10 days down!

Namaste! Happy Monday everyone.

I have been in Nepal for 10 days now, and am beginning to get my head around where I am and what is going on! The orientation at the school every morning has been really helpful – I am very familiar with some of it (for example the maths scheme of work is the same as we used at St Edward’s) but other things are utterly new and different to anything that I have seen before from UK teaching.

I have been to the International Church for the last couple of weeks which has been lovely to be, pray and worship amongst people from an incredible number of nations. I am planning on going to Nepali church, perhaps when I have got slightly more of a grasp on the language/culture. For the last week we’ve been having Nepali lessons for 2 hours every afternoon! I love learning languages so it’s been really fun, although I’m not sure how much I am managing to retain. My brain just feels very full all the time! And the problem is, if I try out my extremely limited Nepali, I get answered in Nepali and am clueless from there... Thankfully I have a number of housemates who understand and speak Nepali very well.

I feel fairly oriented to the area – I am happy to wander around Thecho (the little town area just to the south of the city) on my own and I’m not getting too lost! We have been into different parts of the city quite a lot on tuk tuks and in taxis. It’s a straight road from where we live to the ring round around the city so (during the day) getting a tuk tuk to the ring road and then a taxi from there to wherever we want to be is a good option.

It has been a real blessing to have various connections here before I arrived – I met up with someone who friends in Wokingham have been connected with, she’s a physio who works in the villages. Then yesterday I met up with a friend from St Andrews who has been living here for a number of years and is doing incredible work with local people and kids. Funnily enough, one of my housemates was actually in the same Old Testament class with me in St Andrews back in 2009. Small world or what? These things make me smile, it’s also just such an incredible reminder that God is so in all of this and is holding my life firmly in His hands.

I bought a Nepali kurtha (a pretty tunic-type garment!) and we got mehndi (henna) done at the weekend. All the women walking around look so beautiful in their colourful clothes, with lots of jewellery and henna. I like it that it’s totally culturally appropriate to wear beautiful clothes here even if you’re just doing ordinary things in your day! One thing that will make you smile though is that my clothing size here is XXL..

It’s also been so fun getting to know my housemates and my colleagues. They are really lovely – I feel so blessed to be part of such a community. We are cooking together, playing a lot of Dutch Blitz and Dobble, watching movies… so definitely my kind of people! It’s also just been really nice exploring the cafes with them, going shopping etc. I’m very much not alone here, which is exactly how an extravert such as myself likes it! Having said that, it is a big house which is nice – it has 3 floors to live on, then the roof as a balcony on the top. We have 4 bathrooms. There’ll be 9 of us altogether once everyone is here. So it’s not as if we’re all living on top of each other all the time. We also have a wonderful house-helper called Babita who does our laundry, washing up, bed-changing etc! I feel rather spoilt…!

Final thing, as you may be aware, this is a voluntary teaching position. Basic expenses are covered such as living costs, visas and a flight home every 2 years but I am not receiving a salary. If you would like to support me, you can use the following bank details:

Account number: 00398628 Sort code: 11-08-62.

Alternatively, I have now been able to open a Stewardship recipient account which will allow tax to be reclaimed. My Stewardship account number is: 20276107. If you go onto https://www.stewardship.org.uk/ there will be plenty of information about that on there.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support and encouragement. Sometimes I am very acutely aware of you praying for me and carrying me. Please continue to pray. We have whole staff training over the next week, then I meet the parents on Monday and the kids’ first day at school is Tuesday. Right now I am not feeling particularly prepared so if you could pray that things fall into place at the right time, that would be amazing. It’s been less than 3 weeks since I finished the school year in Reading so it seems all a bit sudden to be starting again! My health has been excellent so far (thank you Lord!) please continue to pray that it stays that way.

With so much love to all of you amazing people,

Hannah