I am not sari?

Yes where should I start its been a little too long since I last wrote sorry it is difficult to keep up with these things. So I moved to my final home here in Nepal. I now live in an area called Pulchuck with the sweetest woman, Enu, and her dog who just had puppies. I am putting a photo of them both up here. When I first moved in I had some reservations and I thought Enu didn’t like me. What the people who dropped me off failed to tell me was that she had just lost her husband a few weeks before I moved in and now that understanding more I think its good that I am living here and it gives me a chance to learn some Nepali and really get a feel for the culture. One of the first days that I moved in it was the Taij, one of the over 60 festival here. I decided to partake and dressed in red and migrated with the thousands of women to Pasupati temple for singing and dancing. I can’t believe women can comfortably wear saris around everywhere to do daily chores. To me it felt like wearing a ball gown. I guess it just takes some getting used to.

 The purpose of the festival is to fast for the long life of your husband and it is the only women’s festival. This should paint an image of the gender disparity that they are trying to change here. That’s right 1 woman’s holiday… to pray for a long life for the husband.

 Classes are going ok. Up days and down days. Sometimes I think they understand other days not so much. The motivation factor is really difficult for me. So far 30% of the class does the work I assign and more than half the class is failing but based on what they tell me in class an what they make me believe that some of what I say is getting through. I am trying to remember that this is new for them too and while I am still adjusting to the culture they are adjusting to my style of teaching to. Most teachers here teach from the book so they can pass their exams and the kids write it down, memorize it, and forget it. While I like to think that I am trying to get them to think and act outside the box its going to be much more challenging than I initially thought. I have huge problems with plagiarism in the class and pretty much 80% of the class when asked to write a paper will look something up and copy and paste from Wikapedia something that wasn’t even close to the assignment. I think I need to set more realistic goals for my class or take more time to explain things better.