Just hanging out with the boys
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2009
1
12
25
Trip End
Oct 08, 2009
Dolakha, Nepal
Thursday, September 24, 2009
This morning we got up ridiculously early at 4.45am because some of the boys had asked us yesterday if we would like to go for a morning walk. We agreed because we didn't want the boys to think we’re lazy. They always get up around 5.30/6ish whereas Taryn and I usually sleep till 7.30ish (sometimes even 8).
So we agreed to a 5am walk which turned out to be really lovely as it was still cool outside (rather than walking in the heat of the day which we have previously done). It was still dark when we headed out (I even brought my headlight)....but the sunlight came up pretty quickly and I didn’t need the headlight after all. The boys took us around some of the local sights to some scenic spots and also picked fresh gooseberries for us (which are quite tart and bitter....but they eat them and drink water afterwards. The water tastes really sweet once you’ve eaten a gooseberry).
Once we got back to the orphanage after the walk, Taryn and I decided it would be good to head into Charikot to check some emails. The connection was still super slow but we managed to get a few emails sent home.
When we got back to the orphanage it was time for breakfast – rice, dahl, potato curry
After breakfast we chatted to the boys before the art class. Art class this time was portrait drawing. We showed the boys the proportions of a face and got them to do portraits of each other. The rest of the class was spent teaching the boys the US and Australian Anthems as well as the Macarena. They totally loved the Macarena and wouldn’t stop doing it...it was hilarious, especially the bit where they all roll their hips. We also asked them to sing us the Nepali anthem which they did proudly with their hands on their hearts. They also delighted us with some Nepalese dancing and gymnastics. The boys seem to love singing and dancing more than anything so we’ve decided to try and include an element of this in each lesson.
For tiffin, we had sweet yellow rice and rice puffs
In the afternoon, Tenjee taught Taryn and I the Nepali alphabet, as well as how to write our names in Nepali. We’ve spent most of the night being parrots trying to memorise all the letters and sounds as well as practising our names over and over. We’ve decided our names are much prettier in Nepali than in English. Tenjee also told us a story about the history of the orphanage. Apparently before it was built, the area was a baby graveyard. He told us that previous people that had stayed in our room had seen visions of a mother with a baby and always felt cold in our room....that totally creeped us out, but luckily we haven’t encountered any ghosts yet. Tenjee also told us that his uncle from the city is coming to collect him the tomorrow (even though he doesn’t want to go and would prefer to stay with us). He promised he will be back before we leave to say goodbye.
Dinner was Dal bhat with chickpeas and veg curry. The chickpea curry is so delicious.
After dinner we watched a Nepali movie with the boys.
Thursday 24 September
This morning we slept in till 8.30.
Breakfast was dal, rice, saag and alu chips
In the morning we taught an English class. Seeing the boys loved music so much we thought we would do the lesson based around a song. I have some songs on my mobile phone so we picked 'Are you gonna be my girl’ by Jet. We wrote out the lyrics on the whiteboard and asked each of the boys to read out a sentence so we could hear their pronunciation. We also went through the vocab of the lyrics to see if the boys understood the meanings of all the words, in particular the abbreviated words in the song like ‘gonna’. They are surprisingly good with the vocab. We then played the song for the boys to hear and then got them to sing along...they seemed to enjoy it a lot so we thought it would be good to do a song for each of the English lessons so that they could have fun while learning.
We then did an art class with the boys where they each had to draw a head then fold the paper and pass it along. The next boy had to draw a body and the one after that would draw the legs. At the end, each boy held up the picture they had. They were all laughing in hysterics about how the pics turned out. At the end of this class, we also taught them the ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ dance.
After class we played carambot with the boys and just hung out in the garden.
Tiffin this afternoon was chapatti with alu chips followed by dinner of rice, dal, choko curry and saag.
After dinner we sat in the dark with the boys outside and they tried to teach us Nepali vocab. They seemed to be so excited to teach us their language. They just kept firing words at us for about 2 hours and they were all talking at once...it was soooooo full on. Taryn and I had such massive headaches afterwards, but we are so grateful that the boys wanted to share their knowledge with us.
