Another week goes by…

Meaning we have less time here! I knew that this would happen: I would get lulled into thinking that I’ll be here for ages and then suddenly there’s only a few weeks left before we have to go. I’m still shocked by it. Time is now going far too quickly. I don’t want to leave here. I must come back, as soon as possible.
This is a long post, to make up for last week’s being really uninspired.
This week was the last week of teaching. Classes went really well – I think everyone knows that it’s the end of term, and they were all on their best behavior, which only encourages my memories of them to be even more rose-tinted. I’m going to miss them all so much!!!!!!!!!
This week we’ve been mostly concerned with teaching, spending time with the boarders, helping out with cooking (Saru left, so now Mrs Thapa has to do all the cooking as well as all the other things she does), and typing up exams (there are roughly about 75 exams to type up – a big job). It hasn’t been all work though – on Monday we went to the wedding of the sister of one of the Blue Diamond Teachers. The most exciting thing about this was that we were able to wear our saris again!!!! Second best part was the food – absolutely amazing. I ate so much (I love how here it’s encouraged to pile your plate high with food and then go back for seconds – or thirds) that I felt ever so slightly ill the next day, but don’t regret a bite. If I don’t have an Indian wedding, I’m definitely having it catered Indian-style. It was a traditional Nepali wedding, but we were there purely for the food (as usual).

The rest of the week passed by in a blur of photo-taking (I made all of my classes decorate pretty nametags for themselves, and took pictures of them all, the plan being that I will never forget their names) and games (there was no way I was actually going to do anything but fun lessons in my last week!). I'm going to miss them all so much. I know I'm repeating myself, but it's true. They are so, so sweet!
And for those who are interested, a quick description of the food at the wedding:
The tamarind chutney they had was the best I’ve ever tasted (tamarind chutney being one of my new favourite foods), with chunks of ginger and peanuts (no seeds even) – I definitely need to learn how to make it. There was also veg biryani (had multiple helpings of that), a chicken and veg curry, mutton curry, deep fried fish, paneer curry, dal (soooooooo good!), tamarind chutney, celroti (we’ve seen that a lot at weddings), cucumber, deep fried bread with sesame seeds on top (incredible), and gulab jamun (Indian sweet – tasted kind of like a doughnut hole that had been soaked in sugar water so it was all gooey and delicious inside). I think I might be forgetting a dish. But it was all absolutely amazing. Just the memory of the food lasted me throughout the week.
Last weekend we stayed at a monastery near Pedong (where the dance festival was), where one of the other volunteers is teaching. It was really special, and I’m so glad we went. The monastery is tiny (there are only about 30 monks), and near a collection of houses that are too small to even be considered a village. It was really quiet (no trucks!) and peaceful, especially at night. The area is absolutely stunning – they’re surrounded by mountains, so the view is outstanding, and the land is really lush (all the plants are this brilliant shade of green). And it was wonderful to be able to spend time with the monks, who are so special. Because the monastery is so small, and the monks are all quite young (the oldest ones are early twenties, the youngest ones about eight or nine), it has a family feel to it.
The monks are all so sweet. They’re really happy and lighthearted, and so generous. When we first got there they were a bit shy, but several games of Junior Uno (not as much fun as regular Uno, I have to say) later, they all opened up and were cracking jokes all the time from then on. I don’t think I ever saw them not smiling or making jokes. We went for a walk in the evening, and it was just like a walk with the boarders – jokes, races, singing songs, making fun of each other – except that it was all 15 – 20 yr old men, as opposed to 12 year olds. They were all so, so nice. I feel so lucky that we were able to meet them.
This weekend we are in Nepal!!! Our journey worked quite smoothly - the 16hr bus ride was a bit of a bore, but had incredible views while we were in daylight (some of Nepal is really flat and hot, and then when we woke up this morning, we were in the mountains, and they completely magical). I'm liking Kathmandu so far. It's HOT here though - good practice for when we go off to do our "proper travelling". As much as I wasn't all that keen on going to Nepal (hassle, time that could be spent enjoying my last few moments in Ghayabari), I'm enjoying it now that we're here. I think it will be a good way of easing into the whole rhythm of travelling as well.

What we've seen so far of Kathmandu (not much), is that it's very touristy (I'm still finding that a bit of a novelty, and so quite enjoy it - I always play "guess the nationality" when I see biggish groups of tourists walking about), very dusty (lots of people walking around with those medical-looking facemasks - a little reminder of Vancouver), and full of little stupas (gompas/temples) everywhere. They all blend into the background, so you don't notice them at first.

Indian Embassy was closed this morning, so fingers crossed everything will work out smoothly tomorrow. I have a bad feeling that we'll have to be here for about a week (HOPEFULLY not longer - am desperate to get back to the school), but we've got a few ideas of what we'd like to do here in that time, so it should hopefully be a good one.

Pictures to come...later!

Don’t mind me - I’m here just for the food!

Being around just for the food has summed up my experience of Indian weddings. I am not complaining at all – the food is always incredible, and I’ll always have been fed extremely well! In the 2 months I’ve been here, I’ve been able to attend 2 weddings (the second one this being this weekend). Both of them have been completely spontaneous invitations, and through somewhat tenuous connections. And it’s always been about the food. I’ll show up, completely unannounced, be fed enormous quantities of delicious food, have a cursory meeting with the bride, and then make a quick exit. It feels incredibly rude, but appears to be normal here.
This weekend, we went to Kalimpong to meet up with everyone else. As usual, we went up to Darjeeling Friday evening, and then took the first jeep to Kalimpong in the morning, so arrived there at about 10. When we got there, we found that some of the other volunteers were going to a wedding that afternoon, and we were invited as well. Once again, we showed up to a wedding completely unannounced, inappropriately dressed (Alex - our connection to the entire event - looked absolutely incredible in her sari), in time for the meal and nothing else (and without a gift as well). But the wedding was large, and there was tonnes (and tonnes and tonnes) of food, which everyone was happy to share with a few random foreigners. I always feel really bad in these sorts of situations, like I’m taking advantage of others’ hospitality, but then I suppose Indian weddings have a reputation for being large for a reason.
Anyway, as well as enjoying delicious food, I also loved checking out what people were wearing. There were some incredible salwars and saris – I’ve decided I want an Indian wedding just so that everyone shows up dressed in saris. The men mostly wore western clothes, but a few were in traditional Lepcha dress. It had a really nice family feel to it, despite being such a big affair.
The whole weekend was lovely. It’s really good to be able to get out and see the others – as much as I love being here in Ghayabari, it’s important for sanity’s sake to be able to leave. The only negative experience was our journey back, which took us about 8 hours (instead of 4), thanks to our jeep breaking down and having to wait over an hour for another one to come pick us up. The next leg of the journey I spent in mild agony in the back of the jeep (our usual spot), but only half on the seat thanks to them squeezing 3 people in a spot for 2 (the other 2 being rather large men), so that I was rammed right up against a pole (which of course jabbed into my ribs every time we hit a rock or pothole).
- That's all I have time for I'm afraid. In Kurseong trying to figure out courses for next year (panic stations!), and am under a definite time limit (last bus goes in an hour and a half and I have a LOT of other things to do here). Gah!

Last week's post

As much as I love being here, I am very much aware of when I will leave. It’s weird. I do feel "at home" here, but then I know that I am only temporary. Ultimately, I have another home that I will return to, and everyone will continue here as they do now. I didn’t realize that I would think about home so much. I think about it all the time. If I’m not comparing the way things are here to what they are like at home (school system, transportation, health and safety, people), then I’m thinking about what things will be like when I go back to Vancouver. When I think about home in relation to here, it’s just about always in a positive way (there are so many things – foods, stories, pictures – that I can’t wait to share with everyone), but it can almost be distracting, because it’s always in the back of my mind.
Anyway, this was week 10 (counting down – there are 9 weeks left). I’m not counting down in an "Oh, thank goodness, almost over kind of way" – it’s the complete opposite ("Help! Only x# of weeks left and there’s so much that I want to do!)! But then I think everyone finds that.
Last weekend we stayed here at the school, which felt really nice. As much as I love traveling around the area, it’s a lot more relaxing just hanging out here. On Sunday we had our picnic! It was a really nice day. Rosalie & I spent ages making sandwiches (peanut butter and banana, honey, cucumber – without the crusts of course! –, and jam), insisting on doing it all by ourselves (meaning that we had an enormous audience). We’d bought 5 loaves of bread, and had calculated to make about 50 sandwiches. We also had carrot sticks, bags of chips, biscuits, sweets, pop, and 2 cakes. It was a feast, but then we were also feeding about 25 people, and if you could see the amount of rice that they can all put away, you’d understand why we were afraid we didn’t have enough! Anyway, it was all a great success. We walked down to the train loop, which is about 3km down the road, and made all the boarders carry something (the boys got really into that & kept trying to get us to give them more things to carry). Then R & I served them all (some of them were really suspicious of the peanut butter and banana sandwiches and refused to try them), and managed to completely stuff them all out (so much so that none of them were hungry at dinner)! Then they all played cricket for a bit, and we walked back to the school in time for tea.
This week’s event (we’ve managed to get away with having an interruption to regular classes every week so far!) was Earth Day, on April 22nd. One of the teachers had prepared a program, so we were to teach classes I to V a song (actually, they’d wanted us to teach more than one song, I think, and/or a poem or two, and up to class VI but we don’t even have any classes with them). In true Blue Diamond/Indian fashion, they told us about the program less than a week before it was to take place, meaning that we had to scramble to a) find a song that we could sing/teach that was about the earth and b) teach it to them all in time. We settled on All Things Bright and Beautiful (for lack of any other ideas, given that we couldn’t use the internet here*) – not a favourite of either of ours, but at least it is somewhat to do with the earth. Also in true Blue Diamond fashion was how increasingly elaborate the production became as it drew closer to the event. On the actual day, it began with an assembly, then a break because the guests of honour hadn’t arrived (and it was ridiculously hot), then a rally (which was so funny – we walked up and down the main road, the students had placards, and they all shouted slogans like "Save the trees Save the earth!", "Save the water save the life!", and something like "No deforestation Yes aforestation!"), followed by speeches made by the guests of honour (scientists from the gov’t environment department), that were painfully long in the heat. We were also supposed to give a speech (which they only told us about on Monday), but fortunately got cut in the efforts to keep the program as short as possible. Then we finished with the song, gave out a few prizes, and everyone did their best to get out of the heat of the grounds as quickly as possible. The whole program was originally meant to be about an hour, then an hour and a half, but took the entire morning.
The only other noteworthy thing I can think of about this week is how many horrible, creeping, crawling monster-bugs that are making appearances in our room! I guess it will be good for me (I’m already less squeamish about cockroaches, and am now able to suppress my screams when I see them), but they’re not exactly pleasant. However, one of the advantages of sleeping across from the boys is having a ready supply of spider-catchers when needed!