Monks are cute

I'm in Bodhanath and just finished with my first day of teaching. After all of my worrying and tearing up and freaking out, it was mostly just fun. I've got two classes (beginning and intermediate) and by the end of the beginning class one boy left repeating "I am not sad, I am happy!" which made me feel great. I didn't really have any idea what I was doing with the older class and all i could think of was to have them describe my backpack, but it actually turned into a pretty-ok lesson about adjectives. Also they all called me "miss" which was funny. So overall, a semi-success!
I think I'm finally starting to like it here. The other people from the program are all weird in their own way:
Sylvia is an older Australian woman whom I was afraid of at first because she went on and on about how young I was and how impossible teaching was going to be. I'm pretty sure, though, that she's just a motherly type who's worried for me. So now she calls me "dear" and all is well.
Steph is a 20-something Canadian who seems to be the most normal of them all so far. She's going to be here longer than the rest (until I leave) , so it seems like a promising friendship.
Gina is a 20-something from upstate New York. She's one of those loud, dramatic, over-the-top type people who normally I wouldn't be friends with, but since that's impossible, she's really starting to grow on me. She's also an army wife who hasn't seen her husband in 15 months. So that might make anyone crazy.
Kyle is an American who's been living in Bulgaria for 10 years. He's in a wheelchair and, according to Sylvia, "needs to get out more." She gave him a big lecture at dinner last night and he just looked like he wanted to die.
Last is Chris, the in-country director, who at first I thought was just a nice, bumbling British guy and now irritates me like no other. This seems to be a pretty common opinion among the group. He also has a Nepali wife who looks to be in her early twenties (he's over sixty), and a two-year-old son. Sylvia thinks that the wife has "someone else" who "helped" her with the kid. Hmm.
SO things are really starting to work out. I switched my teaching time so I can take the bus (aka van stuffed with 50 people) with Sylvia and Steph, and since my teaching is only an hour and a half, I think I'm going to help them out at the orphanage in the afternoon. I'm going there today, so that'll be interesting. Sylvia says that "they're lovely, but with loads of snots."
Anyway. That's it for now. Hopefully the upward turn will continue! How is everybody? Love, I'll write more soon!