Lesson 3: On Contradiction
Well I have arrived in Kathmandu and met with many good people. After spending New Years Eve drinking and dancing stupidly with a local hotel owner and his friends, I have stayed with my friend Badri and his family and met with some new friends, all of which 'may' have contacts to arrange teaching work for me, although offering what you don't have is fairly common here.
New years eve here is much like it is in the UK, a time for families to get together and for those rich enough to afford it; to go drinking and listen to live music in bars.
I have met with NELTA but they do not have as many options for me as they had made out, also I feel that like many organisations here; they are not as big, or organised as they make out. They can place me in a village school, in return for food and boarding, but they do not seem to have relations with schools inside Kathmandu. It is a common thing in Nepal for people to make out they are much better than they are, especially with supposed NGO's. Well at least it is good to see where all the UN international aid money goes to. The guy who I met with was not even able to talk to me over the phone as he could not understand native english speakers, however he runs the International TEFL School in Kathmandu. It shows how desperate this nation is for decent education.
Before I met with NELTA, I had gone to a cafe for a coffee, the waiter there has a friend who, has a friend that works at a Language Institute. Apparently they were looking for an English teacher and if they have not found one he will be contacting me about that sometime. Also his girlfriend is trying to learn English to get into an Australian Uni, so I have said if she can find a few friends who wish to study, then I will give them all private lessons and they can split the hourly rate between them to make it affordable for them. So no thanks too the language professional, but thanks to a waiter, this was not a complete waste. I guess the English proverb 'its not what you know, but who you know', works very well here too, although in this case the richer man was not the one to know.
Hopefully I will also be meeting a friend from Rolpa shortly, she is now a central committee member of the Maoist Party and I hope to write an article on her involvement and the current situation here. Whilst all the papers are taking of Nepal finally being on the brink of peace, it is quite possible that the opposite is true. For example as part of this peace transition; Nepal now has direct military censorship over its newspapers, just yesterday I saw one of their major newspaper offices closed off by armed police, whilst Military officials inspected what was to be printed today. Similarly a radio station that a friend of mine has worked with, was raided and had equipment 'seized' by supporters of a politician that has set up a rival station, aptly named 'nice radio'. Ban Ki Moon keeps claiming things here are good in the eyes of the UN, whilst they claim to support freedom of press (lets just hope he's not on my blog... else he may practise his idea of freedom on me).
New years eve here is much like it is in the UK, a time for families to get together and for those rich enough to afford it; to go drinking and listen to live music in bars.
I have met with NELTA but they do not have as many options for me as they had made out, also I feel that like many organisations here; they are not as big, or organised as they make out. They can place me in a village school, in return for food and boarding, but they do not seem to have relations with schools inside Kathmandu. It is a common thing in Nepal for people to make out they are much better than they are, especially with supposed NGO's. Well at least it is good to see where all the UN international aid money goes to. The guy who I met with was not even able to talk to me over the phone as he could not understand native english speakers, however he runs the International TEFL School in Kathmandu. It shows how desperate this nation is for decent education.
Before I met with NELTA, I had gone to a cafe for a coffee, the waiter there has a friend who, has a friend that works at a Language Institute. Apparently they were looking for an English teacher and if they have not found one he will be contacting me about that sometime. Also his girlfriend is trying to learn English to get into an Australian Uni, so I have said if she can find a few friends who wish to study, then I will give them all private lessons and they can split the hourly rate between them to make it affordable for them. So no thanks too the language professional, but thanks to a waiter, this was not a complete waste. I guess the English proverb 'its not what you know, but who you know', works very well here too, although in this case the richer man was not the one to know.
Hopefully I will also be meeting a friend from Rolpa shortly, she is now a central committee member of the Maoist Party and I hope to write an article on her involvement and the current situation here. Whilst all the papers are taking of Nepal finally being on the brink of peace, it is quite possible that the opposite is true. For example as part of this peace transition; Nepal now has direct military censorship over its newspapers, just yesterday I saw one of their major newspaper offices closed off by armed police, whilst Military officials inspected what was to be printed today. Similarly a radio station that a friend of mine has worked with, was raided and had equipment 'seized' by supporters of a politician that has set up a rival station, aptly named 'nice radio'. Ban Ki Moon keeps claiming things here are good in the eyes of the UN, whilst they claim to support freedom of press (lets just hope he's not on my blog... else he may practise his idea of freedom on me).
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