Substitution (may 6th)

6 hours, 8 classrooms, 5.5 subjects. Are we having fun yet? Today I taught as a substitute teacher. I'll take a moment to apologize to every sub that ever taught me, you are way under respected. Today I taught grade 7 English, grade 4 art, grade 3 science (two separate classes) grade 6 physics, homework spare, and grade 3 social studies. There was one other class but I don't remember what it was anymore.

I had one girl tell me that I am beautiful. It's silly, but it made me feel good about myself and I began to feel better about my own abilities from then on. We walked home after school by choice. It takes 20 minutes to walk along one road that runs straight to our house. The only challenge is that it crosses Ring Road, which is the one main, circular artery that runs around Kathmandu. Samakoshi English Boarding School is on the inside of the ring while our house is on the same "wheel spoke" but on the outside. Ring road is what could be considered a 6 lane, two way highway except that there are no lines, lanes, lights or obvious laws and jay-walking is the only way to cross it. No guts, no glory!

For the past 3 days it has been very hot during the day and full on monsooning at night. It starts with lightning and rumbling thunder in the distance and then the sky starts to boil. Soon after, the clouds open up and an entire ocean falls on us all at once. Seriously, without an umbrella you may as well grow gills because it's hard to breathe with so much water in the air. I thought Victoria was wet, but it has nothing on this.

In Nepali lessons today we learned the 10 vowel sounds and a lot of words that use them. It is a good language. Phonetic and obvious once you know the rules. The hardest part is that many sentences depend on who you are speaking with and whether they rank higher or lower than you in the social pecking order. It's only the second day though so there is a lot of time to nail this down. 'G', the instructor says that his goal is to have us "accredited" before we leave. We are his new project and he takes this very seriously.

Subaratri! Good night!