nepal: i'm here!

i'm so excited to be in nepal! when i arrived around 11 PM, i saw ruthie waving behind this large crowd of people. when we found each other, we took a taxi to her house. the roads got narrower and narrower and bouncier and we ended up on a dark narrow street with no lights in front of her house with dogs barking loudly behind gates on either side of the street, just a bit wider than the small car itself that was the taxi. up above in the sky there were SO stars!!! so awesome. there are never stars in the city where i live in china. i could see orion along with the sword and a bunch of little stars behind it too. YES!

then today, the sky was so BLUE. and you can see lovely green mountains from the windows of her house, and at certain places outside, giant white-capped mountains in the distance. we got to visit some of the children she teaches today. there is a little four year old boy who loves to dance. i loved to hear the children sing in nepalese. ruthie asked me to make "math homework" for two of the little girls, so i made math worksheets, reminiscent of worksheets i used to make for my brother when he was about 4 years old and make him learn how to add without counting on his fingers or using a ruler, and then i would give him grades. i taught one little girl how to add by carrying because she was using her fingers to add larger numbers and counting. she wasn't just using her fingers though, she was using *sections* of her fingers, especially when she subtracted numbers larger than ten. each finger has 3 sections and the thumb has 2. she would start from the thumb and count each section up to twenty-something--whatever the problem required--and then she would count backwards the amount of sections back for the subtraction and then count how many were left. so interesting. maybe i should have taught her how to borrow, but i didn't because i was so fascinated with how she was counting.

here they have planned power outtages each day, which is interesting, although i heard they don't necessarily happen exactly when they are scheduled.

well, i am excited to be here, and we will see what happens in the next 20 days or so! our plans are happening day-by-day-ish so far, but i've only been here one day so far. hee hee.