July 26, 2007
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When rice just won’t do
The team’s been recovering well from the bout of medical complications during the past day. Today we’ll be heading to Pokhara and staying there for a couple of days. Half of the team will be heading back to Kathmandu on Monday to conduct a few more interviews, while I and 2 others will be in Pokhara continuing to assist the local school and its computer/library system.
Today is also my last day as an English teacher at the local government school in Kathmandu. I was able to return teaching yesterday and the class went pretty well! I was greatly surprised by them when they started to volunteer and come up to the chalkboard to write down their answers to my questions. The class and their regular teacher were laughing as they saw how surprised I was at this initiative. It was really encouraging and I hope that this eagerness continues when our team leaves next week.
One funny thing happened right after class ended. When Mike(my team leader) and I were leaving the class, suddenly we heard a bunch of girls from the class shouting Mike’s name, “Mr. Chen!” Next thing I know, I see a group of 10 girls surrounding Mike and hearing them ask for a photo of him. Of course, Mike was surprised and said that he’ll see if he can find a picture he can give the class. We offered to take a picture with the class tomorrow and mail it to them when we get back to the States. Right after that, the girls asked for my picture, but I think they did that out of courtesy. ;>)
Who knew that my MARRIED team leader was such hot stuff to the ladies?
I really wish I took a photo of that moment…Kodak anyone?Putting that aside, later on in the day, I got to participate in an interview with an International relief organization during the afternoon. We met with the temp. director of the organization and discussed her group’s focused topic, IDP(Internally Displaced People). You see, during the civil war in Nepal, many Nepalese left their villages and towns because of the war. This group’s focus is to find and assist these IDPs and help them return to a normal life by helping them understand what their rights as Nepalese and IDPs are.
It was an extremely good conversation and definitely gave us a great brain storming session later on. Hopefully when we return we’ll have processed more of what we learned. More about the IDP topic surely to come on this xanga later on.
All right, my time here is almost up. Take care everyone and namaste!
