My New Home

I moved into my home stay on Sunday. It is a beautiful 5 storey house in a lovely part of Kathmandu. I don’t think many Nepali’s live in houses like this. My neighbour apparently has a pool in the garden. From the roof you can enjoy stunning views of Kathmandu and the Monkey Temple. My bedroom is a good size with en suite (the orange tiles wouldn’t look out of place in the 60’s) and a small balcony. The bed is Nepali size, so my toes are sticking out the end :oS

The Kitchen

However, even houses in well-to-do areas are still susceptible to the constant power cuts of Nepal. In the last few days we have only had power for an hour each day; and even then during that period it was intermittent. In the evening we use lamps/torches for light. Luckily there is always hot water for showering since the family have solar power and cooking is also not a problem due to them using gas. However, charging phones and using laptops is a real luxury, so no power is this week’s excuse for not being up to date with my blog :os Also my great idea of buying a huge pot of yogurt for breakfast each morning wasn’t so great, since by yesterday it had become a pot of smelly goo. Yum!!!

My 60's Bathroom

My hosts are lovely. They are Sarala’s mother and father or aama and babu as I am suppose to call them. They are always smiling and laughing, mostly at my bad pronunciation of Nepali. Talking about my atrocious Nepali, I told one lady I liked eating dog (kukur) instead of chicken (kukhura) when asked if I was a vegetarian. She did look at me a bit strangely :os

I am surviving the dal bhaat once a day. So far, every day the curries have been different unlike the stable you get in the restaurants. Today I had chicken curry, a taro curry and a very yummy spicy achaar. Yesterday was curried green beans and the day before goat with potato and the evil veg (cauliflower) curry. I think I can survive 2 weeks of this, but I do cheat at lunchtime and eat Western food at Thamel.

My Bedroom

One of the rules in all Nepali houses (also some offices) is no shoes, so I have to wear over sized slippers. A rule I can relate too (Toni I hope you are treating my wooden floors nice ;o)), but it is nerve racking on the marble stairs since I have nearly plummeted to my death twice.

Rooftop View

The school is a 5 minute walk from the house. I decided to take it easy, so I just do 2 classes (year 1 and year 4) in the morning. Year 1 is madness, they have attention spans of a peanut :os They have 3-4 teachers to control them. Teaching them consonants is not going very well. Not sure if it is my Welsh accent (however in my defence they have only been learning English for 3 weeks since the new school year has just started) or them being only 6 years old :os Year 4 are very sweet, they are flying through their course book. Yesterday, I had to teach them why we use full stops. Hmmm, I don’t know, I just do :oS The year 4 English teacher didn’t really help me by saying it’s used with an imperative sentence – gulp!!!! I tell you Nepali students probably know more about the English language/grammar than most people of my generation or maybe it’s just me and I was asleep during those classes :os