4 December 2008
Today, I received cards from two students to wish me a happy
new year. I was very surprised but then realised, that indeed, we are in december,
and Xmas is coming soon as well as New Year’s! But nothing here can remind
me of Xmas! It’s very funny for me to remember that in Europe, all the
main cities have now so many lights everywhere while here, everything is so
dark because of a lack of lights and because of very frequent electricity cuts!
I’ve been finishing my class for the last few days with pocket torches
as electricity goes off around 5pm, and may not come back before 10 the next
morning! Anyway, as one light of 40W is far from being enough for a whole classroom,
my students always bring their own pocket light, so it doesn’t change
much to have electricity or not!
To eat everyday the same meal based on rice is as well far from the nice Alsacian
culinary delicacies which are prepared during Advent and for Xmas ... although,
don’t worry, I’m not starving here! ;-)
This morning, the class went wrong and I left it crying from frustration and anger, feeling so useless and hopeless! I spent indeed 2 hours teaching them the present and the past tenses (by repeating the rules, making them repeat the rules and do at least 50 exercises) to see at the end “I listenS and he play”!!! I couldn’t believe it! What can I do in this case? Do you think that making 100 exercises instead of 50 will really make a difference? I doubt! For the present tense, English is certainly one of the easiest language, far much easier than French for example, and than Nepali too. I shouted at them, I have to confess, asking them what else I could do so they remember! And you won’t believe it, but they are students who have been studying English for at least 5-6 years, with some of them 7 hours per week! Unbelievable! The problem is that in Nepal, children never learn to think at school: they only learn to repeat and copy, and this is unfortunately the case in all subjects. So how can I, in a few weeks, teach them how to think, furthermore in an other language? Almost impossible mission! But I know, I shouldn’t have shouted like that at then end, and I fear not to have many students tomorrow, as I don’t think they like to be challenged like that, considering the way they are usually taught at school. They’ve never learnt to make their own sentences, only to repeat what the teacher says, without having any idea what it means and how a sentence works. They can’t even read English on their own. It’s really sad, because with so many hours per week, starting from a low age, they could almost be bilingual by then!
To calm me, Hari offered me to go to the top of the hill, from where we can
have beautiful views on the Langtang Himalayan range, with peaks at 7000m. Unfortunately,
byt the time we arrived, the weather was so bad that we couldn’t see a
thing, not even the next valley! And it was very cold! But at least, I managed
to take a nice shot from the village, which may give you some idea of what I
mean that I have to climb a lot (of course it doesn’t look as steep on
the pic as it really is!).
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Back at school, it was much warmer and I was surprised that there were so much difference. But Hari told me that the top of the hill was actually at 3000m, 1000m above the village! It’s funny to think that in France, until recently, climbing to 3000 was usually quite an achievement for me, and most people in France and England have never been that high, and here, I do that “just” (well it’s still a 1000m climb!) by going to the top of the hill, between two classes!!! ;-)
The classes of the evening went very well, so I felt much better. The little
children managed to understand the rules of conjugation after only 1 hour, so
I think it’s my morning students who have a problem rather than my teaching
which is bad! ;-) And the teenagers even asked for homework, what else could
I hope for?! ;-) So I came back home with a much lighter heart than this morning!
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