Greetings from Kathmandu (1st email, copied in)

Dear all,
I wrote this group email around easter but due to technical difficulties only managed to send today (apologies to those who don't want to be updated, this may come out of the blue, and is a bit long!) I am in Nepal, in Kathmandu, with 3 and half months to go, and it's all very exciting. Aside from the awful pollution (I now sport a fetching darth vader style face mask when I walk the streets) the city is amazing. Its in a valley, surrounded by small mountains, and good days you catch glimpses of the himalayas, where I'm going next weekend.

Theres lots of crazy cultural stuff (I say this as an anthropologist...)I went to a temple city place where they were cremating people on the river banks - there were naked holy men everywhere, and best of all -wild monkeys jumping around on roof tops and on bridges (and disconcertingly eating crematy bits in the river...). Another temple to the bloodthirsty goddess Kali, nestled in a spooky hillside, involved crowds of Hindus pushing each other out the way so they could throw rice meals on this shrine, while further back every minute some chicken, goat (or buffalo if you're lucky) would have its head lopped off. There were literally little streams of blood coming out of the place. This happens every saturday. Buddhist temples are nice and peaceful, with fluttery rainbow coloured flags everywhere and soothing chant music, and quite a few exiled tibetan monks. Oh, and yesterday was 'Holi', a Hindu festival which involves throwing water balloons (or buckets) and coloured powder and anyone and everyone in the street (especially tourists it seems). It coincided with Good Friday this year, and you have to give them credit, its much more exciting than spending 3 hours in church.

I'm staying with a nepali family, theyre great. They have an exceedingly enthusiastic dog called 'yeti', who eats rice and lentils and buffalo meat (i find it strange somehow, a dog eating rice), and jumps all over me (I can't seem to pronounce the nepali for 'sit!' correctly). I play with the 4 year old, he teaches me nepali and i help him out with the lyrics of 'twinkle twinkle little star'. The mum has got me hooked on a ridiculously melodramatic Hindi soap opera. At the moment they've left bombay to go to malaysia to track down the main lady and her ex-husband's kidnapped son, who in fact is now a kind handsome millionaire young entrepreneur (brought up by his evil aunt - who has her own evil theme tune every time she comes on screen) who they meet all the time without realising, etc, etc. We're watching Bollywood blockbuster 'Devdas' tonight, with ex-Miss World Aishwarya Rai from Bride and Prejudice (The girls in class 5B due to some slight misunderstanding have decided that since I have a video camera I should marry her and i generously gave me some postcards of her, which brighten up my room.)

And finally, the school is amazing. Its proper hard work, 9.30-5.30 (with a 30 minute commute), 6 days a week (!!), classes of up to 50 children, in classrooms without lights (on a rainy afternoon last week the kids at the back of the class couldn't actually see the blackboard it was so dark - but normally its fine). There is no curriculum for english conversation, I have to plan lessons myself at home, which is good and creative but tiring. Its a school for children who would otherwise be on the street, some of them are really not that well behaved (I get a sore throat from shouting at some point each week), especially when they know that volunteers will not use the bamboo cane (I bribe them with promises of playing simon says instead, which works to varying degrees). But they are wonderful kids. They're always enthusiastic and impressively hardy, and you can really see them improve their english, they fall over and scrape their knees in the playground and don't shed a tear. They also constantly
thump each other really hard, even the girls, sometimes in anger but sometimes for fun! Its weird though, being back at school and having to tell them off, you turn round from the blackboard and you catch one of them hitting the other for the umpteenth time and you have to punish them, even though you know in that instance he didn't probably start it - and you get these tiny people with these indignant upset faces. But its all good. They wear great brightly coloured uniforms so in assembly you have
all the colours of the rainbow (this is the plan anyway, of the mad genius founder of the school who regularly sits me down and preaches his (good) vision for a casteless society and free education), and the school is made of bamboo.

Anyway, I better stop. I tend to check my emails on my one day weekend, I don't reckon I'll send these group emails that often because these one days are quite precious! I'd love to hear from people and will try to reply if you write to me,
hope all is well,
Michael
p.s. weather is good, everything is ridiculously cheap (internet for 15p an hour if you're lucky, full good meals for 50p), and most importantly not a maoist revolutionary in sight, it all feels very safe, though this may be due to the number of automatic rifle touting government soldiers floating around.
p.p.s. since easter have had 2 weeks holiday and have another left, so don' t worry, its not as hard work as it sounds! during highlights have been himalayas and low points eating goats brains.