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Saturday is the only day off in the school week and we were glad to have a day to get ourselves together. Up for breakfast at 7.30; more packet noodles but this time with garlic and cabbage. We woke to a beautiful view down the valley with the village perched in a basin at the top.

After breakfast, our bags arrived and we could finally get out of our sweaty gear. Saturday is the day for washing and we seemed to have a lot of dirty clothes. Purna gave us a couple of buckets of hot water from the stove which made the job a bit easier. Purna's house is fairly modern, with running cold water and a sit down toilet (which must have come up the hill on a porter's back), but this does not extend to hot water yet (he has plans for solar panels).

As soon as we had finished washing ourselves and our clothes, we were taken up to Purna's in-laws for lunch. This meant we had a chance to meet the family - Purna's wife, Jhangmu, and son Karma (6) stay at Jhangmu's parents while he is away. Jhangmu's parents live in a house further up the village towards the temple. The whole family are very welcoming and kind. Lunch included our first taste of Tibetan-style butter tea, which was maybe not quite as bad as we had been led to believe but is not growing on us. Then dhal-baat (rice and curry). Everyone always sits cross-legged around the central stove – which, as Purna said, foreigners take a while to get used to but we were happy to put up with the initial aches and pains as it is quite convivial. 

The village is preparing for a festival, nara, in a few weeks which for Purna's family means a lot of hard work sorting wheat from chaff in wicker baskets and distilling lots of roxsie! This year Jhangmu's parents are the 'chiba' – the nominated organisers of all the festivals for the year, mainly Nara and Dasain. This is quite an undertaking as it involves a lot of preparation and co-ordination although the whole community pitch in donating food and labour. Nara is a bit like a week long harvest festival and involves edible sculptures decorated with coloured butter and the making of bread, meals and tea for the whole village. As a result, they need to prepare 1 tonne of wheat which is used for bread. We have been told that it would be bad to put on a smaller spread than the previous year, so it seems that this festival must get bigger and bigger.

Teaching starts tomorrow (Sunday to Friday). It sounds like our main job will be sitting in with the existing teachers and trying to help them make lessons more participatory, and less rote-learning style.

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