Work starts

It has been freezing here over the last couple of weeks, every morning I don vest, and complete set of thermals before layering jumpers and jeans, it’s not that it is colder than the UK, it probably about 10.C it’s just that there is no heating!
I have started work now (which is also cold) and much to my relief it’s enjoyable and not scary. In my office there are two ladies my age and younger who are very keen to learn English and to improve their work skills. The office is small but tidy, with no working telephone, computer, internet or heater, so the set up is very different from home where we have all the resources we need at our finger tips. Not a lot really seems to happen at work apart from visits from family, colleagues and board members-this is the Nepali way, there are no boundaries between work and personal life. Thankfully in my first week we agreed to a meeting to plan the year’s activities and improvement areas, so I am planning my first workshop. This will be very interesting as I will be delivering a workshop to 15 people who are deaf, blind and physically disabled oh and do not understand English. I am looking forward to it though and will have the aid of an interpreter and my office colleagues, I do not expect it to go to plan.
My work days are very short the office is open 10:00 – 4:00 in the winter and 10:00 – 5:00 from April till November, I have yet to work out the rationality behind this. I start work at 10:30 because I do not have the keys to the office and the staff are usually late and do not want me to be subjected to passers by pestering me, which would be the case. There is much sitting around and practising English and Nepali and generally dossing and some work does get done , we finish around 3:30 or 4:00. Nepali’s eat a meal before the office and then a snack in the afternoon before a meal in the evening, any food brought into the office is shared, so if I brought lunch in I would have to bring everyone lunch, so I have had to alter my eating habits to eat break fast late and my evening meal early and hope that a snack will appear. Yesterday I took raw peas and radish in to share and much to my surprise this proved very popular. And everyone is late here, an hour or two late is normal, which is hard for me as I am really punctual and impatient but I am adapting to the slower haphazard pace of life. People can be relied upon though, last week a water piper burst in my bathroom and the entire water tank (tanky in Nepali) emptied itself much to my horror, into the bathroom, I called my language teacher and he came and brought a plumber with the right part and the matter was resolved in one morning, very kind.
And so I can happily say I have survived my first week at work!