Bump It Up

Being a middle school teacher I tend to be subjected to more ridicule, more teasing, and strange looks than most people’s jobs. I like it though. It provides me with opportunities to live just a little more silly than not.

This week at school we are trying to get the student body excited about school spirit. Most schools will do things like wearing pajamas, dressing a certain way, or other goofy stunts.

Our stunt......bump the hair. 

Our student body is spectacularly amazing at teasing, ratting, hair spraying, and creating mile high hair styles. I am very impressed with their hair skills. 

Now there are different versions of the “bump”.
**Due to student confidentiality I can’t post their pictures...darn!**

 “Snooki”
Ginormous poof is teased to the very crown of your head. A small curtain of hair is gently placed across the teased portion and hair sprayed into to place.

“Waterfall”
This particular version is a “Snooki” on steroids. The small poof is multiplied around the entire head from ear to ear. The completed product resembles a hair halo. The most perfect versions look as if the wearer has a hair umbrella attached to the top of the their head.

“Bump It”
Some girls wear the bump it. Most at our school do not. I might have over heard one girl call another wearing a bump it “poser”. So we shall not go there.

Male Version of the Bump It: Mohawk
Today I saw a mohawk that stood 4 1/2 inches high and shellacked as if it were cemented with glue. It gleamed and glimmered in the gym lights. And I do believe if a ballon got anywhere near the ends, it would have popped due to the extreme pointyness of the spikes.

Yes, I got caught up in the hair bump madness. It isn’t as big or as spectacular as some of the girls. But it’s a start. I love walking into school dressed out of the norm, seeing the looks on student’s faces. It makes me giggle inside.

Saturday Travels

I’m going to take a small break from my Nepal reminiscing. On Saturday my friend Toni and I decided we both needed out of Phoenix for a little bit. My wanderlust has not been quenched by traveling to Nepal and Costa Rica in the last few months. Actually, it has only fueled the fire. I don’t think it’s going to get any better any time soon. So instead of sitting at home thinking of what fun adventures could be out there, we both loaded into the Toaster and away we went!

About an hour outside of Phoenix there is a great little road side attraction Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch. It was just plain amazing. We saw ostriches, goats, deer, and donkeys. But by far, my favorite site were the lorikeets.

These amazing little birds were so hilarious. Once we walked inside their cage you could hear them talking and chirping to each other. The very nice young man told us to hold our little cups of nectar in our hands and simply hold out our arm. Lo and behold, the lorikeets descended!

They were pretty greedy. 

I’d like to introduce you to Larry, Curly, and Moe. They stuck around for quite a bit. Then my nectar ran out and they flew away. 

But not before fixing my hair. He spent quite a while up there making sure my hair was exactly the way he wanted it to be. 

But it’s just not an adventure until you have a brightly colored bird sitting on your shoulder singing into your ear. 

Hurray for random Saturday adventures. 

I love Arizona winters. 

Namaste

Wheel of Death

One of the most ingenious items I saw while in Duradanda was something we lovingly called

 “The Duradanda Wheel of Death”

(insert ominous voice with reverb here...)

It’s made of 

...wood...

....bamboo...

and

...twine...

....

That’s all. 

And of course I went on it. 

 

I felt like I was flying. I was a little sad because the Arizona State Fair was had just begun as I was leaving the country. I was missing out on greasy food, midway games, and scary half put together rides where you feared for your life. 

Well we were in luck, we got our amusement park ride half way across the world in Duradanda, Nepal. 

I think my favorite part was the fact it was powered by teenage Nepali boys. They would stand on the sides of the platform and propel us around, and around, and around the wheel. We would be standing the town center plaza talking with the kids, playing games, laughing and talking. As we were standing there, there would be troops of kids clambering all over this mini ferris wheel. 

If we even glanced over at it, they would get all excited and ask, “You want?! You try!”

It took us a while to warm up to the idea of spinning around on a wheel made of twine. 

But I got over it, and enjoyed it. 

Probably one of my best memories from the trip, as terrifying as it was, just plain amazing. 

Where else in the world can you ride on a homemade ferris wheel, spinning round and round, with the Himalayas in the background? 

Namaste 

Swagatam (Welcome)

Our entry into Duradanda was something like out of a movie. I had ideas of what it might be like, but as many of the experiences in Nepal, the actual experience surpassed anything I had previously imagined.

Our bus ride to the village was supposed to be only take a few hours and we were to arrive mid-day. Well as many times on the trip, things changed. With the transmission falling out of the bus and our unexpected hike it placed us to Duradanda right at sunset. It didn’t help that the Annapurna mountain range and the Himalaya mountains were standing at attention off to our right. The sun looked as if it would never leave the peaks. Normally when the sun goes down, it will stay on peaks for a few moments then disappears. The Himalayas on the other hand, seem to absorb the sun. Gather it as if they will never see the light again. So we obviously were a little pre-occupied. Also, as we found, a Nepali version of “short hike” does not equal an American version of a “short hike”.

The elders of the village had gathered together to outside of the village to welcome us in. The fact that their village was selected to host a Choice expedition was a huge honor, and they knew this.  They had been planning for months for our arrival, and now we were finally here. It was as if in a dream. We were met with horns, drums, singers and dancers.

A Choice expedition coming to a village meant many things. On the surface, it meant that many volunteers would be coming to the village for over a week. It meant extra hands to help with manual labor projects. It meant new faces to greet and interact with. It meant learning new things about people from far away. But it meant so much more than that to the leaders of this village. Having an expedition come to their village meant hope and life. The hope that things can change. The hope for a better future. The hope that not only poverty can be changed, but the hope that life may be enriched....better.

As we made our way to the village, the women were waiting for us to arrive. We were greeted with many enthusiastic “Namaste”, handshakes, and of course smiles. We were introduced to the first of many  marigold necklaces (have forgotten what they are called). We were given a tika of red powder on our forehead. The tika represented a blessing to each of us. We learned quickly that we would be given many tikas during our visit.



Of course, after our greeting, there was more dancing. There was always dancing. The villagers were so excited to have us, they wanted to share their music, dance, and culture with us. Love it! These villagers knew how to dance....and dance...and dance...and dance. We learned many new dance moves from them, along with a few versions of traditional Nepali folk songs. As our trip progressed we learned one of the common songs “Resham Firi”, which became our SHe mantra. It didn’t matter the venue, the people, what was happening, where it was, what time of day, or any other variable. We would randomly burst out into “Resham Firi” and the villagers would laugh at our extremely bad Nepali accents, then join in to fix our mispronunciations.

It was only the first night and I already felt like family. What an excellent way to begin our expedition.

Namaste

Super Visit

This is a quick departure from my Nepal reminiscing. So if you'd like to skip i totally understand.

Yesterday we had the district big wigs come to our campus. The new interim superintendent of schools and his entourage wanted to come look at our school and observe some lessons. I completely understand why they want to come, and even welcome it. I want to know that the people in charge of making decisions that directly affect my working environment have some kind of idea what life in a classroom is like. Often it seems once a person enters District Offices, they seem to forget that kids are kids and tend not to follow a pre-prescribed outline of learning.

BUT, I hope they realize it scares the living daylights out of us normal teachers who are used to hanging around with 13 yr olds all day and not having adults in our rooms. Give me a room full of teenagers and I can deal with them, teach them, and most of time discipline enough to keep a general flow to the class. Add even one adult in there and I'm stumbling over my words, blanking on kids names, my pluse races, and I just sound not as confident as i normally am.

Guess where the superintendent and his entourage ended up. Yup. They made a visit down my hallway just to see me. Super.

It went well, my 8th graders were doing exactly what they should be doing. We were taking notes at first, so not so exciting. But after the notes the students got our digital cameras out to practice photography techniques, which the viewing party seemed to like. Phew. I knnokw my introduction and discussion weren't as spectacular as they could have been, but overall wasnt too bad. I still havent heard anything from my principal deeming the visit a success or total flop. Hopefully I'll have a little bit of feedback soon.

All in all the super was in campus for about and hour. It feels like a dog and pony show, but hopefully they saw some teaching amidst my stuttering.

Nepali Transportation

Lights outside Kathmandu Hotel first
night in Nepal. 

Upon arrival in Nepal I was greeted by a sheer blast of humanity at the airport. I had just come from Thailand where the airport was very clean and modern. There were moving walkways that very nicely told me in Thai "โปรดระวัง . ทางเดินเป็นสิ้นสุด. โปรดระวัง . ทางเดินเป็นสิ้นสุด "and English, “Please be careful, the walkway is ending. Please be careful, the walkway is ending.”

As I worked my way through Customs in Nepal, I realized very quickly I was in a whole different world. That whole new world continued as I went outside. Before I left Thailand I set up an airport transfer to my hotel in Thamel, which is the touristy area of Kathmandu. As I walked outside to find my taxi I was overwhelmed by men asking me, “Taxi? Taxi? Good price, good price for you.” “Help with your bag? I help you.” Then proceeding to try and physically take my bag out of my hands. That I didn’t care for so much.

Luggage being loaded to
the top of the bus

Luckily my transfer people were there with my name nice and big on a sheet of paper. They loaded me and my now broken luggage into the itty bitty taxi and zoomed off towards Thamel. 45 minutes later and a few thoughts of, “what have I gotten myself into this time?”, we made it to the cute little Kathmandu Resort Hotel located next to a bank and above a car garage. I luckily had an afternoon to wander Thamel and take in the sites.

The next day I met up with our wonderful in-country director, Bishnu Adakari, who gathered us all from various places in Kathmandu then we were loaded into Nepali busses. Our home for the next 6.5 hours that day and another 8 the next.

I don’t care what anyone says about roads in the US. They have NOTHING on roads in Nepal. Imagine taking a normal US road. Then age said road by 20 years. Add in 20 years of snow and ice chipping away said road. Don’t bother adding new lines, no one pays attention to them anyway. Got it?

Okay, now with that super fun road add the following: large busses, mini busses, taxis, 2 door sedans that have been doctored beyond belief and are somehow still running, tuk-tuks, motor bikes with full families, bicycles, the random cow, and of course lots and lots of pedestrians.

Welcome to Nepal roads. 

As we began our 2nd day of driving by loading onto the busses and heading towards Duradanda. Bishnu told us, “Enjoy the silk roads now. When we change busses we will then head into the ‘real Nepal’. So enjoy now!” Yikes. 

Oh boy was he right. 

Our lunch break was brought to us courtesy of the transmission dropping out of the 1st set of “large” busses. I was truly impressed by the mechanical prowess of our driver and his bus boy. They ushered us all off the bus. We hiked up a little path not realizing it would lead directly into someone’s front yard and had lunch. While we ate, they managed to patch the bus back together and get her running again. We then drove another mile to meet the tractor and smaller busses which would take us the remainder of the way to Duradanda. 

 Stuffing into the back of an extremely tiny public bus headed up the mountain to Duradanda is difficult. I realized quickly that Nepali buses were designed with Nepali people in mind. Nepali people are much shorter and not as large as American people. This equaled a very long, very cramped, leg numbing 4 hour bouncy ride in the back of the bus. 

 Switch back. Switch back. Switch back. Switch back. 

Welcome to the REAL Nepal. 

Don’t look now, but there’s a 2000 foot drop to the valley floor outside your window. 

So after ...

- 2 days on a 2 different buses

- 1 broken transmission

- 1 transfer which included throwing bags off the top to a waiting tractor

- a Nepali high road traffic jam which included our tractor and bus backing up....down the road to make way for the truck load of delicious oranges

- a back seat window seat where I feared I would fall out when the bus went over the HUGE potholes the size of Kathmandu

- getting out to walk a “short” 1 1/2 hour distance
- about 4 hours later than we expected

........we made it. 

Swagatam (welcome) Duradanda


Namasate

Introductions

In an attempt to separate my public school teacher life and my personal life, I’ve decided to createthis blog. I’ve realized there are too many things I’d like to share that I just don’t really want associated with my teacher blog.

Silly, yes.

Slightly paranoid, yes.

I don’t care.

I some times have difficulties separating my life from school because it consumes so much of my life. So, in an attempt to establish my outside of school persona, a new blog is born.

Part of my desire to begin anew as well is to chronicle the latest adventures in my life. In the last few months I’ve had the amazing life changing opportunities to visit Thailand, Nepal, and Costa Rica. I took over 1500 pictures in Nepal and another 300 in Costa Rica. I want to share my experiences with friends and family all over the country.

One of my friends who accompanied me to Nepal has started to do “Nepal Highlights” on her blog. I’ve been inspired by her short but detailed snippets of her trip. It is a daunting task trying to share and convey the overwhel

mingness of Nepal. Every time I think of possibly beginning I feel daunted at the sheer amount of information I’d like to share.

So I’ll begin with one of the simplest yet most profound terms I learned in Nepal.

Namaste

The direct translation of “Namaste” is, the divine in me recognizes the divine in you. How beautiful. Many people use namaste as a simple greeting in passing on the road, in greeting, in leaving, in joy, and in welcoming. Due to the sheer amount of times a Nepalese man or woman says namaste during the day, the beauty of the statement is sometimes lost.

When we learned what the literal translation meant, it brought a brand new appreciation for the Nepali people. They are humble and proud of their country, of their children, and their culture. As we passed men and women on the road, we were often looked at with confused looks and sometimes apprehension. (The villages we were welcomed into were quite remote and we were a bit of a novelty). But we would place our hands together, give a small bow and a smile, then exclaim happily “Namaste”. This was always greeted with with a face splitting grin, a recognition of their cultural hello, a small bow and a “Namaste” in return. Some of the older gentleman would often return with a “Namascar” which is the formal greeting.

So, namaste my friends. The divine with me recognizes the divine in you. May you find a moment during the day to truly greet and recognize someone in your life.

Namaste