24 February, Pokhara.
Tuesday, 24 February, Pokhara.
08:30 wake up alarm
09:00 get up, coffee served on the balcony. And………… electricity!
I start to get into a rhythm:
8.00 alarm,
8.30 breakfast at H.E.;
9.00 C.W.A. to bring the children to school.
Depending on the electricity availability:
- if yes: 2-3 hours on the laptop working on the dictionary job
- if no: to the Garden restaurant to write, sitting in the sun. Internet. Lunch.
- 15.15: on the way to collect the children from school.
- 16:00 study room time, which I can use to either write diary (like I am doing now), to work on the Manual for Volunteers at C.W.A. and if needed to help the kids with their homework. But, they have now also a Nepali teacher coming to the house every day (his name is Pramot).
- 18.30: diner at H.E. (socializing with the staff and volunteers).
- After diner: Internet café, nightcap, room.
This morning a bit different schedule.
I slept a little bit longer (after the travel of yesterday), had 2 hours electricity left which I used for working on the dictionary.
At 12.00 the power was off again.
Shower, H.E. coffee, chat.
To the village for brunch, while updating yesterday’s diary.
15:13 together with Kay to collect the children from school.
And again a lot of surprises: I found out that Kay as a volunteer in the C.W.A. did not know that the house has its own website!
She did not know that there are files of every child … in the office!
So it is very clear that it IS necessary to write a manual for the volunteers in future.
Tomorrow Kay is going for 3 days to Chitwan and I will ‘take over her duties’.
After 3 days she will be back in Pokhara for 5 or 6 more weeks, so she can finish writing the Manual.
When she comes back from Chitwan we will take the beads to the home. I already saw that one of the top cupboards in the study room is empty, the perfect place to store (and NOT hide) the boxes with beads.
There are also some positive points:
- one of the top cupboards is filled with new homework books; the other is containing colouring pens and some paper. VISIBLE!!
I feel like a kind of detective, sniffing around, observing, but it feels good to be able to get the home a bit more ‘organized’. To KNOW that the materials donated by YOU and other sponsors will be used.
Kay, the volunteer, is a great girl. Born in England (English parents), but with her parents she has seen a lot of the world. She lived also a few years in Nepal when she was young, so she speaks fluent Nepali!
17 Years young and full of ideas and enthusiasm. We both are very happy to be here at the same time and to be able to make a difference.
Sitting in the study room, Sofia – my little angle – came to sit on my lap. She was talking non-stop and tried to read my diary. She can read perfectly English, but of course now she saw a lot of new words. What is this, what does that mean? Nice to know that she actually learned something today.
She was folding a boat from paper, and then put it in my bag to take it home. I will not take it out of my back until I go home, knowing that she will check every day that it is still there.
At 18.00 it was time to go home. Dinner at 18.30 together with Doreen, volunteer from Germany for 4 weeks. She is placed in a kind of nursery, development centre. She is taking over from Claire, a woman from Canada who was there as a volunteer for 6 weeks and is leaving tomorrow.
From the talk under dinner I understood that also she is a teacher and she had many ideas. She told Rohri (assistant manager of H.E.) that the teachers were very open-minded for new ideas and she was pleased to be able to teach them new games, new songs and a new method of teaching. Also she commented that it would be better for the little ones to give them a break in between. At the moment they are in a small room with too many children of different ages and she said that after 2 hours the older ones are getting bored and overactive.
Tomorrow Doreen will suggest to the teachers to take a 15 minutes break in between, take the children outside for some fresh air, running around and get rid of the build up energy.
The electricity came on again at 20.00 so I was on my way to the Internet place. There I spend about 2 hours to upload the promised pictures from a CD, but it took me ages to get just a few pictures done!
Around 22.30 the Internet closed, back to my room, still electricity so I started to type out the diary days from before with the pictures inserted. I saved them on my USB-stick and tomorrow I will give it a try to update the website this way.
Tired I thought it was time to go to sleep, but I ended up in one of my famous sleepless nights.
So many ideas, so many new impressions again (I learn so much, get so much new information every day) that I just could not ‘shut down’ my head. At 3.30 I was still awake!!!
Finally I fell asleep, must have been around 04.00, because when I turned around at one point the electricity was on again (from o4.00 till 08.00 said the schedule).
08:30 wake up alarm
09:00 get up, coffee served on the balcony. And………… electricity!
I start to get into a rhythm:
8.00 alarm,
8.30 breakfast at H.E.;
9.00 C.W.A. to bring the children to school.
Depending on the electricity availability:
- if yes: 2-3 hours on the laptop working on the dictionary job
- if no: to the Garden restaurant to write, sitting in the sun. Internet. Lunch.
- 15.15: on the way to collect the children from school.
- 16:00 study room time, which I can use to either write diary (like I am doing now), to work on the Manual for Volunteers at C.W.A. and if needed to help the kids with their homework. But, they have now also a Nepali teacher coming to the house every day (his name is Pramot).
- 18.30: diner at H.E. (socializing with the staff and volunteers).
- After diner: Internet café, nightcap, room.
This morning a bit different schedule.
I slept a little bit longer (after the travel of yesterday), had 2 hours electricity left which I used for working on the dictionary.
At 12.00 the power was off again.
Shower, H.E. coffee, chat.
To the village for brunch, while updating yesterday’s diary.
15:13 together with Kay to collect the children from school.
And again a lot of surprises: I found out that Kay as a volunteer in the C.W.A. did not know that the house has its own website!
She did not know that there are files of every child … in the office!
So it is very clear that it IS necessary to write a manual for the volunteers in future.
Tomorrow Kay is going for 3 days to Chitwan and I will ‘take over her duties’.
After 3 days she will be back in Pokhara for 5 or 6 more weeks, so she can finish writing the Manual.
When she comes back from Chitwan we will take the beads to the home. I already saw that one of the top cupboards in the study room is empty, the perfect place to store (and NOT hide) the boxes with beads.
There are also some positive points:
- one of the top cupboards is filled with new homework books; the other is containing colouring pens and some paper. VISIBLE!!
I feel like a kind of detective, sniffing around, observing, but it feels good to be able to get the home a bit more ‘organized’. To KNOW that the materials donated by YOU and other sponsors will be used.
Kay, the volunteer, is a great girl. Born in England (English parents), but with her parents she has seen a lot of the world. She lived also a few years in Nepal when she was young, so she speaks fluent Nepali!
17 Years young and full of ideas and enthusiasm. We both are very happy to be here at the same time and to be able to make a difference.
Sitting in the study room, Sofia – my little angle – came to sit on my lap. She was talking non-stop and tried to read my diary. She can read perfectly English, but of course now she saw a lot of new words. What is this, what does that mean? Nice to know that she actually learned something today.
She was folding a boat from paper, and then put it in my bag to take it home. I will not take it out of my back until I go home, knowing that she will check every day that it is still there.
At 18.00 it was time to go home. Dinner at 18.30 together with Doreen, volunteer from Germany for 4 weeks. She is placed in a kind of nursery, development centre. She is taking over from Claire, a woman from Canada who was there as a volunteer for 6 weeks and is leaving tomorrow.
From the talk under dinner I understood that also she is a teacher and she had many ideas. She told Rohri (assistant manager of H.E.) that the teachers were very open-minded for new ideas and she was pleased to be able to teach them new games, new songs and a new method of teaching. Also she commented that it would be better for the little ones to give them a break in between. At the moment they are in a small room with too many children of different ages and she said that after 2 hours the older ones are getting bored and overactive.
Tomorrow Doreen will suggest to the teachers to take a 15 minutes break in between, take the children outside for some fresh air, running around and get rid of the build up energy.
The electricity came on again at 20.00 so I was on my way to the Internet place. There I spend about 2 hours to upload the promised pictures from a CD, but it took me ages to get just a few pictures done!
Around 22.30 the Internet closed, back to my room, still electricity so I started to type out the diary days from before with the pictures inserted. I saved them on my USB-stick and tomorrow I will give it a try to update the website this way.
Tired I thought it was time to go to sleep, but I ended up in one of my famous sleepless nights.
So many ideas, so many new impressions again (I learn so much, get so much new information every day) that I just could not ‘shut down’ my head. At 3.30 I was still awake!!!
Finally I fell asleep, must have been around 04.00, because when I turned around at one point the electricity was on again (from o4.00 till 08.00 said the schedule).
posted by Rita Sanghita at
8:59:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home