Out of the Comfort Zone of the Classroom

For the past 6 weeks I've spent 3 hours a day, 5 days a week learning Nepali. It's been lots of fun and I've slowly been able to communicate more with Nepalis at school and in the wider community.

As part of my language learning, my teacher's got me doing a thing she calls 'CLL' - Community Language Learning. This started a few weeks ago where I would find a Nepali who worked at KISC and have a 10-15 minute conversation with them using only Nepali. I asked them the usual questions about their family, where their house was, what foods they like etc, and they would answer using words and phrases I didn't really understand. Even though our conversation was limited, I enjoyed this time as it gave me an opportunity to get to know some of my colleagues.

Then, about a week ago, my teacher decided it was time to step out of the comfort zone of the classroom and into the community. We walked along the street and found a woman who was with her child at the park. I sat down with them and began asking her the questions I knew (where is your house?, how many people in your family?, what do you do for work?). The conversation was pretty one-way and after I had exhausted my questions, there was no-where else to go. The conversation was over in about 5-10 minutes.

After that experience, I was feeling pretty apprehensive about CLL as I realised how very limited my Nepali was, however, just the other day, my confidence began to grow after my conversation with Nabin.

Again, my teacher and I ventured out of the school grounds and headed up the street trying to find someone for me to talk to. She initially asked an older guy to speak to me but he wasn't too keen. Instead, this younger guy who was nearby volunteered and so I began to speak to Nabin. He was great! He spoke very S-L-O-W-L-Y and if I didn't understand something, he repeated it again S-L-O-W-L-Y, then said it in English, then again in Nepali. I came away with a few new phrases and a bit of reassurance that stepping out and speaking Nepali with the locals isn't too bad after all.

Looking forward to the adventures (that involve speaking Nepali) ahead!

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Pokhara

I recently got back from an awesome few days chilling by the lake in Pokhara.

Pokhara is the 2nd biggest city in Nepal and also the starting point for many treks in the Himalayas. Since I only had a week off from language classes, instead of going trekking, Trish, Esther (also KISC teachers) and I decided to spend a few days chilling out instead.

Our holiday started with a 6:45am bus trip, and after taking 2 hours to get out of Kathmandu, we finally arrived in Pokhara around 3pm. The rest of the day was spent settling into our guesthouse, walking by the lake and checking out a few shops.

On Friday, we took it easy, walking up and down the main strip of shops, stopping regularly to see what was on offer.

On Saturday, Trish, Esther and I headed up a mountain to the World Peace Pagoda. We'd read in our trusty Lonely Planet guide that we could take a more scenic route through the forest so we headed towards the beginning of the trail but got a bit lost on the way so stopped to ask a few 10 year old kids if they could tell us which way to go. They were more than happy to walk with us and ended up being our guides up the mountain (for a small fee of course). Sadly, the view wasn't that fantastic due to the mass amounts of clouds so I'll have to make the trip back up again the next time I'm in Pokhara.

On Sunday, Trish, Esther, Philippa, Debby and I decided to hire a boat and go out on the lake. We had the BEST time! It was so relaxing floating along, reading, eating and chatting. We'd hired the boat for 4 hours but after 3 hours it started raining, and unfortunately the roof on the boat wasn't waterproof so we quickly headed back into shore and spent the rest of day at a cafe drinking chiya.

Monday was our last day in Pokhara so we spent the time wandering from shop to shop buying all the things we hadn't bought yet.

Arriving back into the dust and traffic of Kathmandu on Tuesday made me appreciate our time in Pokhara even more. It's definitely somewhere I'll go time and time again while I'm in Nepal.

Looking forward to more adventures ahead!

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