Do the BBC

Lately, the BBC News website has been really tackling the issues that are closest to my heart, such as this, this, and this.

The Little Things

I'm starting to notice how Kathmandu has changed in the two years I've been away. At first it seemed much the same. Just like two years ago, it took me a couple of days to get used to the distinctive smell of burning trash, incense, sewage, and spices that blankets the city, the lack of paved roads and sidewalks and the chaotic traffic. There are still no skyscrapers or office buildings, but I visited a modern mall that was built a couple of months ago. There are more people and a lot of new buildings. Most unsettling is the highly anticipated recent opening of a combined Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut in the heart of Kathmandu. There is still no McDonald's or Starbucks, but it may only be a matter of time.

However, the most notable change for me is that nobody rides on the top of the buses anymore. Apparently while I was away it was made illegal and the police started cracking down on the practice. I can understand it as a safety concern, but it was a pretty significant part of my first introduction to Nepali life back in 2008. And I felt that there was something unique about sharing the top of a bus with a dozen or so Nepali students, tourists, and elegant Nepali women with fashionable kurta surwals who had somehow managed to climb up the side of the bus in high heels.

I'm about a week and a half into the training. The first week was spent at the Fulbright apartment in Lazimpat - we walked down from Lazimpat past the Narayanhiti former Royal Palace to Gyaneshwor every morning to the USEF building complex.

Stately.

The first few days at the Fulbright building consisted mainly of "survival Nepali" language training. They didn't know what to do with me, because I was the only one who was conversational in Nepali, which was frustrating for me and the people in my classes. Eventually the two teachers split it up so that one teacher taught me and another taught the other five students. It seems like a useful teaching lesson except that the solution - individualized attention - is something that will probably not be feasible for me next month when I might be teaching a class of 30 or 40 students. Anyway, after that it was great for me because I now just have interesting conversations in Nepali three times a day, and I'm learning vocabulary to help me talk to people about interesting things like "mother language politics" (मातृभाषा राजनीति), "children's mental development" (बालबालिकाको मानसिक बिकास), and "Bhutanese refugees" (भटानी शरणार्भीहरु). I'm compiling a mini-dictionary.

During the week we also had a security briefing from the US Embassy and a health lecture from the CIWEC International Clinic. It took us about fifteen minutes to go through the security at the US Embassy and then we needed an escort through the compound. They gave us US Mission badges and we were part of a bewildering security briefing that was mostly for new Embassy employees. The briefing touched on domestic terrorism and IEDs, how to use the "panic buttons" in our houses (we don't have any), counter-surveillance and what to do if we come across classified US documents or are approached by foreign spies. Most of it seemed a little bit more relevant to the people that live behind those gigantic, imposing walls than it is to us. Visiting the CIWEC Clinic was a bizarre sort of deja vu experience for me, because the last time I was there I was a patient and I was in such a nauseous daze that I didn't really know what was going on around me. This time I was in a much clearer and healthier state of mind (one of the other ETAs had to be tested for dengue fever, but he's doing a lot better now).

We also began our teacher training with NELTA, the Nepal English Teacher's Association. We were given lectures on Nepali educational history, the state curricula and how to use government textbooks, and preparing lesson plans. This week we visited a public school and attended some English classes.

On Saturday we moved in with our "practice" Nepali families, with whom we'll stay for a couple weeks. I'm still averse to living with a family for nine months when I am placed (this here will be my fourth Nepali family), but I guess the villages will not have apartments. Anyway, this house is not quite the same as the mud-brick and dirt floor houses I remember:

Corinthiany.

This is bigger than the Moodhouse.

Puja room.

The family is incredibly nice and friendly. The mother and father have lived in Germany for a few years, and the father has also worked in the UK and Japan. They have two sons and a daughter, and they have all been helping me with my Nepali and re-teaching me the devastatingly difficult art of washing my own laundry in a bucket. My new Nepali name is Laxman (my previous names were Amar, Baalaa, and Taggu). I like Laxman because it is close enough to my actual name that I don't have to memorize it.

Well, that's it for now; congratulations on making it all the way to the bottom! I also want to thank everybody who has written me with feedback and encouragement. I appreciate the support, and I love to get comments so I know who's reading and what people find interesting.

Language Method Evolution

In the past few days I have begun teacher training provided by NELTA - the Nepal English Language Teacher's Association. We were given a very interesting overview of the history of English language education methods in Nepal - which can be broken down to a focus on grammar-translation, followed by oral-structural-situational in the 1970s and then a communicative approach in the 1990s.

At the same time I've been reading On the Mortality of Language Learning Methods by Wilfried Decoo (from a recent post on Language Log), which wonderfully summarizes the history of language education in the past 200 years or so and explains why language teaching seems beset by quick revolutions in methodology that do not provide substantial increases in learning ability.

Additionally, Decoo examines the relationship between language acquisition linguists, teachers, bureaucrats, and language product publishers.

I personally believe that this short article should be required reading for TEFL teachers, even if it may be controversial. Maybe some of you will disagree with me.

Devanangreji

One thing about walking around Kathmandu is that there's always enough reading material. Every surface is covered with billboards - advertisements for private schools and colleges, whiskey and fruit juice and cigarettes and whitening creams.

Most of the little street pasals and eateries display entrance signs made from giant blue or white placards with Pepsi or Coca-Cola graphics on the side.

Billboards are written in either English or Nepali. Nepali is written in Devanagari, the same script as Hindi and several other languages in South Asia. Devanagari is phonetic, and if you can't read Devanagari you have no idea that it is also used to write angreji - English.
To pick a few examples of places on Lazimpat Road:

"la-ji-mpu-t mey-tu-l i-nji-ni-yu-ri-ng wu-rks

This sign reads "Lazimpat Engineering Works" at the top, and then "Phone" and the number at the bottom. All written in Nepali script but entirely in English.

"pa-shu-pa-ti swi-t ey-nd cha-t ha-u-s"

Pashupati is the name of a famous Hindu temple in Kathmandu, and it is the only non-English word in the name of this establishment, the "Pashupati Sweet and Chat House."

above: "ney-pa-l bai-nk li-mi-te-d"
below: "mu-ni tra-ns-fu-r"

Sometimes the Devanagari is a Devanagari rendering of Roman name, as in the above sign, and sometimes it gives you extra information, like the sign directly below it.

below: "ju-yu-su-wa-l frey-s joo-s ey-nd froo-t sey-ntu-r"

Sometimes a sign is written in nepangreji, half-English, half-Nepali. This advertisement for Real Fruit Juice says "Fruit Power aba Mickey ko saath" which I think means something like "Fruit Power - now with Mickey!" Below it is Devanagari-English: "Jayasawal Fresh Juice and Fruit Center."

above: "spey-sha-l pu-ri-ka-r: mu-tu-n se-ku-wa ra chi-ku-n tu-ndu-ri"

This blue sign from Kamal Chowk is a wonderful tangle. The Devanagari reads "Special Purikar: Mutton Sekuwa ra Chicken Tandoori." So there are three compound nouns where the first word is English and the second Nepali: "Special [menu]: Mutton [barbecue] [and] Chicken [Tandoori-style]."

Meanwhile, the name is in Roman letters: "Fast Food & Momo Ghar." A momo is a delicious Nepali dumpling-like food and ghar means house. Instead of alternating, the first half is English and the second half is Nepali.

English is omnipresent in the city center of KTM, even in secret ways that are hidden from tourists.

From The People Who Brought You stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

(but not actually)


Nepali Kukur, a blogger with The Nepali Times, has written two blog entries entitled "Stuff Nepali People Like."


Stuff Nepali People Like I

Stuff Nepali People Like II


Of course these are stereotypes, but self-stereotypes can be pretty enlightening for the clueless foreigner like myself, especially when you look down at the comments section and see the sorts of disagreements and qualms people have.

Flats and Bats

I am experiencing a surreal lack of culture shock. You know that feeling you get when you meet with an old friend that you have not seen in years? How you instantaneously fall back into your old mode of interaction and it feels like no time has passed at all? That is what it is like to be back in Nepal.

Our program orientation starts on Monday. Since Thursday I have been living in temporary apartment with the five other ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) and two of the researchers. We live by Lazimpat, around several embassies, in an apartment that reminds me very much of my first week at Pitzer College Nepal. The other Fulbrighters are all really great.

Pretty nice apartment. We even get cell phones and computers this time! 

I have been dubbed the 'social coordinator' because I know how to get around in  Kathmandu and I know where some restaurants and monuments are. On Saturday we found our way down to Durbar Square for the Tij Festival, and then on Sunday we walked all the way from Lazimpat to Swoyambhu, through many of the interesting back alleys of Kathmandu and across the river.

After a couple hours, Swoyambhu is still far in the distance...

And here we are a little closer.

But Nepal has a way of surprising you right at the moment you feel like you've got your bearings. Going down Lazimpat on our trek to Swoyambhu, we saw some interesting wildlife, at least to American eyes. Now, I've seen enough of Nepal that I wouldn't bat an eye if I saw a cow or a goat wandering through traffic or a monkey crawling along the power lines. But I didn't expect to see giant fruit bats flitting through the trees in broad daylight right near the Ministry of Education in the center of the city. 

Your typical Austin bat is roughly the size of this fellow's head

The Story So Far...

Well, tomorrow I fly to Delhi. I will stay in Delhi for two nights and then be in Kathmandu in the morning. I still haven't planned where I'm staying in Delhi, but I've got pretty much everything else taken care of. But I thought I would take a breath and make my second post on this here blarg, and explain what I'm doing.

In 2008 I participated in a Study Abroad program with Pitzer College in Nepal. I lived with three families in Balkot, Bandipur, and Tangting. I took Nepali language classes every day - in a Kathmandu bazaar, on a rowboat in Pokhara, on a trek along the Annapurna range. I taught briefly in a school and completed a project on the English language as taught in public and private schools in Nepal (and the Mother Language Education Program). I swam in a river that turned out to contain crocodiles, was almost run over by the wooden cart of the Living Goddess and threatened by communists on Gai Jatra, and saw a leopard wander into someone's house. I was sick all the time and I had to go to the hospital after eating yogurt in a Korean monastery at Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. It was pretty great.

I hastily graduated college the next semester and spent the summer working in California, studying the linguistic properties of German postmodern opera. I also tutored German and talked to interesting people about dying languages and language preservation. Then I moved back to Austin and into a house on 47th street with three old friends. The place was called the Moodhouse and many madcap shenanigans ensued. I also worked for the Census Bureau, leading a crew that counted people at universities, hospitals, and clinics. We interviewed the homeless population of Austin in soup kitchens, camps, underpasses, shelters, and in the woods.

I began volunteer-teaching English at the AAIM Refugee School when I learned that Austin has in the past several months become the new home of a large number of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees. Who would have guessed that my most immediately marketable skill after college would be the ability to speak Nepali? Later, I volunteered at the incredibly amazing Multicultural Refugee Center. I participated in computer literacy classes, resume and job help, sewing instruction, sustainable garden workshops, and once briefly with the Refugee Soccer Team. I became friends with several members of the Bhutanese community, and they helped me with my Nepali while I helped them with their English. They were also on occasion kind enough to feed me daalbhaat, the ubiquitous Nepali rice-and-lentil staple that has become an addiction of mine.

During this whole time I was waiting on my application for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Nepal. This was to act as an English instructor in public high schools in Kathmandu Valley. My side project was to be an investigation into language politics and attitudes regarding minority languages and language preservation. I received the grant in April, flew to Washington DC for an orientation in June, and I have been slooowwly packing since then.

And that is why I am flying to Delhi tomorrow.