the way up to 12 months = 1 year. 

As a class, we design these posters together, which helps us review those pesky prepositions (a must for all levels) with me asking things like “what goes below Tuesday?” along with the conditional  “what could we put beside ‘play?’”. Preposition work is then emphasized as we as a class chose where to paste the newly made poster.

After designing the poster, I or my co-teacher, Kalpana, outline the posters in pencil in order to get the dimensions correct. Then we pass the posters around the class making sure that every student is able to trace some of the letters in marker. This not only has the students practice their cooperation, but also has them create ownership over the final product which leads to them taking extreme care over the poster and has thus far kept vandalism to a minimum (although in order for 3^rd grade to reach even the bottom of one of the posters they would have to pull some acrobatics feats that would impress even Cirque Du Soleil).  I nearly had to break up a beating after a 2^nd grader had scrawled his name on the bottom of 4^th’s Day of the Week Chart.

Using this same process, minus the pencil tracing, I also created the alphabet with 3^rd grade on half sheets of paper. Many of them still struggle with the letters and this was good practice. At first they had to draft the letters in pencil before we gave them the marker for the final product.  As a class, we had them create three sets, one for their class and the other two for 1^st and 2^nd.  Before we pasted these above the white boards, we used them for a few weeks outside.  The first time I lined up 3^rd grade outside with these cards, 1^st and 2^nd got so jealous (and their teachers curious) that I ended up having nearly enough kids for all three alphabets to be made.

Some of the activities I conducted with the cards (with poorly worded names):

-          Alphabet Construction: Distribute cards randomly, and have the students reconstruct the order. Practices not only the alphabet but also practices team work.

-          Step Forward: After alphabet construction, I will say a word like ‘cat’ and the students who have those letters will step forward, then create the word. For bigger words which repeat letters like ‘tomorrow’  I simply have the student step forward.

These posters have helped provide some character to an otherwise plain room. They have allowed students to have access to materials that have not been available in the classroom.  Plus I think we had some fun doing it.

Kalpana

Class Three

Here is another project I conducted with class 3. Connecting the dotted alphabet to create an elephant. They then proceeded to color them in a manner that would have made the Merry Pranksters proud.

Class Four

Don't let their innocent looks and quirky fashion sense fool you. These three girls are the biggest trouble makers of the school, you let your guard down for  5 seconds, and one of them will have stolen your pens and tied your laces together and the other two will be treating you as a jungle gym.

In other news, to combat my inevitable depression from leaving Gorkha, I booked my flight to Solu-Khumbu last week. Three weeks trekking in the shadow of the world’s tallest mountain, here I come!

Thanksgiving

        A WAYYYY while back was Thanksgiving.  This was my 3^rd time missing the holiday (my first time in China and the second in Botswana) although you have been away for it before, it doesn’t mean that you become numb to the sensation of missing your family or eating the best food of the year. The second one is only accentuated more while living in a county with limited dietary variations. Now there are a considerable amount food items which I miss. But to save me from the agony, I will not go into the foodthatmustnotbenamed.

               

Fulbright obviously knows this and for Thanksgiving they did us a solid.

                Ovens in Nepal are about as elusive as a yeti.  Any ‘baked good’ you purchase here must be judged on a totally different scale than back home. Even in Kathmandu, the only houses I have seen with ovens are those of embassy employees.

                For Thanksgiving, Fulbright had arranged a van to take us back to Kathmandu so that we could celebrate with everyone and have a real Thanksgiving meal.  Spending Thanksgiving with all of Fulbright, along with many people from the Embassy, was wonderful but the true highlight was when the van that Fulbright had arranged came a day early to deliver us pies (real pies, apple and pumpkin!) for us to share with our families.  Needless to say, we were stoked. That afternoon we went from house to house sharing our pies with our families.

Cutting the pie with the family

Julia and I being true cross-cultural ambassadors, drinking roxi with are apple pie

Krista and her host fam

We also celebrated Thanksgiving with our ACCESS Program. And because who wouldn’t want to eat mashed potatoes and Nepali Turkey (chicken) two days in a row, we split the group up into two. The night before, we met up and prepared mashed potatoes:

Only to realize the next day that 10kg we had prepared the previous day with garlic and milk had turned sour. Having not cooked for several months and thus not had to worry about refrigeration, we had completely spaced until we smelled the rancid pot of potatoes.  We quickly were forced to make the meal again, but it turned out just as tasty and with a little less food poisoning.

Our Feast: For some reasons the canned corn was a complete failure. Students would not eat it.

I don't always wear pinstriped pants when I serve mashed potatoes, but when I do, it's in a rural Nepali town

Some other things we did while on our break in Kathmandu:

We prepped for our upcoming trip to Everest. This is Julia sampling some alpine gear.

We also found these guys

The ‘In Brine’ was the selling point

Underdressed and Overimpressed

        I always had a suspicion that my focal person for Fulbright in Gorkha, Bom Sir, was some type of G (I mean you sort of have to if you have a gold ring with your initial on it), but a night a few weeks ago solidified it for me.

I was in Kathmandu when I received a call from Bom Sir inviting me to his son’s post wedding party/dinner. Stoked, I rushed across town only midway through to realize the reason for me being in Kathmandu and what that dictated about my appearance. If it hadn’t been for a pesky ear infection that day, I would have been somewhere in the middle of a whitewater kayaking trip. To put it bluntly, you don’t really pack pinstriped suits for such trips (although you do for school).  I arrived at the ‘Party Palace’, a circus tent with a mix of AstroTurf and shag rug laid down, walking past several police in riot gear with my cleanest articles of clothing being my down jacket and chacos.

Bom Sir was looking as good as ever and as I approached he said, “The Prime Minister is arriving." I laughed at his obvious jest at my appearance giving him the Queen’s wave and in my most grandiose voice saying “Thank you, thank you.” To which Bom Sir said “No look!” I turned around, thinking that it was some nickname for his son, only to see four Armed Police Force trucks pull up, their guards unload and out of a white SUV climbed a man whose face is on the front page of the paper nearly every day, Baburam Bhattarai, The Nepalese Prime Minister.

Now here is a photo of a Bom Sir and the man in the black hat (referred to as a topi) who is the PM of Nepal:

     Turns out the PM is from Gorkha and he and Bom went to school together, throw in the fact that Bom’s son is a high ranking police official (with less-than-secret-service milling about) and the PM had to come.

     It quickly became clear that I was the only one in attendance who possessed a camera that also didn’t make phone calls and was thus given the task of documenting the PM’s 15 minute visit. I followed him and his entourage around as their personal photographer, capturing the moments as they greeted the wedding party and presented gifts before leaving just as quickly as they came.

    As the military procession drove away and I snapped my last few photos, it left this soon to be unemployed college graduate wondering, can I put this on my resume?

The PM

Bom, his family, and me (can you spot me? Hint: I'm the one smiling)

Physical Education

My KG Class

                 The past few days for the last period I have gotten to lead Physical Education with the 4^th graders. Yesterday with my beanbag juggling ball, we played 3 Flys Ups. The concept of catching the ball three times then becoming the ‘flyer’, or as I tried to make it more relevant to them by borrowing the term ‘bowler’ from cricket, was totally lost on them.  For them a victory enough was just getting a chance to touch the ball. So I spent a solid hour making them field pop flys and grounders.  The closest thing to baseball outside of cricket Nepal has ever seen.

                As I was leaving I saw a group of KG and 1^st sitting in a circle with one student in the middle and two running around the outside.  They were mimicking Duck Duck Goose which I had taught 4^th the previous day! The concept of Duck and Goose was a little difficult for 4^th and it quickly developed to becoming  ‘Dog, Dog, GOES!’ KG and 1^st had evolved the game even further replacing ‘dog’ with any word (English or Nepali) that began with the letter ‘d’ and then with a big slap on the back of the head to alert the chaser it was her or his turn.

This is a photo of me and the fam playing dominoes last night. Sajana, 19 is in yellow, Nilima is in front and she is in 6^th grade, Nischal is in the back and he is in class 9 and Aama is in the bottom left.  We had to postpone eating dinner for twenty minutes for Aama to try and win out only for Nischal to have a late game surge and go from last to first in 3 games. Obviously, Aama wouldn’t let it end there so as we ate our meal we had to start another game only to have Aama midway through the game, after she was getting severely beaten, tell us all to go upstairs and study for our exams. I don’t even have exams and she made me feel guilty about procrastination! 

Corporal Punishment

As I have stated before, teaching has been one of the most challenging, yet rewarding experiences of my life so far. Through this journey I have learned a lot. I have also developed an ever deeper appreciation and respect for many of my previous teachers. Coming up with not one, but multiple lessons on a daily basis that are not only engaging and entertaining, but promote critical learning and teach something is a skill that I am still in the process of developing.

               

There are many differences in the system here and  the system that I grew up with, from infrastructure to class sizes to teaching for the test only. But the difference that I have grappled with the most and will never get used to, is corporal punishment. 

               

I have heard contradicting statements on how the government views the act of beating children but whatever their official statement may be it still is a common occurrence in school.  I have a co-teacher who, until I asked him to cease would regularly slap a student on the back or smack their hand with the wooden board eraser if a student was talking while he was or the student didn't complete the homework.  I have also witnessed on several occasions lines of students who are regularly late or absent or failing head to the teachers’ lounge each to get ridiculed and then hit on the hand with a stick.

               

It makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. And angry.  The justification for it is that the students won’t show respect or learn if they are not beaten.  But many teachers here do not beat their students and still able to maintain order in the class and have students learn.

               

It is something that I struggle with regularly. There are students that know that I will not hit them no matter what they do and they take advantage of that and do not show me respect and talk over me and do not do the work. But they are a minority. From my experience, I have found nothing gains more respect from the students than an engaging and sometimes fun, lesson plan.

Conversations with Students

While walking to class the other day I had one of my 7^th grader students, Rupa, approach me and say what sounded like, “You are very haughty, sir”

“What?” I replied confusedly.

“Haughty sir, haughty”

To which I wanted to reply: “I am disdainfully proud of what?” Before I could come up with a proper response, my face gave away my complete and utter confusion and she tried to repeat herself slower with more emphasis on pronunciation.

“Hay-tee sir, hay-teeeee” Was she trying to make some analogy, comparing me to a 3^rd world country in the Caribbean?

As I stared blankly at her, attempting to decipher this code, she repeated herself.  This time, raising her hand from her head to the level of mine, “You’re very haytee sir, you have much hate.”

“Thank you Rupa” I replied, “I am very tall.”

As she ran off to class I hesitantly said, “Namaste” now all too aware of some of the problems that can arise with improper pronunciation.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea who this man or his incredibly cute baby are. They approached me at the temple and asked if I could pose for a photo with them, my only stipulation was that they do the same for me.

Myself at Manakamina Temple

Ian and I lounging around at our conference.