Hello again,
After our return from Okhaldunga we had a busy weekend before heading back out for our visit to Angakhola and Jheksang schools on the Monday.
On the Friday afternoon of our return from Okhaldunga we visited a science fair at a local school where Abhi was representing his school. We had seen Abhi's work in it's preparation stages but were so impressed with what he and his friends had made, a model of a JCB with a fully working scoop which could move from side to side and scoop up dirt from the desk on which it stood. The model worked on a hydraulic system using plastic syringes attached to tubes to move the different parts. It really was a great model and we both agreed that we wouldn't have been able to make anything like it now let alone when we were 12!
All of the work from the other children at different private schools from around Tansen was very impressive and it was great to see some creativity which is so often lacking in some of our schools. The children of these schools though do have a far more privileged upbringing than the children in our government schools so it is not really a fair comparison. The event though did provide us with some more inspiration for ideas we could use in our schools. 
On the Saturday we visited Pipal Danda school, accompanied by the Rotary chairman of Tansen and had a meeting with them to try and get the building project re-started there. It turned out to be a rather frustrating meeting as they are making it very difficult for us to help them. We understood that they had had problems in the past but we are trying to help them and it is frustrating that they are dragging their heels on this. With the monsoon season approaching it really is so important that we can get this project up and running again before the rains come. We did bring the school a number of resources though which they seemed pleased with and we are beginning to build back a trust with them so hopefully we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
With such a busy weekend and having visited Pipal Danda on the Saturday we had a rest day on the Sunday where we did some more blog writing and also visited Madhav, a local man from Tansen who was always keen to say hello and see us and had been inviting Andy to lunch for some time. We had a really nice meal with him and his wife - he was very keen on showing us all of his 'Western friends' - I think there is a certain amount of prestige involved in having foreigners round. He and his wife were lovely though and we had a good time talking with them.
On Monday it was time to go back to school as we continued with our busy schedule. The welcome we received from Angakhola school was once again incredible. The children lined the path and plastered tikka on our faces and hung crazy amounts of flower garlands round our neck - for Rob it was his first experience of anything like this and rather overwhelming!
After our warm welcome we got straight on with some teaching, visiting year 8 to make some cubes. Once again it was not an easy activity for the children and it was very clear that they had no experience in doing anything like this. None of the children guessed what we were making until we literally folded the net together and their lack of skill at using a pair of scissors was quite shocking, though understandable given they have never used them. The finished results were once again really excellent, though it took a lot of time and a lot of support from us. The children really enjoyed the activity and were quite rightly proud of their work.
The cubes lesson took up some of the afternoon session also so we only had time left to work with year 3 on our body parts lesson which the children again thoroughly enjoyed and joined in enthusiastically with the actions we made for each of the different body parts.
In the evening we stayed at one of the teachers homes, a 45 minute walk away from the school. In the early part of the evening we took a walk around the village and were joined by a number of the children and we ended up playing various games with the rugby ball and volleyball. The children seemed rather disappointed when we said we had to head back down to the house but it was fairly dark by this point! We enjoyed a delicious meal with local chicken and beaten rice, accompanied by the seemingly obligatory Roxy!!!
The evening was spent with a big dance program where there was a mixture of traditional Nepali music alongside quite a bit of more modern music. A great time was had by everyone though.
We had a nice walk back to the school in the morning surrounded by the children who enjoyed piggy backs, trying on our rucksacks and hanging off our arms and pulling us along. They are always so smiley and it was a great way to start the day walking along in the warm sunshine.
We started the next morning by taking a visit to the nursery and brought the Year kindergarten children up with us. We brought along a number of the resources we had given the school and gave them free time to explore the resources and read the books. The children really enjoyed this and they were all engaged either in an activity or in reading one of the books. One of the recommendations we are giving is that the teachers do bring these resources to the classes maybe once a week for just half an hour and give the children a chance to explore them. We both strongly felt that the children would get a huge amount from this, especially if coupled with discussing with a teacher about what they are doing.
The nursery looked really amazing though (and a few of the other junior classrooms were starting to show some encouraging signs of display work) and they had put up some of the things Andy had brought with him on his last visit. We also visited the library, a 'Room to Read' building, and re-iterated to them the importance of making sure these better classroom are used as much as they possibly can be.
Our next two lessons were Alien Soup and Friction which we had previously done in other schools but these both went down really well and the children thrived on the hands on nature of the tasks. Towards the end of the Alien Soup lesson, for a bit of fun and whilst the children were writing up their investigation, we had a competition to see who could draw the best Alien, voted for by the children, which Andy won!!
After lunch we worked with both the Year 1 and Year 4 and got the paints out to do some leaf printing. This didn't work out as well as we had hoped due to having the wrong kind of paint and with too many children gathered round at one time. The prints didn't really show up that well but most importantly the children loved doing it and so, whilst the end result wasn't overly spectacular the children had a great time and the teachers saw the kind of thing we were looking to do and got the idea of using things from their natural surroundings.
The final lesson we did was PE and after doing the over and under game, which had proved immensely popular when Andy had previously done it in other schools, Rob, as a PE specialist, picked out one of the games he had used in classes in England, benchball. It took quite a while before the children really understood what they were doing but this in itself caused a lot of hilarity and once they did have it they really loved it. The game has the great advantage that as one team scores more points (gets more people on the bench) it becomes more difficult for them so the game remains fairly even throughout and everyone gets an opportunity to join in.
We finished slightly early at the schools request as they wanted to say goodbye and thank us for the work we had done with them. They presented us each with a Karawa, a traditional Palpa drinking pot, a really lovely gift, which they had had inscribed with the school name also. It was a really lovely leaving ceremony with all of the children gathered around. In general we were really impressed with the school and sad to say goodbye.
We had a quiet night and set off at 9 the next morning for the short trip by jeep down to Jheksang school. We first visited Year 1 as this had been one of the poorest classrooms when Andy had last visited but we were really pleased to find some more display posters up along with a number of teddy bears which had apparently been sent to them by their UK twinned school, Hayes Park Primary School in London. It was really good to see them making a start in putting things up and we helped this further by adding a few more posters and also re-arranging the desks into a horseshoe shape so the children can see and talk to each other. We were really pleased the school was so co-operative with this and hope they will see the benefits. 
Jheksang school does not have a library, as is the case with half of our schools. We have been trying to encourage the view that whilst a library building is good, a well stocked bookshelf in one of the rooms is a great starting point. Again we were really happy that the school put their existing resources up and on display and we saw many children come in during our time here and choose a book or puzzle to take away. This has been set up in their staff room, which is not ideal, but it did seem that the children were welcome to come in and have a look.
The remainder of the morning and early part of the afternoon was spent making cubes with year 8 which once again proved challenging but ultimately a big success and the children were evidently pleased with the end result.
We were pleased to see some of the pupils involved in an outdoor cooking lesson and it was great to see a practical skill being taught without a textbook in sight! We were invited to come and have a taste later on and it was delicious, the only problem being we had only just eaten an enormous lunch and so another huge plateful of food was difficult to get through!!!
In the evening we made our way up the steep hillside to a neighbouring village, which we reached in just under an hour. Once again there was an evening of entertainment and dancing laid on for us which was a lot of fun!
Our next day at Jheksang was full of practical activities; alien soup, body parts, friction and measuring. We adapted our friction lesson (whilst these lessons were new to the schools - we were getting rather tired of teaching the lessons in the same way!) and the children measured whose shoe had the most friction by placing them on a bench and seeing how high one end of the bench could be lifted before the shoe slid down. Some of the results the children were not exactly as we expected and possibly that had something to do with the accuracy of the measuring but nevertheless the children enjoyed it and understood the principle of the activity. 
The measurement lesson we also adapted and had the children completing a standing jump and measuring the results. We tried to explain to the teacher that this was a great starting point and the data could be used to create graphs, look at averages (mean, median, mode and range) or innumerable other activities. The idea being that it is much more interesting for children to handle data if it is relevant to them and real. In our final lesson we took the books and resources around to class 3 and let them choose what they wanted to read or do, again explaining to the teachers the benefits of allowing children to immerse themselves in a book or an activity of their choosing. We really hope this is something they will take on to make the fullest use of the resources possible. 
We again walked up the steep track to the village in the evening but this time for a nice quiet and peaceful evening which we were thankful for. We arranged to make an early start the next morning to trek up to the top of the hill, a 2 hour walk, where apparently the views are amazing. Unfortunately in the night it rained heavily and hearing the rain thundering down on the tin roof at our wake up time we didn't move, knowing the walk would not be happening. It had thankfully stopped by the time we left for school but it was still very difficult trying not to slip up on the steep, muddy track down to school. This walk is something that some of the children and teachers have to do every day and it is difficult to imagine what that must be like come the monsoon season. Jeeps at that time of the year are not possible as the roads are too slippery and dangerous. Life must be very hard.
On the final morning we made some posters about different countries using the maps and factsheets we had brought. Once again it was difficult to get the children to show any originality but when you consider how little they know about other areas of Nepal, let alone the outside world it is not so surprising. They drew some great pictures though and we talked with them about the things they had drawn. Passing the globe around, a few of them could easily locate Nepal but not too many. Again this just goes to highlight their lack of access to good atlases, globes that we take so much for granted in the western world.
Finally we ended our visit with another game of bench ball, which again the children loved. One of the boys was particularly good but also grew frustrated with his less accomplished team mates. It was funny to see him bossing them around, instructing them to make runs and growing frustrated when they dropped the ball. He had a real passion for the game which was great to see, though he perhaps needed to be a little more sympathetic to his team mates!
On the whole we were really impressed with Jheksang school. They showed real interest in what we were doing and seemed happy to let the children come and have a look and a play with the resources. The two poorest classrooms had also improved a lot since Andy was last here. It was great also to see that they were busy improving the playing are and extending it out further. This seemed to us to be a good use of funds as there is a real shortage of flat areas for the children to play in. We headed back to Tansen just as another heavy rainstorm hit.
Best wishes
Andy and Rob
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