What am I Doing Here?

What am I doing here?
This is a question that I, fortunately, don’t need to ask myself, but perhaps you are interested in the answer. This being a quiet weekend for us (staying at the school, which, after 2 consecutive traveling weekends, actually feels quite nice), I have a little bit more time to go into details about my everyday life. I’m also pre-writing this post at the school, which means I can make this really long (distraction for all of you studying for exams, perhaps?)
So.
Just about every morning I wake up at about 6am or earlier (aka whenever the boarders do – the walls are paper thin). Because I’m lazy, I usually put a pillow over my head and try to go back to sleep. They get up that early to do an hour and a half of studying before school. We have breakfast before they do, and then get ready (one of us has to leave early to go to Tindharay every morning). I go to Tindharay every Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s a nice break from Blue Diamond – we basically just follow along with whatever the teacher tells us to do, and there’s a helper there to keep everyone in line. We sing lots (and LOTS) of songs with them, and then have to wait ages for a bus to get back (but then it’s only a half-day, so we’re usually back in the early afternoon).
At Blue Diamond, school starts with assembly at 9:30 (quite entertaining to watch, & only takes about 10 minutes – they all stand in straight lines in the school grounds and sing the national anthem, and then one of the teachers will usually say something, or they’ll all inspect everyone’s uniforms), and then classes go until 3, with only a 10 minute tea break and half an hour for lunch.
I’m teaching subjects like English (Poetry, Handwriting, Spoken), Games, Entertainment, Dance (funny joke), and Song & Drama. With most of the younger ones, I basically do lots of colouring and worksheets. We sometimes read stories (with mixed success), and the younger ones do some singing as well. The older ones are doing English Poetry, which is a bit of a challenge since most teenagers aren’t really into poetry anyway, let alone in a foreign language. But I’m determined to at least have them not hate poetry, even if they don’t like/get it.
This past week we’ve started up a few after-school activities. Rosalie’s doing a recorder group, and I’m doing an art club, and then we’ll both be doing a ballet class together. The thought of doing something after school had stressed me a bit before coming here, as I really did not have any idea of what I could do, but it’s funny how it all works out in the end. You basically just do whatever you can, even if you don’t think you have a particular talent in what you’re doing. For the art club, we’re going to focus on different artists and try to draw in their style (my inspiration came from realizing that the only thing everyone draws here is their house – this is an attempt to get them to move beyond that, or at least start drawing their house in a different style!). And then the ballet is because Rosalie has many years of ballet under her belt, but hasn’t done it for awhile, and I have only a few months experience but at least it’s somewhat fresh in my mind.
So Monday to Thursday we’re doing our after school activities until about 4pm. Then we either play with the boarders (everyone’s suddenly REALLY into UNO), or try to quickly escape up to the local café, for an extra cup of tea. It’s run by the parents of one of the girls in KG, and it’s actually one of my favourite places here. There’s nothing special about it inside, but the tea is incredible, and being able to get out of the school for 20 minutes is sometimes necessary for the sake of my sanity. I always leave there feeling really happy.
After tea at the school, we usually (weather permitting – it’s the start of the rainy season) go for an evening walk with the boarders. Lately it’s just been walks up to the shops for them to buy snacks, but sometimes we’ll go around the tea estates.
Then the boarders have more studying, from 6-8pm, and we’re left to ourselves to lesson plan (aka think about how hungry we are –we’re right by the kitchen, and the combination of mild boredom, hunger, and delicious smells is torture!). We usually eat around 8pm, and then usually go to bed fairly early. It may not be particularly exciting, but I do enjoy our daily routine.
I have a feeling that this is slightly old news, but I don’t really remember what else I have up on the blog – I haven’t really been checking! Sorry Sorry
Anyway, a couple other random notes:
Tomorrow (weather permitting) we’re going to have a picnic with everyone (inspired by our picnic in Mirik, which was really nice). We’re buying the supplies today, and then making sandwiches and everything tomorrow. I’m quite excited for it! It’s really good having things like this to plan – I’m such a planner, and it gives us something to look forward to.
Did I mention that I got to sleep in NEPAL last weekend? I’m still surprised by it! Last weekend was really fun, I have to say. The hour between making the decision to go on the 3 day trek and actually getting started, I was in a slight internal panic (predicting nothing but disaster) but it all worked perfectly. The fact that it was so spontaneous made the trip that much more special.