Sad to Leave the SMD School

 Over the past month we have made lots of great connections with Nepali teachers, children, young students, university students, and leaders of some of the largest non-profit groups here in Nepal. After a month here in Kathmandu, my feelings about the city have completely changed. I have learned to enjoy (more like tolorate) the maze of streets, constant honking, and pollution. But more importantly, I have learned to love the culture. The first thing I noticed about teaching here was the lack of "troublemakers" in the class room. Not one kid exists at this school who is taking his/her education for granted. What is wrong with American students these days? Are we too involoved with our itouches and gameboys to appreciate the gift of education? The lack of motivation among so many students in America, even college students, astounds me. Being around students between grades 7-9 that voluntarily assign their own homework every night, truly is a rather motivating sight. Two nights a week I was assigned to help the boarding students witht their homework, and I would see my math students working on problems that I never assigned them. They just wanted to practice what I had taught them in class. The difference between here and America is that every student here understands the immense opportunity they've been given. Not only do they realize education is the key that can open doors to life possibilities, but they internalize it. The most common question I am asked from kids here (even from children less than 10 years old) is "What is your aim in life?"  When I reply, "I don't really know yet, I'm young," they look at me in astonishment. I am not saying I think American kids should be more focused on their "aims" or careers at all. I'm just trying to make the point that too many kids feel entitled to their education and don't realize the infinite possibilites literally being handed to them. After all, if I would not have been lucky enough to have an education, I would not have gotten the possibility to travel here on a grant from my school.
Apart from the children's great respect for education, I love their buddhist rooted philosophy of sharing and caring for others before yourself. A couple weeks ago, Emma, two senior girls from SMD (Seniors here are graduated students that are taking a year off to apply for universities), and I had to make dinner for the 25 other seniors in the appartment with a budget of 400 rupees (a little over $5). We spent 3 hours making chickpea burgers and french fries. Later that night I found out from Emma that while everyone was eating, she had walked into the kitchen and saw that the two girls that had helped us make all the burgers were now making instant ramen noodles. Apparently they had handed out all the burgers and their were not enough left for them because some people wanted two burgers. Instead of taking a burger from someone that wanted two, the girls just made instant noodles and laughed over the whole situation. Somehow, I don't think this situation would play out similarly in America.
Over the past month, SMD and Kathmandu have become my home, and I am sad to leave this beautiful place (Kathmandu is beautiful in its own way). Tomorrow is our last day and an important one for the school because it is the Karmapa's Birthday. The whole school will go to its sister monestary for religious ceremonies then we will return to the school for a talent show. Emma and I somehow got dragged into a group to perform Soul Sister by Jason Miraz. Emma is participating in a "fusion" ensemble of Nepali and Western instruments performing a set of 3 Nepali folk tunes. Assuming we are able to get our trekking permits today, we will depart for our trek in the Everest Region. We are no longer planning on the Annapurna Circuit trek for various reasons. Instead, we will be embarking on the Gokyo Lake trek. We thought about doing the Everest Base Camp trek, but we hear the base camp is just a bunch of rocks and quite polluted, so instead we will be trekking to Gokyo Lake where we can get the similar close up views of Everest with better immediate surroundings. At best the trek will take us 12-14 days. By some miracle Bishnu recieved his passport and will be joining us when we return from our trek in Katmandu. For readers who do not know Bishnu, he is a bhutanese refugee who lived in the refugee camps in Southeast Nepal until two years ago when he was granted acceptance to the refugee resettlement program in America. My sister met Bishnu two summers ago when working at the International Refugee Committee in Atlanta. Since then Bishnu has become my brother and has lived with us off and on over the past two years. This will be the first time he has come back to Nepal to see his family. With not enough time to express all my thoughts and experiences, I will leave it at this...
Thanks for reading.

Life in Katmandu

Because of a lack of internet time, please excuse my misuse of the English language...
We have gotten more adventurous with where we are eating to save money...new favorite meal--fly chowmein! Havnt gotten sick yet--but the stomachs a rumblin. Its looking like Bishnu will not be able to join us as the American immigration office sucks at doing anything in a timely manor--it would be really nice having him here, i always imagined id be experiencing this with him. Plus when we leave Kathmandu, it would be nice to have a native speaker--we climbed mt pulchoki last weekend, the highest mountain in the Kathmandu valley around 9,000 something feet, and we were discouraged from taking the actual walking trail because the locals warned us of tigers and thieves. Tigers apparently are not a threat though and i wish we would have encountered one--thieves on the other hand, not so much--were trying to keep Emma's camera this trip (I lost it in Amsterdam last summer). So instead we took the dirt road to the top and round trip we hiked 17 miles. We have figured out the minibus situation so we can save money by not using taxis. Its quite ridiculous...think buses the size of vw vans and cramming as many people in as possible--definitely private run not state. So we took two mini buses and road for an hour and a half to get to the base of the mountain. Didn't bring enough water/food and almost fainted on the bus ride back (probably also from claustrophobia and/or pollution). Emma said i looked as pale as a ghost. But we made it back to our neighborhood safe and sound only to have a nice dinner and laugh over our crazy adventure--apparently thieves may be a bit of a problem while trekking by ourselves and sleeping in our own tent next month--i think if Bishnu was with us this might not be a problem. As of now we are planning on doing the annapurna circuit--its a 17 day trek and the most culturally and environmentally diverse. We have been reviewing the topo map and route discription every night to become super familiar as well as gathering as much info on the side. This weekend was fun--on friday we had a nepali friend here at the school take us to Swayambu. We took a minibus at 5:30 in the morning to get to the top of the mountain and see the monkey temple when the sun was rising--saw tones of monkeys--emma found the babies quite cute--learned not to stare them in the eyes or they attack you. Afterwards our friend took us to a hole in the wall restaurant for some morning samosas--I was sure I would be vomiting the rest of the day but it worked out! From there we walked to thamel then took a cab back to Boudha and just hung out the rest of the day and read and planned for treking. On saturday, we woke up early and went to the school for breakfast and watched the junior boys basketball championship- I was guest of honor and was fed copious amounts of cookies and juice--life was good--played bball with kids the rest of the morning--in the afternoon emma and I walked all the way from boudha to thamel taking us about an hour--I have no idea how we ended up there--our plan was to just walk west and hope to end up in Thamel. Emma bought a down jacket for the trek--she spent $45 for a marmot 200 fill jacket (I am pretty sure it was real and if it was not it was the highest quality of "fake" jackets). We further explored the area then went to Saturday night raggae at sams bar... I no longer felt like i was in Katmandu--we had a couple drinks and chatted with other travelers and trekers. We took a cab back home arond 10:30 and were stopped by multiple road blocks--the city is really cracking down and trying to get everyone off the streets by 9. I think because we were tourist they didnt care about our taxi. When we got back to our room, we stayed up till 1:30 chatting with a Tibetan man about his plans to start a revolution for tibet. Since this was the latest we have stayed up by far, we passed out hard and awoke for work in the morning. Last night we went out to dinner with John Cook and ten of his sponsored students who just graduated from their plus two high schools. We are becoming better friends with workers for the South Asia Children's Fund like Nigel, Dawa, and Began. I hope to do more work with SACF in the future. Today we came to school and were surprised to see all the kids playing outside. Apparently their was an educational strike today so all the schools were shut down in Katmandu. We have been playing ping pong and music with the kids all day. I can still hear kids trying to play twinkle twinkle little star on the violin upstairs--poor emma, she has been teaching them now for about 3 hours... 
Workers here at the school need to use the computer now, so I will update more later... 
Thanks for reading.

The end of our first week...

This week has been incredibly busy as we instantly started working at the Shree Mangal Dvip school in Katmandu after our arrival last Tuesday. We got a room in a suburb neighborhood called Boudha and its only about a ten minute walk from school. I think were paying about $4 a night and as of now it seems like we will be staying there for about a month. We lucked out with our room because it is on the top floor of a six story building and from our window you can see the Boudhanath Stupa. Katmandu has proven to be more of a chaotic city than I expected--we have just now gotten used to walking through narrow streets without stressing over being hit by motorcycles, cars, farming tractors, and bikes--everyone thinks they have the rite away even through tiny alleyways. Pollution is also worse than I expected--it's hard to breathe on the streets and many people wear face masks. Yesterday was our first day off school so we took a cab into Thamel, a more touristy district with a ton of trekking shops and whatnot--from there we walked to Durbar square--we quickly left downtown katmandu after a couple hours--it proved to be more chaotic and pollution filled than our neighboorhood--we couldnt walk five feet without someone trying to sell us something, be our treking guide, tour us around the square, or just beg for money--it was very overwhelming being a westerner. However, we very much enjoyed the ancient architecture in the square and the history associated with the buildings. Over the course of the week, we have come to really love our neighborhood of Boudha. It's a Tibetan settlement so monks are everywhere and there are many monasteries--our school is also for Tibetan refugees from the mountains so some of the students are monks as well. We would like to learn from the monks in the monasteries but we can't really just go into a monastery and pray with the monks or anything--we have been meditating on our own--I think once we get to the mountains we will have more of a chance to interact with monks in monasteries. Its also very hot here--like 85 degrees maybe--on top of the pollution sometimes conditions are not ideal. We have had headaches almost everyday (Emma more than I)--we think its from the pollution because we are getting lots of sleep and drinking a lot of filtered water. No sicknesses yet thanks to aquamira drops! We met Shirley, the directer of the school, the other day. She's this skinny little old Canadian woman and she is a ball of intense energy and knows how to get things done. She walks in the school and immediately everyone is on there best behavior and the school instantly becomes super organized. It's a big school by the way 700 kids I think. Shirley is ready to tackle anything in the world from caste discrimination, to gender discrimination, to poverty and lack of education. I'm very much inspired by her. She's never really at school--she works 16 hour days though constantly battling with the UN and Embassy's and whatnot. Emma and I are both super happy with our work here at the school--we were quickly given four classes each teach--I am teaching two 9th grade math classes, a 7th grade math class, and a 6th grade English class. I have definitely had to review some of my algebra rules as well as verb tenses. It sounds like our job here, in addition to teaching, is to work with the Nepali teachers and integrate more effective and creative western styles of teaching as well as decrease the amount of female teacher discrimination. Were supposed to work with some of the female teachers to give them more confidence and stand up to the men teachers and whatnot. I think our first approach will be setting an example of interaction between me and Emma. I have already emailed Mr. Cooper for some strategies. We have a day off tomorrow so I think we will take a cab or minibus (I hear mini buses are quite the experience) to this temple (I forgot the name at the moment) in the mountains close to Kathmandu--its about a four hour hike and we are looking forward to breathing some clean air!

AND WERE OFF!

Flight to Dubai at 9:30 pm tonight, 12 hour layover (rage in Dubai???), then a flight to Katmandu.

Fun Fact: Bishnu just informed me that he enjoys doing his business with his hand and water more than toilet paper in America. Looks like I'll have to see which is better...