ACS - Nepal, 2014

Namaste to all,

We're here in the beautiful country of Nepal along with the American Community School of Beirut for another Week Without Walls experience. For all of you eager to know what is happening over here Faizal is giving us a short report of the first few days.

"Hey,

As many of you may have heard we experienced some frightening turbulence and wound up in Lucknow, India. After a short wait we departed to Kathmandu and felt relieved to land in the place we'll be calling home for the next week, Nepal. We spent our first night in the Bhaktapur guest house ending a long and stressful day with some tea and fresh samosas. The next morning we explored the highly diverse and culturally rich town of Bhaktapur. We visited a Ganesh temple where we actually got to witness three traditional Nepali weddings.                                                                                                                                                

  We spent the rest of the after noon exploring the beautiful Bhaktapur market as we all grouped up and set off to compete in a scavenger hunt. We faced challenges such as learning to navigate new territories, communicating with locals and bargaining through currency exchanges. We engaged as team assigning roles to each member, teaching every one of us some great traveling etiquette.

 That same day we took a bus ride through some of the largest and most beautiful valleys and landscapes most of us had ever seen. We finally arrived at Borderlands and were welcomed by some lovely rain showers. We had some time to settle into the gorgeous Borderlands camp based right by the massive Bhote Koshi flowing all the way from the Tibetan peaks. 

The next morning we woke up to some refreshing morning stretchings and enjoyed a great Nepali breakfast. We split in to two groups. The 10^th graders embarked on a long trek through the nearby mountains where they stopped for a refreshing dip at a waterfall. Meanwhile the 11^th graders split into two smaller teams, one of which started of with a short hike to the top of a canyon and enjoyed some knee shaking and adrenaline filled canyonning. The other team stayed at the base camp where they engaged in some great team building activities. These thought us much about teamwork, corporation and leadership. We are all really excited for the remainder of this trip and the many more adventure to come."

                                                                                                                          Faizal