A welcome I never could even have imagined!

On our first morning we woke up to the howling of the dog, the cockerel crowing and the tapping of goat hooves outside our house. This felt like a million miles away from Kathmandu let alone Edinburgh. School starts at 10am and finishes at 4pm but they do not eat lunch. Instead they have a huge breakfast which we are certainly not used to. Our attempt at cooking something tasty was not very successful but porridge always saves the day!

We were both extremely nervous about our first day at school but this soon changed when every child and teacher welcomed us by giving us garlands or flowers each so much so that they were overflowing from our arms. It was such a lovely welcome and something I will never forget. Most of the children were gathering around wanting to say hello which was so lovely but also a little overwhelming.

We then went up stairs to the staff room to discuss what we were going to do. The headmaster does not speak a word of English and therefore runs away from us as soon as he sees us which made organising teaching some what challenging. We settled on teaching grades2,4,5 and a combined class of grades3,4&5 every day. Naively we thought we would visit the classes and start teaching the following day but this was certainly not the case as the English teacher showed us the grade 2 class which we were to start teaching immediately. To our surprise we managed to teach them clothes that lesson after trying and failing to establish any English that they knew. Needless to say it was extremely limited. Overall, our first day whilst scary being launched in to teach lessons immediately was good fun and we both enjoyed it.

We spent the entire afternoon sitting outside in the sun with tea planning lessons for the following day which was good fun.