And then it was time to pack up and move on, to be returning in a couple of weeks. Goodbye Tansen.

On Saturday the 13^th Dan and I were invited to the Montessori school that Sargar is heavily involved with. There was an open day to celebrate the god of education. So the school had put on a show for the parents to come in and watch. I can whole heartedly say that this was the closest thing to a school production that the parents would come into see in the UK that I have seen in Nepal. The main point being that this Montessori production was child orientated and it only lasted a couple of hours. Compared to the hours and hours that children and adults have to endure during some of the school anniversaries that I have witnessed in Nepal.

Sunday the 14^th Saran and I then went to Pipaldanda to complete some more twinning activities. We were able to fit around half of the school in the carpeted room upstairs and Saran and I explained what the children were being asked to do. But to nor surprise of us the children’s drawings were very similar and they hadn’t thought very much for themselves. But, their drawings were very good and it was obvious that the children were very proud of what they had produced and they were keen to show their work off to me and to their teachers.

The following day the Monday the 15^th Saran and I got back on the bike for my last bike ride and headed to Jheksang. Here we worked with classes 3 and 4 to do the twinning activity. The school has demolished 2 classrooms and the 2 new classrooms are government funded. This means that the schools doesn’t have enough rooms currently so classes 3 and 4 are together and nursery has also been moved. But this worked in our favour as we were able to do the twinning activity at the same time with all the children that were in the right classroom. The head teacher was away from school doing some business so we were able to complete the twinning activity and then head back to Tansen.

I spent Tuesday the 16^th with Janaki shopping. I had seen a really lovely bed sheet hung on someone’s washing line and asked Janaki if we could find something like it in Tansen. Turns out we couldn’t but I was able to get some other bits before I left and I was able to write a spices list to make dhal bhat and masala tea. I’m sure though when I try to make it at home it won’t even be half as good as what Janaki makes.

I had a really exciting Wednesday. I spent the day doing the last bits of my washing. Before then going to Amrit for their school anniversary day on Thursday the 18th. We were told that the day we were going was the day of dancing so we were hoping that we would be able to watch lots of dancing. Saran got bored very quickly and my and Dan’s hopes of seeing lots of dancing were very quickly shattered as of the 3 hours that we were there we only saw about 5 minutes of dancing. The teachers were very keen that I stayed the night as it was my last visit but I had to explain that the next day was for me to pack up my room.

There was a family wedding coming up on Saturday and Dhanni was already there but Janaki left on Friday. Abhi was in Butwal for a school competition so another relative came to look after the house. I offered that we should get some momo for supper that evening but he was very keen to try and make dhal bhat. As it was his first attempt I was pretty impressed and he was very enthusiastic about learning how to cook, which was good to see that young men are keen to learn how to cook.

The last week of school visits, family visits and twinning activities.

Saran and Dan had planned to visit Gorkha from Monday the 8^th to Wednesday the 10^th to get the agreements signed for the new classrooms that Manisha are going to provide and to collect their bank details so that the Manisha could make the first bank transfer so the school could start work. During their time away I thought that I would make the most of it and do some washing. I was then planning on going to Bagnas to work with some of the children to complete some twinning activities for me to take back to the UK and send out to their twin school. My mission over the next couple of weeks was to complete this with most of the schools except a couple which Dan said that he would do with the school.

I was planning on going to Bagnas on the Day that Saran ad Dan arrived back in Palpa, but surprise, surprise there was a holiday so instead we went to Dhanni’s village as he wanted to see his mother and he had a trident that the family was going to donate to the local temple so that was also being delivered. Janaki, Dhani and I also were also accompanied by two other guests, which is always nice as visits to the village are normally quite busy for the family, but can be extremely slow for any visitors that are invited.

Saran and I then had a very busy Thursday as we visited both Bhalebas and Dumre to complete twinning activities. This was also the last time that I will be visiting these schools as I finish work on the 20^th to go to Kathmandu to meet my friend Hollie who is flying out to meet me and to spend my last month travelling around the country seeing it from a tourists perspective. We went into two different classes in Bhalebas but in Dumre we multi-tasked and after explaining to the children what they were supposed to do we were then able to keep an eye on both classrooms and then collect their work. Some of which was really amazingly done, some of the children in Dumre really have a talent when it comes to art, although it is such a shame that this is not really recognised in the Nepali education system. 

I finally managed to get to Bagnas on the 12^th and, as always, I was very surprised with the standard of drawing from the children at Bagnas. They were a little unsure of how to use the freedom we gave them to create an annotated drawing so out of the 30 children that we worked with we had about many replicas of the same 5 different designs. The children were very proud to show off their work to be and loved the high fives that were given for completed drawings.