Looking Back at School

It's been about six weeks now since the teaching part of my trip ended. I recently found the notebook I used at school, and looking through it was like reliving the three months. It brought back a ton of memories, so I though I'd share some.
-I did lesson plans for all my classes until mid-February. I didn't realize I did them for so long; I was better organized than I thought! There's conversations we had Class 2 act out, ever-changing topics for Class 1 as we tried in vain to find something in the book they hadn't done yet, and day after day of either the exact same plan as the day before or a note saying see an earlier day, as classes were seemingly randomly cancelled
-the essay on human rights that Caitlin and I did scant research for and made up the rest from our general knowledge (think lots of bullshitting, this is what I learned at school!) is in here. We discussed the topic one period with Class 10 (with one day's notice to write the essay!), and I was very impressed with their English writing skills. Each student was to write a paragraph during the period, and some wrote some really good ones. We had to explain most of our keywords, and I made a horrible mess with Amnesty. Caitlin had to rescue my explanation, which had gone horribly south.
-Class 7 really got going when we introduced the past tense wordsearch. It got them eager to come up to the board, which lasted the rest of the semester. The second time we did one it wasn't finished when the bell rang, but they wanted us to stay until it was done. Seeing everyone so eager made us more than happy to comply!
-my notes go from a wordsearch on February 18 to our schedule for exams. I guess that's when I stopped making lesson plans and just went with the flow. That's the end of the front of the book, everything else I used the book for started on the last page and worked backwards.
-the first (last) page has my and Caitlin's Nepali names. The teachers decided to name us, so I was Uma and Caitlin was Parbati. Both are incarnations of the same goddess (please don't ask which one). Being given the names and learning to write them in Nepali was the gesture that made be really feel accepted by the teaching staff.
-there are several pages of class lists. At first I thought lots of the kids were related to each other, as there are disproportionate numbers of Ales, Magars, Thapas and Gurungs. Then I remembered that a Nepali's last name is actually their caste, and so isn't entirely indicative of familial relationships. I was glad to remember that, for about 30 seconds I was seriously worried about just how related 30 9-year olds were to each other.
-when the school was being painted and I was teaching outside there were no blackboards available. For the most part I either taught without writing anything or prepared poster boards in advance, but the first day I had nothing as it was a surprise to be outside. I ended up using my notebook as a blackboard, so there's page after page with one word on it, written big enough that the kids could just see well enough to copy it down. A slow way of doing things, but it worked!
-about 15 pages have been torn out to make flash cards (and more from Caitlin's book) to we could quiz each other on Nepali vocab. Some of the teachers were extremely helpful when we made the cards, and together with the older students were wonderful with quizzing us. My favourite word: oofranu, to jump. I love the way it sounds
-there are page after page of word games. With four free periods a day, Caitlin and I had lots of time to fill. We played snake on her cell, read, chatted, and played game after game. Our favourite, the one in my notebook, was finding words using the letters of longer words. 'President' was the best, with almost 200 words found. 'Adventurous' and 'despicable' were runners up.
-lots of pages revolve around food. I used the notebook to copy recipes from the internet (as it was the only thing I always had on me when going to the internet cafe). There are several pancake recipes as I looked for a good one to introduce Caitlin, Amy and Kirsten to North American pancakes. In the end though, I still bow to the master. Uncle Dave's are still the best, and everyone I made them for enjoyed them.
-the final entry is a list of ideas for the poster boards we made for the Jubilee. We ended up making six of them. Never saw them again though!