Friday the children had a performance at school put on to entertain the teachers. About a dozen Umbrella children were involved in singing and dancing. The girls are incredibly talented. I will post a couple very short video clips.
Saturday the volunteers gathered up a few of the children from each house and held a music workshop. Instruments were made and then one of our very musically talented volunteers lead them to play their instruments and sing an African song about a monkey. Very cute and entertaining.
Today, Nadja organized a beauty day for our girls. It is some sort of special day where all unmarried women wear green & yellow bangle bracelets. I think it Is for good luck finding a good husband. We went to a shop to get bracelets for ourselves and all the girls. The bangles are made of glass and have no give at all. Apparently, my Canadian mitts are a bit bigger than those of the average Nepalese women. The lady at the store must have realized how much I needed these bangles because she squished, squeezed and manipulated the bones in my hand until she got the bracelets on. I must mention that only 2 bracelets were damaged beyond repair during this process. And the bracelets that I'm wearing, they will probably still be on my wrist when I land back in Canada this fall, unless they break.
Once the bangles were bought and installed, we headed over to the house to hand out bracelets to the girls and start the face/nail painting. Great fun was had by all and at the end if the night both Nadja & I were exhausted.
I am still trying to figure out a way to post my other photos along and will post a link as soon as it is available.
My diet has changed drastically since arriving. I had brought myself a ration of chocolate to last the entire 3 months. On my first visit to the grocery I realized that there is not a shortage if chocolate on Nepal. 3 month supply is 3/4 gone as I know it can be replaced. What I am really missing is cheese. The only kind I have seen is processed. If you're a future volunteer and you're reading this PLEASE BRING CHEESE. Otherwise, I may just fade away to nothing (although due to the chocolate situation, chances of that happening are slim). There really isn't alot that you can't get here, everything is just different. And the drastic difference is that I haven't eaten cheese in two weeks. The dal bhatt isn't bad, but one night I'd love a cheese sandwich.
I haven't seen any twizzlers here either. :(
At night I sleep with earplugs. They help, bit do not completely drown out the sounds. In the evening it is loud with the sounds of nature, people and vehicles. There is a swampish area not far from my window that sounds like it is home to about 4,594,753,108 frogs. In the morning it's the same, but replace the sounds of the frogs with a few dozen roosters. I am really appreciating evening rainfalls. It makes the air almost cool enough that i
need a blanket, and it drowns out all the noise.
Between Communicating with the Nepalese & our Spanish volunteer (who has limited English) I find myself speaking alot of broken English. Sometimes I forget when I am speaking with someone who has a complete grasp of the English language and will say to them something like "you come cafe? We eat?". This is after less than 2 weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment