SATURDAY

Having stayed in Lakeside last night we got up early and by bus, taxi and walking arrived back at the monastery in time for breakfast and then three hours of exam supervision. Class II had to draw a picture of the water cycle. One student asked every teacher what this question meant. I tried to explain it to him several times. Finally he drew a picture of a motor cycle in the rain.


After exams we fixed the curtains for the clinic by cutting them off and sewing a new hem. The monastery had a pedal power sewing machine. Nobody was confident so I attempted to use it. After a few knots and the machine becoming 'unthreaded' we sort the help of one of the women who worked there. She laughed and happily hemmed the curtains.


The monks were also having haircuts. So I lined up for mine. Vastly different from the barber at home. I had to kneel in the doorway while one of the senior boys ran the clippers over my head. The Lama was greatly amused at my new 'monk style'



After lunch one of the monks invited us to the movies in town. The movie playing was Avatar and it was supposed to be in English. This would be amazing sitting in a theatre in Nepal with a monk watching a science fiction movie. We met up with Amanda, Tess and Maya but found the movie was in Hindi. Instead we set off to visit the orphanage the Dutch girls had been staying at. It was vastly different from our orphanage. There were ten boys living there and the house was well organised. It had TV, a vegetable garden, chickens and the boys all went to karate lessons every morning at 6am.Two Danish volunteers were staying there now.

On the way back we found a music/DVD shop and were able to buy a copy of the movie Avatar. It was rediculously cheap and later that night we watched part of it, before a blackout stopped us. The sound quality wasn't the best but two of the monks sat and watched it with us.