Anna, Carlota, Clara, and Ariadna

Name: Anna, Carlota, Clara, and Ariadna (Spain)
Sex: Female
Program: Teaching in Monastery

1. What did your average day look like?
We woke up at 6:45am, had breakfast at 7am and went to Zumba lessons at 7:30. After the lessons we taught English at women’s concern, the class used to start at 9am until 10 am. Then we had free time until 13:00pm that we went to Himalaya Deep Jyoti boarding school, we went to monastery and we taught to the little monks from 16:00pm to 17:00pm. Friday’s we had the day off in the monastery and Saturdays also at school so we went to do sightseeing.

2. Other things I did on my placement.
We went to the monkey temple, Bouddanath, Bhaktapur, statue of Shiva, Thamel…(sightseeing and hiking)

3. What are some of the issues or challenges you faced?
The language barrier was challenging, sometimes it was hard to communicate with the teachers and the kids and also getting used to the traffic as well as the pollution.

4. Advice to next volunteer going to your placement?
Prepare the lessons because children really appreciate the effort and you will feel more secure while doing the class. Try really hard to fit in as soon as possible so that the culture shock is not too over whelming
.
5. Would you volunteer at this placement again?
Definitely

6. Would you volunteer at this organization again?
Definitely

7. Suggestion or problem?
To have more information about the program before the placement even though once there you are really helpful.

8. Please write a Journal-type entry of you experience now. This will be for our monthly newsletter & also for our future Volunteers. It will be better roughly one full page.
For the three firsts days we stayed at hotel lily and in the morning we had Nepali lessons with Durga and in the afternoon we did sightseeing. The first week we did the monastery program and we stayed at Durga’s with two other volunteers from Israel and other from Sweden. The second week we went to another placement, an orphanage, we had a really good time there. For our last week we came back to Durga’s and taught again at the school, monastery and the women’s concern center.