Nepal Capital, day one

The view from my balcony. (Balcony makes it sound glamorous, but I promise it isn't.)

So I got to Nepal safe and sound. However, my first impression (on little sleep, and culture shocked beyond belief) was terrifying. The traffic is honestly one of the scariest things I’ve experienced…there’s a lot of honking and driving on the wrong side of the road and almost hitting pedestrians involved. Buses are 10 person vans with at least 20 people crammed inside. Whoasies. Also, the streets are lined with trash which lends the city a disgusting smell. Kathmandu is a city of five million, the capital of its country, and it has no municipal water, sewage, trash, or transportation systems. Oh, and don’t ask for my address, because I don’t have one. This is how these five million live.

Houses, shacks, mud, and piles of trash along a main road in Kathmandu. This is along a serious thoroughfare.

That being said, I’m sure things will start to look up once I get sleep. Nepali is going to be difficult to learn, but the other volunteers are great, and the kids are so loving. I don’t know where I’ll be placed, I haven’t spoken to the woman in charge of that yet, so we’ll see how it goes. Today I got to go to a ceremony for brothers--it was a holiday today, tomorrow is one as well; there are a lot of holidays in Nepal--where sisters honored their brothers by decorating them with paint, tying a pretty bracelet on their arms, and shoving food in their mouths. Interesting, to say the least. I then got to go to a temple here in town called Swayambhu. There were three giant buddhas in the Buddha park, and then we climbed a big hill to see all of the giant lumpy things--called stupas--which I was told were dedicated to gods and goddesses, but I have also been told that they hold relics of Buddha and are sacred for that reason. There were lots of monkeys, lots of people making sacrifices, and lots of poo from pigeons and dogs. It was cool to see, and it offered an awesome view of the city. After a stop by a restaurant for lunch, a store for some supplies, and an ATM for some rupees, we took a taxi back up the hill instead of walking the long way. (I’m in the Dhapasi district, by the way… it’s funny that they ask for your address on the visa papers and there aren’t really addresses for most people.) Tomorrow is a new day and I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

The Boy's House leader, Vinod, being annointed by one of his sisters. All of the other boys got the special treatment too.

Jesse with one of his favorite studentsMe with one of Papa's girls


All of the Tibetan prayer flags at the Buddha temple. Well, not all of them... this was one of like three giant sections of Tibetan prayer flags.
At the Buddha temple. His golden insignia with a monkey on it.