Lots to keep track of- it's hard to remember it all!

A bunch of us planned to spend Shabbat on a goat farm in Chitlong, a district outside of Kathmandu. Although we were told it was a challenging bike ride, four of us decided to give it a try. Friday morning, we rented mountain bikes in town and set out on the main road. Okay, 'challenging' was an understatement of the century. It was the hardest thing I've done in my life, physically speaking. The path was very steep, totally rocky, extremely dusty, and filled with ruts and ditches. We had to hike up a large part of it, which is no easy feat if you're shlepping a bike. And although the views were insanely beautiful, it was hard to keep my eyes open after seven hours of extreme biking.

It was worth it though- Shabbat on the farm was INCREDIBLE. The village was stunning, straight out of a picture book. The food was great (fresh goat cheese), and Shabbos day we walked to a beautiful lake (which we thought was nearby and turned out to be two hours away. lo nora). I won't go into details about our shady, drunken innkeeper (for my mother's sake) but suffice it to say we had some interesting times...

That's mainly it for the down time. We have a tough week ahead of us, full of training. I've been placed in Mahader Bessi, the stone quarry/village community. I'm really excited about it albeit slightly nervous as it has the reputation for being the toughest community with the worst accommodations. Also, it has a super high alcoholism rate. But, it does have the best lassi's (yogurt milkshake) in all of Nepal. (p.s. worst accomdations = no shower or running water)

I'm still figuring out what I'll be doing specifically but as of now I'm working on building a seminar on special needs education (for teachers) and also doing something with the youth here. It's all very overwhelming.

One last story to leave you with: Today we went to observe a classroom in a slum of the city. The teacher was (attempting) to teach plural and singular in English. To demonstrate, she wrote the words 'child' and 'children' on the board and then asked the students to practice making words plural in their workbooks. So this is what the students wrote:

Singular: Child Plural: Children

Donkey Donkdren

Mouse Mousedren

Welcome to the education in Nepal!