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!