We have been in the village of Haripur –Sarlahi, Nepal for 2 weeks now. This place consistently amazes me. The breathtaking sunsets, the eyes of the children and the hearts of our awesome hosts.
We are paired with another team (team Boundless). Our first week we worked together the whole time. We spent the week teaching at Haripur Prashansa Acadamy and “gardening”. I have never considered myself much of a teacher, but the Lord has revealed to me that I quite like it. I spent most of my time in the “nursery” class (ages 3-5) alongside another Nepali teacher, teaching abc’s and 123’s. The gardening consisted of pruning a few shrubs and “mowing” the grass. Mowing the grass is pulling the grass out by hand or sawing it close to the root using a hand tool. There are no lawn mowers, no hedge trimmers and no weed eaters. Just hands and hand tools. It’s quite an experience.
This week our teams have been split up. The teaching team: teaching at the school – The church team: walking to encourage other village believers and construction work. I have been teaching 1st grade this week. I didn’t think I would actually do well with kids over the age of 3, but I have had such a good time. There is no teacher for their class for their first 4 periods so I find myself teaching Social Studies, Science, English and Grammar all by myself and all before 9am (school starts at 6:30am). We have had one day doing construction. I learned how to make cement and by “make” I mean, we sift the sand, scoop the sand using a plastic bowl into a pile on a mud-hut floor, add the cement mixture, then mix in the water using what we call the “volcano method.” We built up the bricks and cemented the wall. Our team of 5 girls felt pretty accomplished.
On our day off, last Friday, we took a 4-5 hour bus ride to Chitawan National Park. We ate what they call American food, which still tasted like curry, and took an hour and a half elephant ride through the Nepali Jungle. It was awesome!!! Our elephant was really sweet and he tried to touch my face with his trunk after our ride while I was taking his picture. I didn’t hate it.
So that is a brief synopsis of what has been happening the last 2.5 weeks. More blogs to come about what the Lord has been teaching me and how the month is coming to a close. I will also post some pictures when I have better internet connection.
Please stay tuned…
