Teej, Kayaks and Taps

Time is flying by in Nepal at the moment. It has stopped raining quite so much now and we are actually catching glimpses of the mountains most mornings now (it won't be long until their out all the time)

This week we celebrated Teej Festival, which is the women's festival. On the first day of Teej, women have big parties and there's plenty of singing, dancing and feasting! I spent the evening with some of my Nepali friends all dressed in their finest clothes. The second day is the fasting day and the third is a day of purity. During this time the schools were all on holidays which meant we spent the majority of our time with the children from the Street Kids Center.

On the main day of the festival we decided to take the kids out of the center and down to the park (with the main goal of wearing them out so that the house mother could have a quiet day!). We quickly set about getting a game of football started and frisbee soon followed. The kids then started playing with Buttons (my dog) near the lake when they saw a kayaker approaching, little did they know it was Maila coming to teach them some kayaking! We the spent the next few hours playing about in the water with Maila teaching them some of the basics of kayaking. The kids love doing activities like this and seeing their faces light up when they were sat in the kayak was priceless.

Whilst taking new volunteers on their induction I went to Shree Krishna Lower Secondary School and was really happy to see that they were putting new taps in. A few months ago, the old ones broke which left the whole school without water. During these hot months it is so important for the kids to drink through out the day so this is great news that the taps are up and running again.

Festival season is just around the corner (what with Dashain and Tihar coming in the next few weeks) which means we will be experiencing lots of holidays at the schools. We've got lots of plans in the pipelines ready to keep the kids busy during these periods.

If you would like to join us and the team here in Nepal, then please contact Gemma on gemma@podvolunteer.org for more information.