Teaching

The past few days I have been teaching at two of the local schools.
At first I was nervous to teach, but it turns out that teaching is just as fun as playing with the boys!
When you walk into the room, they all stand and sing (yes, sing to a learned rhythm) "Good-Mor-ning-Miss!" and they wont sit until you ask them to. In class we play vocabulary games like Categories and Hangman, and practice speaking with debates and drama skits. We also do art, which is something they never get to do in school. Most of the children are perfect angels in class. Some of them are shy but many of them are curious and love to talk to us and ask questions about the West.
Most of the time teaching has been easy, but class 10 was difficult. There are 46 students in class 10, and they are all my age or a year or two younger! Ordinarily I would have been terrified to stand infront of a huge class of my peers, but teaching in Nepali has stretched my comfort zone by a mile! When class 10 requested that I sing the national anthem, I did so without hesitation. It may have been horrible, croaking, and out-of-key, but I wasnt shy and I wasnt embarassed. I even danced for the class and played Deushi Bhailo! The class was roudy and didn't want to listen, but I handled it and in the end, the class was enjoyable.
Class 10 was a challenge, but class 9, the second-oldest class, was possibly my favorite! We played "2 Truths and a Lie" to practice spoken English and to get to know the students. The kids LOVED it and shocked me with their humor, which many Nepali people dont have. Something else shocked me about class 9, too: two of the girls (14 or 15 in age) are married. This fact didn't come from our game, but rather from observing the line of red powder down their scalp which shows a married woman. I can't image being 15 and married!