29/9/13

Tonight is my first night in my new home.  I feel like a failure, like a shallow, materialistic American.  My new family is obviously better off than my old family, and my comfort level has gone up, considerably.

I had a very stressful, exhausting day of starting classes with a new teacher and class-horrible and humiliating, packing my room and saying goodbye to my family, and moving into my new room.  My hajur ama (grandmother) sobbed when I left, and held my face in her hands, saying that they would do whatever it took to let me stay.  A horrible, heart-wrenching moment.  I will visit at lease once a week, but I’m feeling very guilty, at the moment.  I keep telling myself that the PC made the decision, and I had to think of my own health, in the situation.

I had a nice dinner with my new family (how weird to say that), watched some TV with the children, who seem darling, and retired to my room early to read and go to bed early, which is, coincidentally, what I’ll be doing now.

Xoxo

Zoop

2/10/13

Third night in my new house-it’s lovely.  It was nice to be able to un-pack and settle in, as I am very much someone that needs to be able to nest.  I put up all of my pictures of family (pariwar), friends (sati) and Montana (mero ghar)-looking at all your lovely faces made me smile.  It’s nice imagining that, while I’m here studying or eating my 50^th plate of rice, that, hopefully, someone is thinking about me, on the other side of the world.

After dinner tonight, I brought out a “National Geographic” and I explained the globe to my family, tomorrow I think we’ll hang the map up in the kitchen.

While my home life has improved exponentially, school has taken a turn for the worst.  As I moved houses, and thus, villages, I am now working with a new teacher and group of students.  All of the students are very nice, but my new teacher is a terror.  He is frustrated with my lack of reading and writing (in Nepali) ability and humiliates and belittles me in class-it’s been pretty difficult.  The problem lies in the fact that starting us on reading and writing so early has slowed down our learning rate, something which the other teachers understand and so have limited the amount of reading and writing that we’ve been doing.  However, this teacher is pushing that, at the detriment of speaking skills and cultural understanding-I hate this.  School is now a 4-6 hour/day nightmare. Ughhhhh