I LOVE YOU, SHEELA!!!!!!!!!!

as if getting to move to kathmandu wasn't lucky enough...as if doing all kinds of cool things, seeing tons of amazing things wasn't fortunate enough...as if having a cook and a house cleaner wasn't enough to make me pinch myself...now i have a teacher's assistant (t.a.) named sheela. she's wonderful. dreamy. so good i can't quite believe it...really. i share her with another english teacher next door, but sheela makes me want to weep...on her shoulder! she's nepali AND efficient. her english is excellent; she knows where everything is, trains me on lincoln protocol, runs off photocopies, will check papers, will record grades, will take attendance, sub, stand in, clean the classroom and wipe my nose when i have the sniffles...i bet. what have i done to deserve this??! my favorite sheela moment so far, and there are many already in just 4 days working together, is when she came in the classroom the first day and told me she was in over the weekend cleaning and organizing my classroom. blink blink... ok, i guess there's a second part to this...then she asked me what colors i wanted on my bulletin boards. uhh...i'm not picky, sheela...you choose...you're reeeally going to do my bulletin boards?? ok. so, she comes back with red paper...lincoln school colors are red and black and then proceeds to wonder how she should decorate them. i have a meeting and must head downstairs, only to come back an hour later to sheela block printing the borders of my bulletin boards!!! she has paint out, a roller, a wooden block and has been experimenting with colors. miss janice (i've since rectified the 'miss' part), do you like this or this color? i thought this would match the curtains better! uhhh...ok. so she does the board and i think it looks great. another teacher meeting passes and i come back in the room and she has changed the paper because she wasn't satisfied...she found a different wood block and redid the whole thing. uhhh...ok. I LOVE YOU, SHEEEEEEEELA!  she's the best...i'm thinking of adopting her, except, i will have her daughter in grade 9. tricky. in any case i feel like the luckiest teacher in the world...or certainly in the himalayas! oh yeah, and tomorrow...she will hang up visuals on the boards and around the classroom. hoooooray! lots of love, j

back to work...for real this time

my first official day at lincoln school was today. i am a full time substitute for a woman who is on maternity leave for the semester. my qualifications fit the job requirements perfectly and being local it was much easier for the school to hire me. we will have teacher in-service tomorrow and next week monday and tuesday before the kids arrive on wednesday. this is going to be a much more demanding and hopefully, rewarding job than wenddy i house as 5th grade english as a second language, i could wing, but 10th grade integrated english and history, i can not! i'll be teaching kids from all over the world about imperialism, world war 1, world war 2 and the russian revolution. we will read four novels: 'things fall apart' by chinua achebe, 'farewell to arms' by ernest hemingway, 'animal farm' by george orwel and 'one day in the life of ivan denisovich' by the recently deceased  alexander solzhenitsyn. some of it's familiar to me and needs to be reviewed and some just plain needs to be learned. i enjoy the challenge and hopefully the kids won't have to 'teach' me too much. : ) so today all the staff met and introduced themselves according to years experience. new teachers first and all the way up to a woman who's been there for 33 years. really. she came overland from london on a trip and wanted to eventually settle in australia. she met her nepali husband and that was that! many very nice people and so many interesting stories. everyone is extremely welcoming and helpful and the feel around the grounds is that of a family. i've never been associated with a staff like this. there are buses that come and pick up teachers and students in the morning with two different arrival times and then 3 different return times in the afternoon depending on after school activities. i'll also be helping with the girls' soccer team which begins in october. they have really short seasons...maybe 2 months which culminate in a tournament of asian international schools somewhere within the region. i will definitely be going on the trip and look forward to traveling out of nepal a little more. one other exciting notable is that the famed chimp activist, jane goodall is coming to nepal and specifically wants to visit our school due to an eco-program that's been implemented. how cool is that that i will get to experience all of this in one semester. i will be finished teaching before i come home for christmas. plus, a couple friends are coming to visit in october and we will go for a major trek. (anyone else interested is most welcome!!) that and several other wonderful trips planned...and we bought used mountain bikes to get out and ride more. i'm even considering riding to school sometimes although it's about a half an hour ride on crazy kathmandu roads in crazy kathmandu traffic. we'll see. so, my first day was a splendid success and i'm happy to be meeting so many great people doing so many amazing things. i've attached the school's website in 'links of interest' on the right side of the blog for your browsing pleasure. take care; i'd love to hear from you! janice

mountain bike ride

saturday we went walking around thamel (the tourist part of kathmandu) looking for new places, when i spotted an adventure company offering a mountain bike ride the next day. i'd been itchin to get out and do something active and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. the man told us there were 2 american women signed up, but we wanted to know their intensity level before committing! we were all out for a nice, leisurely, non-technical ride through the country side so it seemed like a good match. then, another woman, minerva, from the philippines, joined in, but she had only arrived in kathmandu a day before from dubai...where she works. she by no means looked like an 'athlete,' but was game so she also signed up. the next morning came and we were all geared up with snacks and camelbacks in tow. the ride started out heading out of kathmandu at rush hour. ??  yes, we had to ride through traffic. i felt like a little duck following its mother, only santosh, our guide was way ahead of us. lol. also, kathmandu is in a valley, so whenever you head out of the city, you naturally head UP! we climbed quite a while before getting to our tea break. kari and lindsay are from montana and colorado and are young, so they did fine, but minerva was hurtin and lagged behind. we finally turned off the main road onto some less travelled roads, but that's when we hit the mud. i enjoyed it all tremendously, but it became more technical than we had bargained for! we were sloshin around in the mud and slippin our way through some deep truck tire grooves. the only scary part was riding along a 10 inch path that sharply fell down a mountain side to the right...hold on! 2/3s through we came upon the women from the video clip. they spotted us, so i waved and they waved us towards them. we ditched the bikes and worked our way along the narrow pathways in between paddies until we reached them, shin deep in the water crop. they were very jovial and friendly, offering us water (pani) and thrilled to see their image on the screen of my camera. christy gave them some gummie bears and they shared them amongst their group. it was really a nice excursion as i'd never seen how rice was grown up close like that. it truly is labor intensive work and demands so much water. 20 minutes later, we continued on our way, and after stopping for lunch at a local joint, did we arrive back in thamel...our starting point. tired, sore, muddy, sweaty, stinky, hot, and happy, we walked home to even more stares than usual...being in shorts and all muddy...we got many smiles, giggles and points! christy got a funky tan line from her shorts and mud spatters on her legs. it's so pretty... : )  good times...i love getting out and having an excuse to get all muddy...haven't done that in a looong time!  hope you get the chance soon. love, j

women of the rice paddy

mountain bike riding

goa

we spent about a week down in goa, which is 2/3s down the west coast of india. it's known for a party atmosphere, trance dancing, sherry wine, drugs and spicy seafood. i guess that's all during high season! we didn't see any of that...it was nice and quiet and peaceful. we rented a scooter and cruised around to different beaches and sights, soaking up the arabian sea air and enjoying the rush of the intense, monsoon tide. the water was too rough to swim, but it was still enjoyable walking or running along the sand. i got a few soakers while running and even got stung by some tiny, glowing blue jellyfish several times while strolling with my feet in the water. ...i prefer the soakers... : )  throughout goa there are tons of shrines. 80% of the population is hindu, but from portuguese settlement, 20% is catholic. the christians built a lot of shrines cause they were all over: on the roadside, seaside, under trees, awnings and any place imaginable where there was space. goa has its own language, too, that's only recently been recognized by the government. considering goa became an indian state in the '80s, things are much different there. the literacy rates and quality of life are both higher than in any other place in india. one of my colleagues from wenddy i house has family living in goa and asked me to go visit them. we embarked on about a 40 minute scooter ride through some rain and beautiful scenery before arriving at their home. it is so interesting to get inside someone's home...they had a beautiful sloping lot with tons of fruit trees and flowers. they were saying that they had so many mangos, figs, jackfruit and other edibles that they had to give most away and some inevitably wound up rotting. such problems... : ) they were nice people and gracious hosts. while in goa we stayed at an old portuguese style guest house. the rooms were fabulously decorated with antique furniture and were accompanied by lovely balconies overlooking the sprawling, luscious flora. they had 2 sweet kitties and a very friendly dog...all of which we found in our room on several occasions!! our time in goa was very quiet and relaxing...and already seems like a long time ago! so, enough of vacation photos...back to the 'du activities on my blog. i promise, when i'm home, i'll look at all your vacation photos if you want... : )  take care, love, j 

goa...LAST VACATION PICS!!!

sufi singers and raj ghat

these are the last photos of delhi...  one of our final nights there we met up with a guy who is an alumni of one of christy's friends. they had never met, but through the alumni association, we were able to connect with him and see the sufi singers. really nice guy...he led us back through the small alleys, past tons of prayer mat sellers, offering vendors and innumerable hawkers of anything muslim. just getting back to the dargah (mosque) took adept maneuvering and resilience. after removing our shoes hundreds of yards from the venue, we popped out at the dargah and realized we needed our heads covered. back we went into the maze to get some "little house in the prairie" head scarves. apparently there was a huge pilgrimage that week which accounted for the large number of people. usually there are a couple hundred, we are told, but easily, this day, there were thousands. the baskets of rose bearing men were queuing to get into the mosque while the women hung outside. after a while, the sufi singers came out and slowly started their rhythmic music accompanied by drums and a harmonium. apparently their songs are mostly of persian origin and are poems passed down through this oral tradition. i felt a little funny being there at first, being in a muslim place and the only clearly westerners, but i soon relaxed into the rhythm of the music and friendliness of the people. we walked around to the back of the mosque and were swarmed by people who wanted to take photos of us or with us. the one woman in purple from the slide show was so excited to be in our presence...we couldn't speak the same language, but she was touching and hugging us and insisted on photos. then the little girl couldn't get next to us quickly enough to have her photo snapped. the photo of the family, however, is the funniest one to me. the looks on their faces cracks me up...we didn't really know where we were, how to communicate, what we were supposed to be doing or what to expect, but we were very warmly received by all.

the next day we took a rickshaw over to raj ghat. this is the place where mahatma gandhi was cremated...a ghat is a cremation pyre. years later, nehru, indira and rajiv were all cremated here. as was ravi gandhi...very interesting and tragic family: the nehrus, if you are inclined to read up on india's history. mahatma was not related to indira, she was a nehru who married a gandhi. one of her two sons, ravi was killed while piloting a plane that crashed, indira was assassinated by her own body guards and rajiv, who took over as prime minister after her death, was also assassinated. now rajiv's italian born wife is high up in office, but does not want to be prime minister because she inevitably will be assassinated, too. in any case, this huge park is on the convergence of several holy rivers and all of the leaders of the country get their own ghat and memorial. all of the people i mentioned had very nice memorials and ghats, except indira...hers was a simple monolith with no signs, no words, no markers, no nothing and she was a huge figure in indian politics. we walked right past it without realizing what it was. rajiv's ghat was a lovely black granite pyre carved with 46 lotus flowers, one for each year of his life. he was a kind and gentle man and was highly regarded amongst his constituency. i didn't photograph nehru, indira or ravi's ghat. as far as mahatma's ghat, it is in a separate section of the park and has an eternal flame. every friday there are ceremonies held there as that's the day he was assassinated and, in addition, there are official services every year on his birth and death day.  it is such a big deal that any foreign dignitary who comes to india traditionally visits this site. george w. and laura bush made an appearance in 2006 while touring india. the mahatma gandhi museum is close by and very interesting...i knew very little about indian history. shocking. one more posting of india pics to go...whew...aren't you glad you don't have to sit through travel photo albums and stories??! lol. lots of love, j

sufi singers and raj ghat

sufi singers, old delhi