Off to a good start

Hey all!!! We made it! Our January 2012 trip to South India is off to a great start! We have arrived in Bangalore with all our baggage and with a great attitude. This trip to South India we will be teaching in Madurai and Manipal. Our team members are Jenna Curtis, Nicole Manuel, and Kelsey Diddier, and our fourth member is Olivia who is joining our program from France. We will be meeting up with her soon and we are so eager to finally meet her! We will be taking the overnight train and then start teaching bright and early Monday morning! Until then, Happy New Year!!
Team Awesome!
Nicole, Jenna, and Kelsey

Update from Nepal

Hello all,

Well, I nearly made it all the way to Everest Base Camp--got as far as Pheriche before winter weather and extreme cold made it nearly impossible to continue. Well, not impossible, just very unwise. I took advice from locals/sherpas along the way, and they advised all trekkers to turn back at Pheriche and Lobuche. I did not argue! I have never felt as cold in my life as when I had my overnight stay in a "lodge" in Pheriche. -20 F outdoors, and easily zero indoors. Actually, the only thing separating me, outside from inside, was a thin plywood wall and a plastic tarp for a door--very primitive from Tengboche on, and certainly not for the weak-at-heart at even lower elevations like Namche Bazar. But what a trek while it lasted! I saw some of the most beautiful geography ever, and had a good time, although freezing cold for most of it. From Lukla to Namche, the weather was sunny and warm, and I hiked in a t-shirt for this distance. Then like a light switch, the weather turned nasty and cold. Trekking upward from Namche to Pheriche was literally in the fog, and the entire trek back down to Lukla was foggy, windy, light snow, and COLD. Once back in Lukla, I found the accomodations all over town to be staggering. In the middle of winter, there is no running water--it's all frozen, and nobody wants to waste their firewood for warmth, only to cook with. The best place to hang out for the night, I found, was in the kitchen of the Shangri-La Lodge, with the locals. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but it was warmer than in the lodge itself! I just smiled a great deal, and responded, "USA"!!! With a backup of airline flights, I had to battle it out with frantic foreign trekkers for a flight down to Kathmandu--this proved to be quite an adventure. Some of these trekkers had been stuck in Lukla for up to seven days already. A very temporary break in the clouds yesterday morning meant that three airplanes had time, and visibility, to land and take back off. A "bribe" on my part of $120 US to the right airport worker (with the help of a sherpa, Goatham), assured me a seat on Agni Airlines back to Kathmandu--really. Otherwise, I think I might still be sitting in the freezing wasteland of Lukla.

Anyway, now I am back in the relative warmth of Kathmandu, at the Hotel Everest Mount Holiday, enjoying my last 48 hours before flying back to the United States. Helena's Rooftop Cafe is every bit as good as I read about and was advised--a long walk upstairs (well worth it) puts you eight stories above Thamel on a sunny, warm, scenic rooftop overlooking the entire city. The breakfast at this location has been the absolute best! See you all in a few short days,

Paul Bosseler

Mountain Bike Race

Today we worked a downhill monutain bike race here in the foothills of Kathmandu. We taught first aid, trauma management, and CPR to race volunteers, and we even got a chance to utilize some of our skills, as there were many crashes, and a few cuts and scrapes that were tended to. The bikers are crazy! This hill is steep, fast, rocky, and bumpy--pictures can do no justice when shooting a 45 degree angle.

Farewell from Kathmandu. The other four volunteers leave for home tomorrow, and I am pressing on to trek to Everest Base Camp for the next two weeks. Will have no on-line contact during this time period, but will get everyone caught up with some great photos in two weeks.

Paul Bosseler

Namaste Nepal

I feel so blessed to have been able to make three trips with Project Swim International, and this last one here in Nepal has been great! The people have been so wonderful and welcoming here. I loved having the chance to teach such a variety of students not only our water safety education program, but to also conduct a CPR class for lifeguards and a First Aid class for a group of Mountain Bikers. The experiences I have had are once in a lifetime, and I am so glad that I have had so much support from family and friends to get here, and continued support from the locals of Nepal, and the wonderful volunteers with PSI.

I want to say a big thank you to our executive director, Benjamin Schaub and all the hard work and HEART he puts into each of these trips. Thank you for all you do!! I want to thank our wonderful and very supportive local contact Yubraj with Nepal Swimming Association and our friend Deepak for their help on this trip. Finally, a huge thank you to the members of my group I was able to lead this year. They are an amazing group of volunteers who have struggled through sickness and hard situations, and everyday awoke with smiles and taught so many people here. Thank you Paul (co-leader), Amanda, Jacque, and Nick for a wonderful trip to Nepal, you guys were so great and thank you for putting up with me for 3 weeks! ;)

It is a bitter sweet goodbye as I leave for home tomorrow and return to school and work! Thank you to everyone who has been involved with PSI, especially the other groups in India! See you soon!

Namaste!

Nicole

Sup Nepal!

So today the school we were supposed to teach at unfortunatly cancelled on us, so we spent the day with our contact, Yubraj's family. We had a great time and they made us a great Nepali Lunch and then we stayed for tea. We had a great time and will Miss Yubraj's family when we leave. We have two days of teaching left which include two schools, a group of mountian bikers, and a village just north of Kathmandu. We will be so sad to leave on Sunday, we have had so much fun in Nepal!!

Namaste!

Team Tiik Chha

Nicole, Jacque, Amanda, Nick, and Paul

A Visit to Kopan Monastery Plus a Great Day of Teaching

The five of us taught in the sun today at Joseph School--it was a really nice experience. We have taught in a variety of settings now--big and small groups, tightly packed school rooms, large auditoriums, indoors and out. It is such a satisfying and rewarding experience to teach such attentive, lively, and inquisitive audiences. I know I can speak for all five of us when I say that we are in a fortunate situation to be teaching as we do! In between teachings, we try to get a little cultural tourism in--these pictures are from Kopan Monastery, which sits on a hilltop on the Northern outskirts of Kathmandu. This is a really, really cool place to see.

Paul

Teaching is Complete!

We finished our 10 full days of teaching today! We cannot believe that our trip is almost over! We taught a total of 1,943 people over the course of 10 days! Our most memorable teaching experience was yesterday, we taught 50 adult women at the Madurai Non-Formal Education Centre (MNEC), an organization that provides women from rural and urban slums with food, medical supplies and education, and it also has a center for HIV/AIDS for women and children. These women were fantastic! They were so eager to learn, and they presented each of us with beautiful flower garlands. At the end of our lesson, a few of them came up to us and thanked us. One woman told us how they see drownings occur fairly often, and they never did anything because they didn't know what to do, and they were excited because this was the first time they had ever received any information about how to rescue someone, and they were very excited to use what we had taught. We were so moved by these women, that we donated our teaching bag with all of our teaching supplies and script of what we taught to the MNEC. This entire teaching experience has been great, some of the boys we taught at an all boys high school near our hotel recognize us on the street every morning.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Mamallapurram!

--Kaitlin, Caitlin, Carley, Beth, Jesse and Bella.

Back from Chitwan National Park!

Hi Everyone,

The five of us had a great side trip to Chitwan National Park for a little R&R in between teaching. We rode elephants, took some nature walks, and went canoeing with crocodiles--yes, that's a crocodile peering up from the water in the first picture. I think he was looking for breakfast! Even on this side of the world, we have heard the bad news, and are deeply saddened by the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, as well as the other victims wounded and killed at her side. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all.

We are back to teaching bright and early tomorrow morning--goodnight.

Paul

From Nepal

So ends our first week of teaching. Our student numbers have been great, and have so far exceeded our goals. We are off to Chitwan National Park tomorrow, where we will visit until Monday. Hopefully we will see some Bengal Tigers while there!

Paul

Half Way and Happy Birthday!

Today we completed our fifth day of teaching, it is hard to believe that we are half way done, only 5 more days of teaching. Today we taught about 130 students, from 3rd to 8th grade. The school correspondant gave us each a home made towel! We each now have three towels that we were given as gifts (the first two came from our partner, Grace Peter Charitable Trust, during our orientation). And while we were talking in the principal's office after our teaching, a cow came up to the front gate, hit it with its horns and moo-ed to be let in!!

Yesterday we taught 450 kids! All at once! We were able to break it up into morning and afternoon sessions so that we taught and demonstrated the skills in the morning and in the afternoon we were able to have each student practice the skills! It was our longest day yet. Oh, and in the midddle during our break, each kid came up and asked for our autographs, some asked 2-3 times! It was crazy! There were mobs of kids around us, we were all covered with pen ink.

It is truly amazing how fast the kids catch on, and they are all able to ask and answer questions at the end. We are all so impressed with them!!

Annnnndddd it's Carley's 19th birthday today!!! We are going to a Dosa festival on our hotel roof top restaurant to celebrate tonight :) Happy Birthday Carley!!!

Sending our love,
Kaitlin, Carley, Caitlin, Bela, Betheny and Jesse.

1,428

So far our water safety, cpr, and first aid program has be taught to 1,428 students in 5 different schools. The students have been so warm and welcoming. They are incredibly smart and ask very good questions. We also taught a CPR review class to 22 of the lifeguards our previous group taught this past summer. Thank you Bree and Drew, they were a great group!

We feel so privileged to be here and the schools have been treating us so well! We love all of our classes and can't wait until tomorrow! We will at the same school we were at today.

Much Love! Team Tiik Chha

Nicole, Amanda, Jacque, Nick, and Paul

A Busy Teaching Day in Nepal!

Our student numbers today reached well into the hundreds (somewhere over 500--Nicole has the exact figure), and included not only children, but local lifeguards as well, who we recertified in CPR. Nick, Amanda, Jacque, Nicole, and myself are pretty tired after today's classes, and I think I am the last to bed. Although we are so far away from home, our work here is extremely rewarding--we are all very fortunate.

Good night from the opposite side of the planet!

Namaste,

Paul

First Week of Teaching.

Hello!
Wow, have the past days been a whirl wind! We have been doing soo much every day. Here, in the picture to the left is our wonderful Carley riding an elephant!! When we visited the Temple in Madurai and were touring the inside of the temple we ran into this beautiful elephant. Luckily our friends that had escorted us there specially set up a chance for 5 of us to ride the elephant and get a chance to take snaps(pictures). The temple was extraordinarily beautiful, there was so much to look at and almost every inch was covered in bright colors. Inside we met a group of women whom were in service of the temple; they were so friendly and asked to take pictures with all of us :] This temple visit is what we did on our last free day here in Madurai, once Monday rolled around we started our water safety teaching week.



Our first teaching day was experienced at the YWCA and overall it went smoothly. It was a very good school to break in the members of the group whom have not taught for Project: Swim Inernational yet. Our second teaching day started at a local Boys school; their enthusiasm was very encouraging and I learned how fun it can be to teach any age group. In the afternoon we ventured towards the Gandhi museum where we met with a group of boy scouts. This group was so great and we later found out that a lot of them live in rural areas so the information from our program is really going to apply to them due to that fact that they are around a lot of water sources. After that long day we were all so exhausted, I'm pretty sure everyone was asleep by 8 o'clock here! So getting up today was a tad bit hard but once we ate breakfast and got going it wasn't so bad. For our third day we found ourselves at Vidyalaya Martriculation High Secondary School. It was the farthest away so far but the school and it's suroundings were absolutely gorgeous. They had their own swimming pool so today we got to get in and teach! It was both refreshing and helpful :D

Well I hope you've enjoyed todays entry!

Best Wishes,

The Madurai Group

Another successful day of teaching in Nepal

Hi all,

Yet another successful day of teaching here in Nepal! A challenging, fun, and rewarding experience for all of us.

From Kathmandu,

Paul

Water Safety

The classes we've been privileged to teach here have been so welcoming and very responsive. We have taught at 3 different schools and over 581 students our water safety, first aid, and CPR programs. It was been such a great experience to interact with so many different students and be able to give them life saving information.

At the last school we taught at, just outside the city, we were treated like local celebrities. The students bombarded us with wanting to take pictures and asking us for autographs.

Miley, how do you do it?

Team Tiik Chha had so much fun with all the students.

For those who have read our previous blogs, our bathroom was finally fixed today. We now have a toilet seat.

Signing off now... Thank you to those of you who are following our posts. It's great to relay our progress back to all the supporters back in the States! So thank you thank you, we love you all!

Much Love & Many Thanks

Amanda, Nicole, Jacque, Paul, & Nick

Peacee!

Teaching Begins!

Today we completed the second day of teaching in Madurai. We taught at the UC Higher Secondary School, for a 9th grade class, followed by the boyscouts from the same school. The boyscouts were mostly from rural areas, that are very close to lakes and rivers, so the water safety program was especially helpful for them since they are around water daily. We taught them in the park (complete with a ferris wheel) next to the Gandhi Museum, the boyscouts caught on really fast, and asked very good questions at the end of our lesson. When the lesson was over, and after a long picture or "snap" taking session, they acted as our personal tour guides in the Gandhi Musem, where we saw Gandhi's glasses or "specs" and the blood stained clothes he was wearing when he was assasinated.

Yesterday we taught a 5th grade class of 100 boys and girls at the YWCA Nursery and Primary School. We taught them the water safety program in the morning, and in the afternoon, each of the 100 students were able to pracitce the skills we taught.

We are all loving the teaching experience and are continuously impressed with the bright students we are teaching.

On a side note, at lunch the other day we met a family from Santa Barbara, California, they are in India for months with four boys under the age of 10! It was great meeting people who are close to home, and it's nice to have friendly faces we run into almost daily.

Pictures are on the way!

Love from Madurai,
Kaitlin, Caitlin, Carley, Jesse, Bela and Betheny

Hello All!

Teaching again today, as we did yesterday. Will add more tonight!

Namaste,

Paul

The Blondes Invade Kathmandu!!!

Greetings!

Today was the first day of teaching. We taught over 300 kids today! Jac and I (and the rest of the group) had a freaking blast with the kids!!! Some were shy and some were studious but all of them were interactive. The students were so respectful and SO EXCITED that were were there. It made you feel very proud to work with PSI and that our efforts are honorable and proactive. It felt really great watching the kids learn. It is always a powerful feeling.. 'teaching and watching their brains light up'.

Oh, but the best part was CPR. It's my (Amanda's) favorite because the kids get all giggly about the 'mouth to mouth' part. They like the scenario and role playing we do with water safety and CPR. The 30 compressions were funny when we had boy volunteers up and demonstrating because their 'aggressive' tendencies came out as they tried breaking ribs and such... We're all smiles today.

The school was beautiful and so was the staff. As we learned from them today, "...guests are treated as gods". How beautiful is that? You just feel welcomed and so honored to be making professional relations as well as making new friends at the same time. Wow.

Nicole warned us we would be exhausted. We are just realizing that tonight as the two of us are crawling into our sleeping bags at 7 P.M., just dying for a cuddle sesh.

The efforts put in are so minimal compared to the experiences we are taking out of it.

Well, the power is going to be cut off. We only have hours of electricity a day. HA.

Sending our love from across the world,

Amanda & Jacque
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Morning from Nagarkot

What a great sunrise from Nagarkot, just 30 km or so east of Kathmandu. The Himalayan Range is very prominent from here, as you can see. Yubraj and family accompanied us, and brought breakfast, consisting of coffee, chipati and jam--a very nice surprise!
Teaching water safety education and first aid tomorrow morning. Getting tired, so am gonna leave it at this for now!
Paul

The Veiw

We hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Yesterday we went to Deepak's family's home and enjoyed a traditional Nepali lunch and spent a great day with his family! His mother's hospitality was very warm and welcoming! We were so full for the rest of the day.

SO... today is our last down day for awhile and tomorrow we start teaching. Today we went to Naragot to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful!! We went with our in country partner and his family, we had a lot of fun!

On a lighter and rather funny note, the girls room's bathroom has so many problems that we are now making jokes about what good plumbers we are becoming.

Wish as luck as we start teaching!

Namaste!

Team Tiik Chha

Nicole, Amanda, Jacque, Nick, and Paul