Week 1 (October 17 - 24)

Week number one was unbelievable.  I was introduced to a family of 6 who are my hosts; the Dahal family. We all now live (until I leave) in a 4 room house which sits across the road from a chicken house and has a chicken house underneath. The running water is a spicket in a room off the back of the house.  We have rice and dahl, or rice and egg, or rice and curry and potatoes every morning and night. There are power outages on a regular basis due to the country's infrastructure, and I have a 45 minute walk straight up the mountain to my school of 6th graders and 7th graders.  I teach English 6 days a week, and through this first week have devised and discovered ways to keep the kids focused while staying on the lesson plans I have created for them.  The days at the Dahal house start at 3:00 am. every morning with sweeping, mopping, and preparing for work in the rice field (harvest time over here too)  The father owns a shop (store) down by the bus station and he is also a head master at a school on the other side of the mountain and is exactly my age, 42.  Both mother and father Dahal are basic in their English and the three kids are relied on by the three of us for translation. They are good with speaking it, especially the middle daughter Suiju.  The days are hot and the nights are getting cooler, we overlook the Kathmandhu valley.  There is dust and dirt absolutely everywhere, as it is farm country.........and the streets are dirt and rock.  The views are great and the foliage is still dark dark green which is odd to me at October 23.  The youngest kid, Bijay (pronounced beezay) locks in  with me for games of chess when I arrive home, he is 13 and very astute.  Ranju (pronounced Ronzoo) is the oldest child in the house and very driven to see the world and asks me many questions.....out of the blue the other night she asked me about the noted self-help book called "The Secret".  She and a friend were speaking about it and it had her curious.......you can sense she is ready to think outside the box.....we have no internet so these blog updates are coming to you from a cybercafe on a street within the underbelly of Kathmandu and the keyboard is frozen with dirt and I am on the clock so i am typing gorilla style as fast as I can go.......you will see mispellings and I will continue to teach English in the mountains of Nepal......