Rain, Cows and Dahl Bat. First Update from Nepal!

The very first blog post and photos from our Gappers just landed Nepal. Rain, cows, and a whole lot of Dahl Bat. The orientation was really fun, although it took a while for us to get used to the Nepali eating habits -even more so now we are in the village. The Language lessons were so helpful - we would be so out of our depth without the small phrases we learned.
Sharmilla is amazing! She is happy to tell us about the culture and regularly laughes at how western we are. She accompanied us around Thamel untilo we got the hang of it. We are all pros at crossing ridiculously busy streets, and Ash and I haggled for two pairs of hand-made pants in broken Nepali. The shop owner thought we were out of our trees.
The city tour was a little relentless - our guide didn't seem to notice that we were zoneing out. We saw the living Goddess -the Kumari - which was bizarre, but fascinating.
Mine and Ash's host family are amazing. Our Aama (grandma equivalent) speaks no english whatsoever. 'potato' is the extent of her vocab. She found it thoroughly amusing that we had no idea how to bathe and was absolutely cacking herself. Our family has two cows - one of which will give birth while we are here. Very excited.
Andrew, Mim and Soph's family are so nice! Their host father, Ragu is so amazing looking. He looks like he's just stepped out of Nepal 400 years ago. They have two young host siblings who are oh so cute. We call them bahini( younger sister) and bai (younger brother), partly because we cant remember their complicated names.
There was a strike today, so school was cancelled after an hour of teaching. Today was our second day and was so much better than the first. Ash and I are teaching at the primary school in Lele, which is a 25 minute walk along the river. The numbers in the school are very low because a private school has opened up near by and many students' parents prefer private education. And we understand why! There is absolutely no structure to the teaching. the children run from classroom to classroom at will, the rpiciple left half way through the day to take me and ash on a tour of the memorial site for the 1992 plane crash and there are no rescoucres. In fact, the 'office' is thoroughly decorated with letter charts, time tables and diagrams whilst the classrooms are COMPLETELY bare. Ke?
Mim was the first to get sick and so szhe missed the first day of teaching. Soph and Andrew taught for 20 minutes yesterday before they were told they were finished for the day.
We are buying rescources for the school and having to completely re-think all teaching strategies - the number of kids is erratic and we are all having to contantly compete with the Nepalese teachers who come in in the middle of a lesson and start screaming at the kids in Nepalese.
We are all so sick of Dahl Baat. There is alot of force-feeding in Nepal.
I cant write any more because i've nearly reached my internet limit.
All is well.
The team.