Elena

Name: Elena
Gender: Female
Country: Spain
Program: Teaching English in School

1. What did your average day look like?
I got up at 8 or 10(depends of the day). I had breakfast in Durga’s place at 10-11. At 12:00 I went to the monastery to practice Spanish with Namdak. Namdak is a monk who went to Madrid for 10 months and wanted to practice the Spanish speaking. We could ask him a lot of questions about Buddhism religion, and other things about Nepal and it’s culture. Afterward at 13:00 I had English lesson with the little monks, teaching English while playing games until 14:30. After, I came back to home to had lunch. We returned to the monastery at 16:30 walking (15 min walking) to teach the adult monks. We prepare very easy English lessons because they only speak Tibetan all the time and were Basic English. After the lessons with the adult we came back to host family, and depends of the day may be we went to Thamel or spent the time with the host family until dinner time. We prepare the dinner together and after that we went to the apartment, prepare the lessons for the next day and went to sleep.

2. Other things I did on my placement.
I met other volunteers Hanna from Finland and Stephanie from Germany. I learned basic things of Nepali language. I went to trekking during 5-6 days by our own around Annapurna National park to see the sunrise in Poonhill. We, me and Laura(my Spanish friend) went to visit Durbar Square with Namdak (the Spanish monk). And the last weekend we went to do rafting with other volunteers from Chitwan and finally some night we went to go for a beer in Thamel with people who met while trekking, in Pokhara.

3. What are some of the issues or challenges you faced?
I faced how to teach 47 kids all of them different ages in the monastery. Luckily I wasn’t alone, Laura my friend was with me and was easier to teach and had fun at the same time. I faced, also how to adopt and introduce myself in the culture, and was really nice.

4. Advice to next volunteer going to your placement?
Sometimes I had liked to have more material and speakers or some stuff to make easier the lessons and more enjoyable. Is better bring the material the maybe you think you need (ex. Vocabulary cards, games like memory…. Sometime that can help you).

5. Would you volunteer at this placement again?
Yes! Of course in this placement I felt like home.

6. Would you volunteer at this organization again?
Definitely!

7. Suggestion or problem?
…………….

8. Please write a Journal-type eatery of experience now. This will be for our for our future volunteers.
Improve the web-page. I would like to see more photos about the different experiences. Maybe you can create a Facebook page to promote more Future Nepal. It could be a good idea.