Day 2 Adventures

After a relatively gentle introduction to their work on Tuesday it was full steam ahead for the visitors from Australia on Wednesday as we travelled by bus to Phulbari to meet around 60 of Mitrataa's Dream Catchers scholarship girls.

The bus ride took almost 3 hours due to some traffic and a very rough patch climbing the hills into the village but it was worth it when we finally arrived at the top of the ridge to be greeted by most of the village, a lovely cool breeze and some fresh air! First stop was a visit to the local school where we each received a garland and walked through a tunnel of clapping students. It was fantastic to see that the school was as clean as we had left it after last year's clean-up campaign by MLC. We had a quick look around the school and showed the visitors the murals MLC had painted last year - it was great to see that this had inspired the school to start putting more of the students' art on the classroom walls.

We then proceeded up a hill to our lunch destination, a lovely courtyard at the entrance to a big organic fruit and vegetable garden. Lunch consisted of mostly local produce from the garden and was as good a dahl bhat as you would find anywhere in Nepal. As everyone then had tummies full of rice and curry we decided to wait a while before starting the day's activities - the Phulbari Olympics!

At the top of the hill inside the organic garden was a shaded area where we all sat and were treated to some singing and dancing by the local girls. This was a great way to get the normally shy girls warmed up and it didn't take them long. Of course it was then expected that the Australians would also perform so they hastily made plans and sang fantastic renditions of Kookaburra, Waltzing Matilda and Home Among The Gum Trees. The last one was particularly popular thanks to the entertaining actions that go with each line!

It was then time for the real fun to begin. We divided the girls into 5 groups and they each had to choose a country as their team name but they were not allowed to choose Nepal or Australia. Canada, Korea, USA, China and Singapore were chosen and with that the games began.

The 5 teams had to move through 6 stations covering cup stacking, three-legged race, wheel barrow race, balloon race, 'beach' flag sprint and captain ball. It was hilarious to watch the chaos that ensued as most of the girls had clearly never seen any of these games before. They all gave it their best shot however as their team pride was at stake. In some cases it was even more entertaining when the Australians tried to demonstrate the activities as in the case of the three-legged race!

After a good hour and a half of craziness in the hot afternoon sun the Phulbari Olympics drew to a close and it was time to present the winners with their prizes. All girls received a participation certificate and a gold medal sticker however there were extra prizes for the top 3 teams. Canada was in 3rd position, Singapore came in 2nd, and perhaps no surprise the USA finished on top! The afternoon was a great success and demonstrated to the kids and their teachers that you can have a lot of fun with very minimal amounts of equipment or resources.

We finished with some group photos before making our way back to the bus for the bumpy ride back to Kathmandu. There were clearly some cases of heat stroke as some very ordinary joke telling, trivia questions and singing took place to pass the time as the bus crawled through a traffic jam on the outskirts of the city. I'm sure the group slept very well that night!