Chitwan

Our first week of real live volunteering has come to a close! It's officially the sabbath here (Saturday's are the holy day) and it has been an exhausting week. 

We rode a bus from Kathmandu for 5 hours on Monday. As we started our descent on the other side of the mountains that surround Kathmandu, I realized that we were in for one heck of a ride. We were in a big tour bus and the winding mountain road resembled something that I saw on a TV show that had a title something like "world's most dangerous roads". Not only were we a big vehicle but the majority of the vehicles that we passed were big vehicles, too. We passed large semi trucks and other tour buses that were headed toward the Kathmandu Valley and many times, I held my breath as they skimmed passed us inches from the side of our bus. We had brave motorcyclists passing us around corners and we have learned that in Nepal, horns don't just signify annoyance but they use it as a warning, "I'm coming around this giant bus so don't run into me!" It was really an interesting experience but we saw many amazing views along the way. 

We got to meet our wonderful host family once we got here. We're actually about 10km out of Chitwan and closer to a little city called Rampur. We are staying in a rural place with our host family the Dawadi Family. The father works in the orphanage's plant nursery with us. 

In the mornings, we go and work in the nursery/garden that supplies vegetables for the orphanage. We have been weeding and planting and sweating like crazy. It's very hot here! 

Because it is so hot, we only work from 7-10 am and then go back for a "dhal-batt" (rice and lentil soup) break from 10-4:30. At 4:30 we go to the orphanage and spend a few hours with the children. They are so funny!! 

The first day, one of the little girls that sat around Steven said, "you know borokobomo?" He asked what she said and she repeated herself. He asked if that was a place and looked at me to see if I understood and I just shook my head and shrugged. Frustrated, the girl slowly pronounced it again, "Barack Obama!!" Ohhhh! Steven nodded and said that of course he did. The little girl looked at him straight faced and said, "Barack Obama is my grandfatha!" Steven looked at her for a minute and then started laughing and told her she was such a joker. She tried to convince him but when it wasn't doing any good she finally started laughing. 

The kids are always trying to pull one over on us telling us lies to see if we'll fall for it. We help them with homework and just hang out with them. The older boys all love soccer so Steven gets along well with them. Really he gets along with all of them. The kids will sit around him and ask him to do the "guitar! Guitar!" Then, he'll play his air guitar and make noises and a lot of the girls laugh and laugh and tell him that he is "comedy boy" 

We are loving our experiences. We always hope and pray for some cool weather to cool us off and we pray for the rats, insects and giant spiders to leave us alone. (Especially me on that last one. I didn't realize that I was so squeamish!!)

Thanks for all of the love and concern. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers! 

Namaste!!

Namaste!

We have officially arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal! I can't tell you how many mixed emotions I had when we landed. I'm sure my mom could tell you I sounded terrified on the phone as we drove the dark streets to our hostile. Our driver took us the long way to show us some of the destruction from the earthquakes. We saw nine story buildings that were now piles of debris, empty lots housing 1,000+ tents and lean-to's, broken roads, stray dogs and piles and piles of brick and rubble.

We got to talk to our country coordinator during and after breakfast. He told us about what happened when the first earthquake hit and then the second. Another lady sat and talked to us and she told us her story, too. She was on the roof of a building when it hit. She said that she would have just ducked under the table but she watched as the building right next to hers crumbled and so she started running down. It was a good thing she did because later, she found out that the roof had caved in to the kitchens below it. After breakfast we got to go and walk around the local streets. I can already tell the difference between here and China. Since Nepal is such a tourism driven country, most people know at least simple English so it's not hard to get around. Everyone is very happy here. People still stare at us until after we pass and the little kids all love to stop and talk to us in English. Their English is very proper but they don't understand everything we say. Right before we turned back down our little winding alley, we got stopped on a corner by a little group of well dressed people that were gathered around a car covered in flowers. We realized it was a marriage ceremony and stopped to watch. It was right in the corner of a busy street with many cars honking as they passed but they must be used to it. 

After our language study, we went outside because it's cooler outside than it is inside our hostile. Steven took his soccer ball to juggle and of course you can imagine the little crowd of kids that attracted. They all wanted to play monkey in the middle and when the little ones got tired of that they came and sat by me on the blanket. Pretty soon one little girl grabbed my phone and started to play with it. She asked for games and when I told her I didn't have any, she soon found my pictures and videos and then my camera and had a lot of fun with that. They loved to see Steven and I show affection and I am sure it's because their culture doesn't seem to show a lot of affection between man and wife. 

After a while, I went back inside to study Nepalese and Steven came in soon after me. As we were sitting there all of a sudden we felt a shaking. At first I thought it was someone below us that had been pounding on the ceiling but as I heard screams I realized it was another aftershock. We hurried out but the shaking was over before we even got outside. It wasn't bad but everyone is so nervous about aftershocks that everyone was in the streets for quite a while, calling loved ones and nervously laughing at the small quake. 

We don't realize how blessed we are until things are gone. Now that we're in a third world country we notice the smallest things that we take for granted.

We're in for quite the adventure. I know it. It's amazing here. The people are special. The food is good. The view is amazing. We are doing well. 

Love y'all tons.