So I am back at Kopila Valley where things are happening.  There is some construction well under way  on the house.  They are adding another story to make a women's center.  At the school we are practicing soccer with the boys and volleyball with the girls.  The boys have a game against the military academy coming up in November and need to work on spreading the field and making smart passes.  John and I will be working with them while Kelly and Nena will be working with the girls on their volleying skills.

In other news I have changed rooms once again.  I am now on the first floor with all the bed wetting boys.  The office is now my room and is actually quite comfortable.  It just gets really loud early in the morning when the kids wake up and feel the need to express their enthusiasm for the day through shouting.  It also smells a bit like pee on this floor from time to time but we are working on that.

We have a dog that hangs out on the premises now too which is great.  It's one of the masons' dogs who is working on the women's center so I don't know how long it will be here but his name is Tiger and he's 15 years old.  He barks at strangers and otherwise just hangs out all day.  Nothing like chillin' with a good dog.

I think I am going to have my hands full pretty soon with tutoring.  We have compiled a list of students who need some extra help and they range from 4th to 8th grade.  I look forward to the challenge, but it will be just that; quite challenging.  They need help in pretty much every aspect of English.  Spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, reading comprehension, writing, etc. (if this list is even capable of continuing).

Anyway, its great to be back and see so many smiling faces.



The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.

Back in Kathmandu!  After a fourteen and a half hour flight and about an eighteen hour layover in New Delhi I'm finally back in Nepal.  Even though I'm sitting in a hotel room ready to take a nap in dirty ol' Thamel, it feels good to be back.  It's different this time, seeing as I know what I'm doing now.  I was in and out of the Kathmandu Airport like a fast food restaurant.  I'll be flying to Nepalgunj tomorrow morning and then taking a bus ride to Surkhet so I can see the kids again.  The travel agent told me that Maggie is in the states again which took me by surprise but then again he also told me that Johnny Depp died three days ago, and that turned out to be a false rumor.

Also, the car that was supposed to pick me up from the airport turned out to be a motorcycle, which we took through Kathmandu to get to Thamel.  Sorry mom and dad!  But it was a free ride and I wasn't about to tell my travel agent to shove it.  Fun too.



The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.

Well its been a few weeks since I wrote a new blog post and I thought I should get back into the swing of things.  I'm still in Chicago right now but I will be going back to Nepal on the 21st and couldn't be more excited.  I just hope the kids have missed me as much as I've missed them.  I managed to skype in once over my break to say hi to a few of them which was great.  It gave my family a chance to peak into that world and to meet a few of the kids.  Its been great being home for the holidays but even after just a few days I realized how much I missed the kiddos.

The blog will be back in full swing in about a week and I will try to update more often.  I'll focus some more on the day to day life and talk about the things that seem mundane over there but as I have been told, are actually the more interesting parts of life in Nepal.  Again, please let me know what you think and tell me what you want to hear about.  Your opinions are always appreciated.



The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.

Well so far I've been writing about some of the bigger events and goings on at Kopila but Sarah Kay, the poet who visited last week, told me I should focus some on the smaller, mundane things that have an impact on life here.  For example, Ben and I  took her into town to pick up a few things and he and I were casually discussing the merits of certain brands of peanut butter that are sold in the different stores when Sarah began laughing at us.  She found it funny because of how serious we were about such a seemingly trivial conversation and yet how important it is in our daily lives here.  "Oh, this peanut butter is the best because its creamier and less expensive."  "Yea the other store carries that crap thats kinda dried out and inexplicably more expensive."  "Yea I don't know why I've been going to that store all this time..."

This was the conversation that prompted her to tell me that this is the sort of thing I should be blogging about.  The stuff that I would otherwise forget once I left this place, the odd details that litter each day with peculiarity need some attention too.  The things that future volunteers would find interesting and at the same time helpful.  Everything from which peanut butter to buy to the different methods of defecation, which has actually been discussed here at length.  Don't worry I'll spare you the dirty details but for the curious few, the debate centers around the different toilet styles.  Believe it or not, the rest of the world does not all use the pots we are so accustomed to parking our rear ends on.

Well, to sh*t away from this poo centered log post... I mean shift away from this poo centered blog post, sorry, I thought I'd mention that this will be my last post for a few weeks as I am returning home for Christmas and New Years.  In the mean time I will be pondering what other seemingly trivial things I can pay some attention to, enjoying some quality time with my friends and family, and hopefully packing on the pounds I have presumably lost in my time here away from my good friend beef.

Thanks for reading, I hope you have enjoyed thus far.  Please feel free to leave comments, questions, constructive criticism, etc.  I am curious to see how the blog is being met.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everybody!



The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.

Today was the first day of senior boys and girls sports.  Senior sports is for 5th through 8th graders.  Today the boys played a 60 minute game of soccer and the girls played volleyball.  Matt and I were line judges/coaches for the soccer game and John and Kelly coached the volleyball game.  Soccer was quite intense and from the sound of it so was volleyball.  The majority of the girls have never played a single game of volleyball but have only hit the ball around.  Apparently they did manage to get a few rallies together, including one where three members of the same team touched the ball before sending it back over the net.  John and Kelly amped up the excitement of the game by cheering wildly after every point, but not without reason.  I was told that the first game was won by a landslide and that the second game was looking very similar until a dramatic comeback began to unfold.  The game was back and forth until game point.  I don't even actually know who won because I was refereeing the soccer game but I couldn't help but turn around from time to time to catch a glimpse of all the excitement, even once missing a luckily inconsequential offsides call in the game I was supposed to be watching.

Soccer was really intense.  Excuse me, football was intense.  We had a game of 8 vs 8.  Lines were chalked on the field and everything.  We even had a cheering section of students, teachers and faculty, and some of the aunties and uncles.  The first half wasn't looking good for one team.  They were down 3 nothing at the end of the first half.  Matt and I were able to switch up some of the lineup to improve how they were playing the game and that ended up ratcheting up the level of competition.  After maybe 10 minutes of the second half the losing team was able to tie it up with some pretty spectacular goals.  Putting their tallest man who was playing sweeper (a defensive position) up front on corner kicks they were able to sneak a few and blast a few balls passed the keeper.  The other team responded to this surprise with some ferocity.  Their star player was visibly irritated.  He began shouting orders at his defense and taking over the game on offense.  Suffice it to say that his school clothes are going to need a deep cleaning tonight.  Despite their frustrations they were able to tack on another two goals returning them to the lead at 5-3.  Then to everyone's surprise, the losing team's big man decided that he was going to take the ball from behind midfield and boot it over everyone's heads and into the goal, out of reach of the keeper.  With only about 2 minutes left on the clock and the game at 5-4 the winning team knew that they couldn't afford anymore mistakes.  Instead of playing on their heals they kept their composure (enough of it at least) and put another ball past the keeper.  Now at 6-4 and in desperation mode the losing team had to step it up again, which they actually managed to do with less than 2 minutes left in the game making it 6-5.  They had another 2 or 3 opportunities to tie it up with only a few seconds left but the winning team hung on for the victory.

There was some blood, some sweat, and some tears by the end of the game but that just goes to show what hard fighters these kids are.  The tears were from the winning side too, they were not born of defeat.  I can't wait to see how the rest of this tournament goes.



The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.

I don't know very much about poetry, in fact I did pretty poorly when it came to poetry in high school.  But we have a visitor this week who is apparently pretty big in the poetry world.  I don't know if "famous" is quite the right word, but people know her, she's kind of a big deal.

Her name is Sarah Kay.  Google her.  She's a spoken word poet and does a lot of slam poetry.  Google that as well; basically its a certain type of poetry that started out as a scam to get people to watch.  This is coming from someone who has never had any interest in poetry.  I am really impressed.

Sarah graduated from Brown University and somehow found herself doing poetry and now travels the world visiting under privileged schools and inspiring kids to express themselves in a very open format.  Her delivery is captivating and her diction is very illustrative.  It doesn't sound like any sort of poetry that I've ever been acquainted with but then again, putting aside some of Shell Silverstein's best works, I 'd say its some of the best I've ever heard.

She's only here for four days but so far its been a pleasure having her around and the kids seem very enthusiastic about getting started in her workshops.

Seriously, check her out.
https://www.youtube.com/results?q=sarah%20kay%20poetry&sugexp=chrome,mod%3D15&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wy



The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.

Last weekend we helped Maggie to celebrate her first ever Thanksgiving at Kopila Valley.  All of the volunteers pitched in and we managed to have a pretty good Thanksgiving meal, despite the lack of traditional ingredients at our disposal.  The uncles killed a turkey that day and because all we have is a small toaster oven we pan seared it instead.  It came out pretty well too.  Mashed potatoes and the canned cranberry sauce were easy enough, as was the steamed corn.  It was Matt's and my job to make the gravy.  We were going to make gravy using chicken bullion but then we found a few packets of instant country gravy laying around.  Even though it was a different kind of gravy we decided that it would be harder to screw up so we took the easier route.  As it turns out I am not very good at mixing.  We also made way to much gravy.  The stuffing came out pretty well also.  Then, to top everything off, we had some apple crisp, basically apple pie without the crust.  We pushed the tables together, lit a few candles and had a good old fashion American meal in Sukhet, Nepal.  We also celebrated with a girl who'se parents are Nepalese but has grown up in London.  It was her first Thanksgiving as well, and she thoroughly enjoyed out rag tag meal.  

Thanks for the pictures Ben.

The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent Blinknow's positions or opinions.