Rice and a little bit of learning...

Hello again all...I am writing today from the lovely community of Lakeside in Pokhara. After nearly a week of village living I finally have the chance to come down and be a bit more connected to the world. So here we go... Well, as much as you read about and feel you are prepared for what comes with living the rural life, nothing can prepare you for the reality. It is definitely rough. And I am staying in one of the nicer homes in the area. We have electricity (occasionally) and a water tap within walking distance. But mind you, this water is very cold, coming from the melting snow of the mountains above us, and provides for a very shocking experience upon washing one's hair early in the morning. I now undrestand why the monks here shave their heads...long tresses do not serve for the easiest of upkeeps in these conditions. And it is these small, everyday menial tasks which I am quickly coming to realize I have severely taken for granted in my posh little suburban life. Things like cooking and cleaning can take up the majority of a housewife's day when you can't just throw the clothes in the washing machine or chuck the rice into some boiling water. (There is a great deal more work to getting rice to the state where you can put it in said boiling water than I ever realized.) But, as rice and I do not have the greatest of friendships at the moment, I won't comment much more on its making. Yes, after a week of nothing but dal batt for breakfast and dinner my stomach has finally held a strong protest and battled on through the night for the right for familiar food. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the infamous "Delhi Belly" has struck. And if you think the average case of food poisoning (not that this is poisoning, but similar enough) is bad when you have all the luxeries of your modern western toilets, I can promise you it is no walk in the park when all you have is a hole in the ground. I have become well aquainted with the family's squat toilet and I hope not to meet under such cercumstances again. (Here's to wishful thinking). But other than that, village life goes on and I am enjoying getting to know all its little interesting details. The school I'm teaching at is also quite different than anything i've ever experienced. What these children have in location (the views from the schoolyard and many of the classrooms are absolutely spectacular...scenic vistas of snow covered mountains with a center focus on Anapurna, the second highest mountain in Nepal) they do, unfortunatly, lack in educational structure and content. The teachers here seemed to be quite impressed by the neatness of a child's handwriting and not at all concerned with the fact that there is very little being taught. Sadly, the children of the area learn much more about the art of copying than anything else. They know how to read and how to write (quite well actually and at a very young age, with the 3 year olds at the school writing perfect letters A-Z and numbers too) but there is very little understanding behind what is being read or written. This is unfortunate when you consider the fact that very few jobs in this world will ask you to read a passage and then answer questions about the passage by filling in the missing word (simply find the sentence in the passage that seems to match the question, find the missing word, and copy it down). To show some fairness, the school has only been teaching English for the past two years, so it is a very new medium. But there doesn't seem to be much hope for improvement when you consider that all the teachers at the school once attended the school, making this methodology all they know, and that the teachers who claim to be "English teachers" can barely understand the language themselves. A simple question such as "How many classes do you teach?" or "How far away do you live?" seems to send some of them into a fit of questioning looks. But through this frustration comes a few glimmers of hope in the rare student that seems to really grasp what you are saying and shows a desire to learn more. The real challenge at the moment comes in trying to asses at what level each student is (age or "grade level" apparently has no importace here) and figuring out how to go from there. But all we can ask for is baby steps and pray that something, somewhere along the line, gets through to assist the learning of just a few kids. My biggest hope, at this point, is even if I don't teach them any English (to the point of usefullness) maybe they can start to think for themselves, rather than just repeating the cycle of mindless copying. Fingers crossed...week two, here we go :) Namaste!