Each year during the festival, she's carried through the city and has historically always bestowed the King with her blessing to rule over the country for that year.
Fun Fact 1: One year, the Kumari was very tired and mistakenly blessed the prince rather than the king. That same year, the king suddenly died and the prince began his rule as king.
Fun Fact 2: There's a widespread belief that whoever marries an ex-Kumari will die young, though I haven't heard of any stories that affirm that belief.
I also read about the problems in education here. Many people believe it's the root problem to many of Nepal's other problems. Very little of the international budget goes towards education, and many teachers are untrained. They teach by memorization, and thus the material has very little meaning to students. Many schools don't have any materials to teach with, or even basic facilities like toilets. Often times without toilets, many girls drop out of school. Girls also frequently drop out of school due to child marriage (though, that's more common in very rural areas in the western region). Soon I'll start interviewing teachers and students wherever I travel to learn more about the different problems Nepal's education system has!
We did a few crosswords in Devanagari, which is the script Nepali is written in, to practice our vocabulary and writing skills. We also tried to play hangman in Devanagari; however, it was very difficult and confusing! In the Nepali alphabet, all consonants end in "a" like ka, la, ma, etc., and then the consonant has additional markings if a different vowel follows it like ke, ki, ko, etc.
