Shree School, Bungkot, Nepal - Volunteer Project

Pictures of our last days.

Day 21 Volunteer Experience
A day filled with tears and joy.

How on earth did a kite decide to strike my head which nearly knocked me out. Mmhhh.

Lots of tears from our helping house fairy Harimaya and the elderly lady living in the neighbourhood, when saying goodbye.
Listening to the national anthem for the last time sang by the kids, brought more tears to my eyes.
Lots of joy when the kids saw the huge teddy bear we bought. Them jumping up and down to reach and touch it made me smile enormously.
Touching speeches were held,tikkas and
flower garlands put on us, so many that I had trouble to breathe.

A moment I will never forget...
Some of the kids started drumming on the plastic water barrel, I started dancing. The beat got faster, my steps got faster..
The Kids were shouting for the madal drum.
And the beat and steps continued to the point were I threw myself on the floor, but the boy on the madal started again.
So I pretended to rise from the death my body slowly rising to the slower beat.
Huge Cheers from everywhere. Just WOW.

So hard to say goodbye to everyone. We will miss the beautiful villagers, teachers and students. We made wonderful friends.
We are planning to come back in 2017.
Again thanks so much for all your donations. We are still in the process to buy materials and helping with other needs.

Day 19 and 20 Volunteer Experience
More English lessons teaching how to form questions at grade 8 and 10.

Absolute joy to see the kids from grade 1 jumping up and down full of excitement, because we are heading to their classroom teaching sports.

We finally managed to hold a football match with grade 6. Normally the use of the football during break time is who can shoot it the highest, the hardest and furthest. One Word CHAOS.

Happy Ellen to help the headmaster with some Excel. Always happy to put my accounting head on.

During break time I used my proper camera to take some pictures. The kids were running into the shots, playing with it. My photographer heart jumped for joy.

Arrival of the representatives from the Volunteer foundation. Happy faces to see the kids play cricket after school.

Really good feedback from students, teachers and villagers made our day. Many asking us to stay and to return soon.

Day 17 and 18 Volunteer Experience
We both caught a nasty cold and stayed home. We ordered more school supplies , which hopefully arrive before we leave. Kids came around to check on us if we are OK. The headmaster sent us some freshly caught fish. Really feel home here and will miss everyone dearly when we will leave.

Day 15 and 16 Volunteer Experience

Two days filled with sports lesson from grade 2, 4,6,7. Involving ball games, hula hoops, skipping ropes, cricket and football.

Friday was the day of competitions.
A week ago we asked the kids to attend the drawing competition and they have been drawing pictures since. We are amazed by the outcome.
The first 3 got winner prizes and everyone else got drawing books and pens, which are rare here.
In the afternoon we held Maths, General Knowledge and Spelling competitions. It was run outside and 2 kids of each house attended a competition. The 4 houses remind me of Hogwarts. :-) More prizes, more happy children.
At the end of the day we received flower garlands. A nice way to end the school week.

Day 13 and 14 Volunteer Experience
Some kids started picking flowers for us and some made paper flowers. It evolved over the last days, I'm worried that the village will have a flower shortage with the amount we receive. ;-) We started to share them with the other teachers, who also put them behind their ears or in their hair. So much love.
More cricket and dance classes. The kids cannot get enough. Also the other teachers join in to learn, which makes us very happy.
Especially Shandra, who is a very engaged lady and nearly joins every class we teach although she would have had some leisure time.
She challenged me to a sprint competition right in front of the kids. Got worried, but won in the end. ;-) The kids loved it.
Rob gave the science teacher Prakash a pull up challenge . Every morning there is lots of laughter going on.
We spent some time with the preschool kids. We noticed they don't have any toys to play with. We took them outside and did some ball practise. Lots of energy and happy, smiley faces.
Rob started after school cricket matches. Between 10-20 kids stayed each time. Success!

Pictures from the last days.
School material, knotting ties, day off, cricket practise, Rob teaches Harimaya how to stretch etc.

Day 11 and 12 Volunteer Experience
It's wonderful to see when the kids have already improved in English. Today we taught them how to construct questions. We noticed when we talk to children they struggle which means What, Who, When, Where, Which, Why, How. Teaching English also helps me to improve.
Kids were overly excited to play cricket the first time (the prior classes we only practised catch and throw). We stayed longer after school, so they can play longer.
In the night we had our first experience with a minor 5.5 earthquake (minor according the locals).
For us it was quite scary when the whole building started shaking around midnight. A good reminder as to what happened here one year ago, where nearly everyone lost their homes.
Yesterday more lessons, more fun. Good feedback from the teachers, that students love our lessons.
Happy.
Another after school invitation to a wedding.
More food, more dancing at the grooms house.
The headmaster explained to us that there are 2 ceremonies, first at the brides house with the brides family and then at the grooms house with the grooms family.

Day 9 and 10 Volunteer Experience.
2 days off school.

We explored the surrounding valley, sitting at the river and watching the world go by. People working in the fields, a woman doing her laundry in the river, an old man chasing the cows of the field, a man washing himself on the river bend.
We visit the headmasters new house. A warm welcome. He told us more about the area and showed us the destroyed family house by last year's earthquake.
Luckily no one lost their life in this area, because the earthquake was during day time and people were outside their homes. But most of their houses got destroyed.

Yesterday we enjoyed a lazy day with writing our diary and reading books.
Harimaya our little house fairy. A character who makes you laugh on a daily basis, who dances in front of you, always plays jokes, tells you off if you do something wrong in her eyes with a cheeky smile on her face.
Yesterday's joke on me. It was 8am in the morning. A tap on my shoulder, I turned and had 2 mice under my nose, I jumped and she didn't stop laughing.

Day 7 and 8 Volunteer Experience.
Kids were excited we came back to school after our day off in Gorkha.
We taught lots of English lesson. Grade 5, 9 and 10. Grade 5 is doing amazingly well and are very engaged.
The next day we presented the sport equipment and set some competitions at the school assembly. Lots of excitement.
I always get a bit teary listening to the Nepali National Anthem sang by the kids at the assembly. Beautiful lyrics.
We used the new balls teaching sport.
Rob taught the teachers how to knot a tie. A tie is not currently part of the school uniform, but will be soon. Lots of laughter from the teachers practising the knot.
After school we got an invitation by one of the teacher celebrating her sons birthday. Lots of food got offered. We really enjoyed the buffalo meat.
Back home Harrymaya made us laugh dancing wearing a wig.

This morning we presented to the school some new sports equipment, including cricket bats, balls, new footballs and badminton rackets, the children and some of the staff are really looking forward to playing cricket, they sometimes watch it but do not how to play and have never had any equipment before.