Give a Man a Fish...

I know I'm at risk of sounding redundant, but there's another festival going on now. This one is called Jaatra and lasts 3 days. It's mostly just the Newari caste that celebrates it, but the majority of people in Kirtipur are Newari so it feels like a big deal around here. Maa and Baa have been brewing ayla for weeks in preparation and the late night troupes of drummers and cymbal-clangers have been growing steadily in intensity the past few days. Judging by the amount of food that's been brought into the house for preparation, there'll probably be over 100 people coming over today for the party, so a "small" gathering of just the immediate family this time. There are some especially weird food items being made for this festival, ones that I haven't yet seen. For example, this morning with my vegetables and rice I was also given a small dish of some clear jelly material. I tried to ask what it was exactly, but all I got for an answer was that it came from meat somehow. It concerned me a little bit what part of the meat could create such an un-meat-like substance and must say that it did not at all taste good. So, 4.5 months in and I have finally found a type of Nepali food that I don't like.

As winter weather settles in, and with rainy season well behind us, 2 of Kathmandu's 3 most complained about problems have been getting worse. There've been more and more electricity cuts and pollution in the city is getting out of control. At any given time, it's starting to feel more likely that there won't be electricity than that there will. It's a little bit inconvenient, but my host sister has found ways to use it's unreliability to her advantage. For example, when Pratik is watching too much TV and won't do his homework, all she needs to do is shut off the main switch feeding power into the 2nd floor rooms (or rather, she'll usually ask me to do this because she can't quite reach it without a stool) and when the TV shuts down just sigh and say "ahh batti gayo" (light has gone). Pratik will then become bored enough to turn to his homework and the electricity tends to miraculously return at about the same moment he finishes. As for the pollution, luckily this is a problem concentrated within the ring road itself and doesn't extend to where I live up in the hills. I'm very grateful to be far enough removed to be able to avoid the Kathmandu black lung because being on the streets there makes me feel it's more effectively taking years off my life than cigarettes could. Actually, I'm thinking I'll start smoking anytime I go there now so that I can at least benefit from the filter. Fortunately, I don't find much need to go there much.

At school, the aftermath of the exams for me has meant an increased sense of responsibility for making sure the students learn what they need to know to do well on their exams, and also a slight shift in overall focus. Before, I had been trusting in the regular teachers to be working through plans that would cover off all the necessary topics and viewed myself as someone who could fill in wherever needed to avoid idle periods or give more conversational practice. But after seeing the students facing exam questions that they clearly had never seen anything similar to before, I now think more test-specific preparation is needed. So I'll be working a lot more directly on giving them practice with the types of questions they'll have to face on their finals 4 months from now. As much as I hated pop quizzes when I was a student I think I may have to start employing them to keep the students reminded of what they have already learned. They seem to quickly forget what they've been through in previous lessons and not see how it's all connected. The good news is that I'll be with class 3 regularly now so can give some structure to at least that one class. I went through all the questions on their last exam with them and then gave them the same test again a few days later. They all did much better the 2nd time around.

What I've been discovering lately is that as much as I'd love to be able to teach all these students to speak fluent English by the time I leave here, that's far from possible. There's not enough time for that. Learning is a process. Hence the slight shift in focus. Now, I'm looking more to what can be done to improve the process by which the students are learning instead of just trying to cram as much learning as possible into them during my short 10 months here. One project I've started working on with the Head Teacher is an English Conversation Book to be made available for the teachers so that they can build their English skills and run full classes in English. The idea came from English conversation classes with our own school's teachers during half-time where they can practice asking and answering questions with me. The Head Teacher had the idea that there could be demand from teachers in other schools as well. All our teachers very much want to improve their English, but feel a bit in the dark about how they can do that. So we want to make a book available that is directly related to the context where they'll be using English. It will have different chapters with example conversations for specific situations around the school and then also highlight common vocabulary words, grammar points and sentence structures. It sort of feels like instead of giving the students some fish, we might be able to teach lots of teachers how to better teach all their students to fish. It has some potential to indirectly reach a whole lot more students if well can pull it off. Though that in itself may be somewhat of a long shot as I'm in no way qualified to write such a book. But, I'm the only one here so it's worth a shot, and both the Head Teacher and the publisher he's talked to are very eager for it to be finished.