Nepal Day 1

Nepal Day One

Last night we got into Nepal around 9:30pm and went through a health check for Swine Flu (Flu A, H1N1) as their sign said. From there we applied for our visas picked up our luggage and went through customs. Everything went very smoothly a man that knew English spotted us and went through the whole process with us. From there we went to find our ride. It was a man who knows Uma. He took us out to his car to load the luggage. Next to his car was a little boy who was around 7 or 8 who kept watching us and smiling I am thinking that he was trying to beg for money but did not say anything. The surroundings in the dark reminded me of some of the scenes in Slumdog Millionaire.

The roads here are very narrow and they drive on the left side of the road. Right now Kathmandu has power restrictions so there is only power 8-12 hours a day and at night time for the most part. Because of this there are no street lamps so the roads are very dark at night. To pass cars here you signal and honk to let the car in front of you know that you are about to pass them. It was a very noisy journey. Along the side of the road you have to stop every so often to have the car searched by police. As I lay in bed writing this there I can hear lots of honking in the roads.

We arrived at the orphanage around 10:30 and were shown our room and we went straight to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night to rain pounding on the tin roof. It was so loud and kept me awake for a while. The beds here are very hard so are the pillows I was thinking about it this afternoon about how I would describe my pillow and it reminds me of cornmeal all packed together tightly. I think it is really cotton but it is very very hard. The whole sleeping situation is going to be very hard for me to get used to. Right now I have the blanket provided under me and the one I brought over me.

This morning I woke up to so many different noises. There is a parrot that hangs out outside of my window and likes to talk to the children and to the neighbors and it was trying to get their attention. It is a small green parrot. There were lots of other bird noises. One of these mornings I am going to write down all of the noises that I can hear. I also felt like I could hear monkeys but Uma said that they do not come here very often so it might have been a bird I have never heard before.

At 8 o’clock (I was already showered and dressed and had been awake for at least an hour, which is so not like me) we ate breakfast with Uma she prepared Josh and I eggs with onions and peppers in them and toast. It was a pretty good breakfast, Uma told us that the Nepali people do not take breakfast and eat lunch at 10 instead but she takes breakfast and will do so for us every day as well. The table that they eat at is very low to the ground and you sit on pillows cross legged. This was very hard for me and Josh we are both really sore from sitting like that all day. (Especially after sitting on planes for the last 2 days).
We started our language study today. We have a tutor who is going to be coming for 5 days to teach us basic Nepali. The language is very hard there are lots of sounds that are not in the English language that we are having to learn how to pronounce. We learned greetings, how to ask names, family, numbers, some verbs, and a few nouns. To ask “What is your name?” you say “Tappaai ko naam ke ho? And to answer I would say mero naam Amanda ho. We studied for around 3 hours. It was very tiring. But I think that I am catching on ok. I think that I will have an easier time pronouncing things from my language book now that I have learned a little bit.

After the language lesson we took lunch with Uma and Rabinda (our language teacher) we ate rice with a curry sauce and vegetables. There were potatoes and chili peppers and a vegetable that I had never seen that Uma called lady fingers. They may be similar to orka but I don’t know. It was very good though.
Afterward I sat and listened to Uma and Rabindra talk in Nepali. (Rabindra could not go because it was raining to hard and he had to walk to the bus). I think the jet lag caught up with me a little bit because I went to lay down for a short nap around 2 or 3 and did not wake up until almost 8. We watched a little bit of television with the children. A lot of it was in English and some of it was in Hindi. It was interesting how much I understood what was going on even though I could not understand the language that was being used. Afterward we ate dinner and visited.

Right now I am laying in bed writing this in a word document hoping that I can post in on the blog. We shall see. We did not get out of the house at all today because of the rain so I did not get a chance to get to internet access. Hopefully tomorrow will be better weather so that we will be able to and to see the city we can only see a little. I will also try to take some pictures tomorrow and show where we will be staying while we are here.
Dhanyabaad (Thank you)
Amanda