Nepal 2016: Day 9 - Kathmandu

Tuesday 19th July 2016

Breakfast is becoming a very communal event. Everyone had a helping hand ranging from making the French toast, to mango crafting to recommendations on how well peanut butter goes on French toast.

The team is in good spirit rearing to go after and more prepared than ever. - Hui King

This is our 2nd day at Gloria school which is official just a private school but it is known, in the community, as a Christian school. The school was started about 15 years ago by Korean missionary Grace. This school is just a joy to be in.

The teachers are outstanding, dedicated and list loving the children. We are also impressed by the educational standards here. The trigonometry we saw on the white board was probable beyond half the team members.

Benson, Derek, and Joshua took the secondary kids today. They organised a paper airplane completion and the mechanical theory behind it. I think that might have swayed some to think of mechanical engineering as a career. 

Catherine and Esther again took the behemoth of a task of taking 90+ primary children. I think their love and dedication shone through today. I know that they spend their downtime last night and also lots of time in Bristol preparing for this. We are really encouraged by their deviation. Also, it seems like they are now experts for handling a class size of 90.

Kindergarten was more organised today. We Illustrated the Noah’s ark with pictures and crafts and the children loved it. The energy level of these children is something else but we are equal to this with Sarina, Kerry, and Gloria taking charge.

Continuing on the afternoon of day 8 at Gloria school. The children were busy preparing for the teachers day celebration. This is the first time teachers day was celebrated in Gloria school and it was a student initiative. While Joshua was leading the secondary students he encouraged a very shy girl to lead the class to perform a class dance for teachers day. With a little bit of encouragement, this shy girl turned into a choreographe and staged a delightful at the end of the day dance.  The primary school girls also performed 2 lively songs for the teachers orchestrated by Catherine and Esther.  We all came away from the 2 days with Gloria school with a sense of awe for the dedication of the teachers and energy levels required for teaching.  The teachers here, in particular, are God fearing and have a deep passion for the children. And yes we can do school camps! And Jason and Maisie did well with the dental clinic,  seeing all the kids who needed extractions etc.  They even saw the teachers.

Finally, today we begin the tooth extractions, the children were checked yesterday and went home to get permissions. Children are all so brave.

After our goodbye with Gloria school, we installed and tested a water filter using the plastic buckets. The design is simple but effective: 2 buckets one stacked on top of another, with a filter piece screwed into a hole that is drilled at the bottom of the top bucket, and a tap installed at the side of the bottom bucket, simples!