June 16 2009

Our time at orphanage #2
For the last 10 days the school that we have been working at has been on a break. Because of this I asked Uma (our coordinator ) to set us up in a different orphanage for a week so that we would have work to do and get a small taste of different orphanages in the area. The orphanage that we have been working at has 24 children and 10 of them are 10 months to around 2 years old.
The first day that we were there we just played with the babies and helped to feed them. They eat what looks kind of like oatmeal and kind of like lentils it could be both I don’t know it smelled pretty good though. The workers there gave me a bowl that was completely full of the mush and a spoon and I fed which ever mouth was nearby that was not eating. It was kind of crazy because you have no ideas which kids have eaten enough and which have not because it was not monitored. All of them looked like they were well fed and cared for though. The diapers that they use here are just a cloth that is folded into a triangle and tied to the babies when they pee it soaks right though. I leave at the end of the day covered in snot, pee, and slobber. A lot of the time the children run around without anything on their bottom half at all. Most of the children are potty trained though and they each have a small training potty that they set up in the hallway outside the recreation room that they spend all day in. They would set up the children on the potties and leave them all sitting there for a long time just chilling in the hall sitting on the potty. It was kind of cute actually. One little boy who was one of the oldest of the children there is named Surje. He is a serious handful he is defiantly the biggest trouble maker but very fun and playful and super smart. He would sit on his potty and play with all the shoes that sit outside of the rec room and then he would throw them down the stairs. At the end of every day I was always looking for my shoes because they were never where I left them. I started taking them off right when I walked in the building so that I would have a better chance of them not escaping from me.
The 2nd 3rd and 4th days that we were there we helped a girl named Amy who is here from Canada with the organization volunteer abroad paint the rec room. The first day we just painted the ceiling white. The second day we did a second coat of paint on the ceiling then did a first coat of cookie monster blue paint on the wall. The room was originally a light minty green it was really gross looking. When we were done painting the walls blue we had to clean the paintbrushes the cleaner that the paint store gave Amy was some kind of petroleum that was put into old motor oil bottles. I did the cleaning and when I went to clean the paint and oil off of my hands I found that there was no soap anywhere to use so I walked home with bright blue hands. The area that the orphanage is not in a great place of town it is very poor and so there are not a lot of tourists in the area very often so when I walk the streets I get looked at a lot anyway because I look out of place but with blue hands I got even more looks than normal. A lot of people on motorcycles would drive past and look at me and then take a second look because my hands were so blue and have to quickly turn and swerve to avoid hitting one of the potholes that are everywhere on the road. It was so funny. When I got home Uma and Nabina were laughing so hard and we had to go the little store down the street to buy motor oil so that we could get the paint off. To buy it you have to bring your own bottle and they fill it up for you from a big tank of the stuff. We brought along an empty 1L water bottle. Nabina scrubbed my arms and hands until the stuff came most of the way off. (Almost a week later now my finger nails are still blue around the edges). On the 3rd day of painting we arrived a while before Amy so we got to play with the babies before we began to paint. They were so excited to see us when we arrived. The room looks so good now. It just needs some touch ups and someone else is going to be working on them. The room is so much brighter and happier looking. The 3 staff members really loved it they kept coming in and dancing around they were so happy with it.
The last 3 days we have been just going any playing with the children. On Sunday and Monday the older children that live there were also home because they had no school because it was a “holy day” (I don’t know why because their holy day is normally on Saturday and they go to school the other 6 days of the week. It was really fun to be able to experience another orphanage situation here in the Kathmandu valley. I really appreciate where we are and the opportunities that our children have. The children where we are, are so well behaved and smart. They know when to stop what they are doing and they understand what we are saying most of the time.

I think that there was probably more that I was going to write but I started writing this almost a week ago and never finished so if it seems incomplete and like it ends abruptly that is why. Let me know if you have any questions about anything. Miss you all.

Amanda

Crazy Weeks!!!

June 12, 2009

It has been a crazy past two weeks. I feel like we have not stopped at all. After going to Chitwan two more volunteers came and so we were busy traveling with them when we were not working. Last weekend Josh, Justin (volunteer from New Jersey) and I traveled to the last resort which is a small adventure resort about 15 km from the Tibet border and went bungy jumping. The location of the jump is off of a suspension bridge that is 160 meters over a raging river. I was the last person in my group to jump because of my weight so I was on the bridge for 2 hours watching people go and by the time it was my turn I was so ready to get off the bridge that I hopped right up and got ready. I was just fine until I stood on the platform and was really going to jump and I froze. I kept telling the guy that I didn’t think that I could do it and he kept encouraging me to just take one step further and one more. It took me a few minutes but I finally jumped. Josh took a video from the side I look totally freaked out. I am going to try and put it on Facebook I don’t know if I will be able to before I get home but if you want to see it just let me know it is pretty funny. After finally being released from hanging upside down you have to hike about 20-25 minutes back up the mountain. It was one of the hardest hikes that I have ever done. Partially because I had just jumped off a bridge but it was hard all by itself. The views were amazing though. Along the trail you had to walk though waterfalls and up steps made of rocks casually placed to assist climbing. They were not stable at all. At one point on the trail there were several children bathing in one of the waterfalls and women doing their wash. Right before returning to the resort there was a small village that I walked though and saw people cleaning and preparing fresh cut rice, and there were goats and chickens everywhere it was really neat to be able to see it. I kept wishing that I had my camera to take pictures but you are not allowed to jump with anything like that on you.

The school that we have been teaching at has a 10 day break, so we took Sunday to travel to Baktupur and Nagarkot with Vanessa (the other volunteer here from Singapore) . The Kathmandu valley was originally 3 different countries Kathmandu, Patan, and Baktupur. Each one is now just a different area of the valley but they each still have their individual Durbar Square. We had traveled to both Kathmandu and Patan several times because they are very close to where we are but Baktupur is about 45 minutes to 1 hour away from us depending on traffic so we had to make a special trip to go and visit it. Baktupur is famous for their “king of curds” which is yogurt curd it is kind of bitter and very lumpy. We tried it at two different place while we were there. The first place was at a restaurant where we paid 86 Rupees for a bowl and it was ok. The second place was a small hole in the wall locally owned place. We paid 15 rupees and it came in a small clay pot that we got to keep and it was way better tasting. It had ginger and cardamom spices in it. Baktapur had many pretty temples including the tallest in Nepal. Baktapur is also famous for its potters square where all kinds of pots and other clay goods are made. It is off season here right now so there was not too much going on but I did see one man sitting at the potters wheel.

As we were leaving a little girl started following us. She latched on to Josh and followed him saying. “Hi hi hi hi hi hi hi one rupee hi hi hi hi hi hi hi one rupee hi hi hi hi hi one rupee hi one rupee hi one rupee hi hi hi hi.” It was so funny because Josh kept saying hi to here and then getting frustrated that she was still there. She followed us for a good 20 minutes until we got into the taxi and drove off. She even started to chase after the taxi but stopped shortly. (We are encouraged not to give money or food to the street children because it makes their lives on the streets easier and discourages them from finding the programs that are set up to help them).

After leaving Baktapur we traveled another 45 minutes to 1 hour to Nagarkot which is a small mountain village that has amazing views and cooler weather. There is nothing to do there except to relax and take in the amazing views. We ate lunch at one of the 2 nice hotels in the village and relaxed in the cool weather and enjoyed the fresh air. From where we were on a clear day you can see the peaks of Mount Everest. It was not very clear the day we were there unfortunately. It was nice to go to the mountains though. So much of them remind me of the mountains of home.

This week we have been working at a different orphanage during the day while the children here are at school. This orphanage has babies and toddlers that we played with the first day. They are so cute and want to be held and played with all the time. The last three days that we have been there we have been helping a volunteer from a different organization paint the playroom. That has been really fun I got very blue doing so though.

I have also been helping cook meals for the kids everyday as well as for the adults here. It has been really fun. I should be able to cook very well when I get home. It is not hard at all. It is just remembering all the spices and having the right equipment. Tomorrow is Saturday and the one day that the kids are home. We are planning on making momos (kind of like a Chinese dumpling) I bought a momo pan yesterday and all of the children are so excited and keep reminding me that it is tomorrow hopefully everything turns out great.
I will post a separate post on Chitwan later I am not done writing it yet. Hope all is well with everyone.

Namaste

Amanda

Facebook Account for Pictures

I am having a hard time posting pictures on here but my facebook account is working so there are some pictures on there I have made everything public for while I am here. Go ahead and take a look.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=541310456&ref=profile

May 22, 2009

Last night we went to go the tailors with Uma to be fitted for some Nepali clothing. (this was the second night in a row we have gone but it was closed the night before). We went to the road just outside of the house and found a taxi to take us to the shopping mall where it is located. The road that we were on to begin with is a very narrow road. Before we got onto the main road we got in a jam with a large truck. We had to maneuver very slowly. Josh was sitting in the front seat of the car and was telling the taxi driver how much room he had between the wall and the side of the car. Both of the side mirrors were already folded in. At one point Josh told the taxi driver that he had tons of room and held up his fingers to show how much room was between the side of the car and the brick wall on the side it was about ½ in. That was about the same from the other side where the truck was and the distance the other side of the truck was from the brick wall on the other side of the road. It was hilarious they drive so close to people and other cars here.

When we got to the tailors it was closed again. Uma asked us if we would like to go to Themel which was our original plan for the evening. We told her that we would like that and she told us to get out of the taxi and get another one because she was going to go home. It was really funny. She dropped us off on a corner and said good-bye. When we were standing on the corner deciding what we wanted to do. She poked her head out the window and told us that we could also walk and to just go straight ahead it is not far maybe 20 25 minutes. (Everything here is “not far maybe 20, 25 minutes.”) It took us about an hour to walk there. We have come to expect it to take us a lot longer than we are told to get places. We walked through what was like a street bazaar with people all over the sidewalks selling tons of different things. One of the people was selling what looked like used underwear. One pile for men and one for women.
Once we finally got to Themel we just walked around. Themel is one of the more touristy areas . We went into a bookstore and looked around and picked up some more postcards. All over the streets there are people walking around trying to get you to buy bracelets and singing bowls and all kinds of things that I did not recognize. They will follow you around trying to convince you to buy things from them. We found an Italian restaurant on a roof over looking the street and ate some amazing food. I had goat cheese raviolis in a garlic white wine sauce and josh had gonococci that he said was the best he had ever eaten. It was all very inexpensive, we paid less than $4 for our meals.

Because it was dark when we finished eating and a long walk back we found a taxi to take us back home. It was the CRAZIEST taxi ride ever. Most of the taxi rides here are an adventure but this one was nuts. Our driver would go really fast and then slam on his brakes inches from hitting people, cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws. He honked almost the entire time we were in the car. He was swerving around people on the narrow streets into the other lanes to get around cars. (Keep in mind that there are brick walls on both sides most of the time lots of corners and winding streets and no street lights). We were sliding all around and jerking back and forth in our streets. And there are no seatbelts in cars here, I don’t know why. I look every time we get in one. We decided that we were not likely going any faster than 20 or 30 miles per hour at the most but it seemed pretty fast when it is dark and crazy like that. We decided that it was like a ride at an amusement park. We were laughing the whole ride home and we were making the taxi driver laugh at us too.

You...Baby...Come?

We just got in from school and we went to say hello to the children. The first thing Sangmu did when she saw me was poke my belly and ask “you…baby…come?” That is the second time I have been asked since we have been here, last time was the day that the baby birds were born. The same question was asked then they made a baby coming out motion and a whoosh noise. It was really funny. I guess that I am not using my best posture oh well.

Today I taught my first English class at the school. We were learning about where things are in a room, for example front, back, middle, in-between, to the right of, to the left of, outside, inside. I also taught the lesson on climate. It was about the monsoon weather in Nepal and how it makes Nepal a good climate for growing food. It difficult to teach when I don’t understand what they are yelling at me. The class was insane. I had to try and describe what a walnut, millet, barley, and tobacco was. The Headmistress of the school sat in for the class and wanted me to draw examples of them. Overall she said that I did a fantastic job teaching and see liked the lesson a lot. I was kind of hoping that she would think that I did a bad job so that we would not have to teach any more.

There is a separate volunteer group at the school that is a Jewish program and they work with the students teaching dancing, drama, singing, and are doing projects to better the school grounds. We are trying to start working with them so that we do not have to teach any more English. We are ending up just doing the teachers jobs for them and they do so much better because they understand everything that the students are saying. They do a fabulous job most of the time. Some of the sentences that they and the book come up with are hilarious. In class today for homework they had to answer the question “The boy had the cobbler …… his hair (cut, to cut, cutting). She is very cruel she….her children to polish them (made, make, to make). We sit in class some of the time and just try to resist the urge to laugh at the teacher and the book.

We are doing really well here and adapting to everything. Today as we were walking home from school which takes about 25 minutes, about how we are not afraid of the busses taxis, and motorcycles that are coming full speed right at us. We just kind of step out of the way and expect them to swerve away from us. It does not faze me at all anymore. We walk to school in the morning go home for lunch and back to school after lunch and occasionally we will walk somewhere in the evening so we are doing tons of walking and getting used to the traffic. The traffic as well as the dogs that are sleeping anywhere they want to, the trash on the streets, fruit people everywhere, meat stands with whole chickens, bowls of chicken feet, and goat heads. We still have not figured out what the goat heads are for they kind of look like shrunken heads if you know please tell me.

I did my laundry for the first time here 2 days ago. It really makes me appreciate my washer and drier ,and now that I am wearing my clothes, my fabric softener. I did it with a bar of soap and lots of water and then hung them on the roof to dry. I did my laundry in the afternoon after class so the sun was starting to set by the time I had finished so in the morning when I went to go and get my towel it was still sopping wet. I had to dry off after the shower with wash clothes.
Anyway all is going great. Can’t wait to share more experiences. Let me know if you have any questions..Miss you all

Namaste

Amanda

Kathmandu

When I was planning for this trip to Nepal tried so hard not to have any expectations for what I would experience here so that I would not be disappointed or freaked out. Being here I have realized that I did have many expectations and none of them have been even remotely correct. I was expecting a peaceful country with some people moseying along. Lots of Yoga and Meditation. A clean country with poor but clean looking people. SOOO WRONG. This is the loudest place that I have ever been. Everywhere you go there are tons of cars and motorcycles. The roads here are super narrow so people and cars have to share the space. There are so many traffic jams here with cars and motorcycles going both directions in the wrong lanes. To let people walking know they are coming they honks so there is so much honking and some of them are ear-splitting loud. Yesterday on our way to the monkey temple in a taxi we ended up on a road that was just wide enough for our very tiny taxi to drive on and parts of the way he had to fold his mirrors in so that they would not hit the walls on the side and we had to have Rabindra (our language tutor) guide us through the road. It was hilarious. So far we have not seen any accidents or major problems caused by the traffic so it is just an adventure to be driving in the car. Josh found out that to drive here we would not need to have anything except for our drivers licenses from home. The idea of driving here seems so crazy to me. There is litter everywhere on the streets and some terrible smells come from it. There are so many people everywhere you go anytime of the day. But mostly when school starts and ends. There are meat markets along the road that we have to walk on to get anywhere. On the tables there will be whole chickens or buckets full of chicken heads and feet. There are some tables with whole goat heads (we still have not figured out what they do with them but they are disgusting to look at). The temples here are amazing though and they are kept fairly clean considering that there are so many people there all the time and there are street dogs and tons of monkeys there all the time that are allowed to do whatever they want to and nobody ever stops them. Today we saw one of the protests walking down Kalimati when we were coming out of the school for our lunch break. There were so many people and they were carrying flags. Some of them here chanting something about the government but that is all I got from it. Uma our host here in Nepal was telling us that the protests are not anything that we need to worry about because most of the people that are involved in the protest are from towns outside of Kathmandu. The people that are organizing the protest will find people that want to be paid to go to Kathmandu for a couple day and walk the protest for a couple hundred rupees. So the people involved generally do not care about the issue at all and are not violent they just wanted to get into the city to see family and make a little money in the mean time.

Nepal Day 7

Me and Josh have now been in Nepal for 1 week. Today is Sunday here in Nepal. We started our teaching assignment today. The children that live in the orphanage that we are staying at attend a private school so they are gone all day there. Because of this we have an assignment to teach at a public school where the teachers are not as good because they are not paid well enough. Today we just observed some 7, 8, 9, and 10 class English lessons. Tomorrow I will be teaching class 7 and Josh will be teaching class 10. It is very fun to be able to work with this age group at the school after working with the Jr. High students from Hillcrest Jr High at the library every afternoon. It is fun to see how similar they act here to the students in Utah. The children that we are working with, in the orphanage range from 5 to 10 they are so cute. Everyday they come home from school at around 3:30 they change into their after school clothes and wash up outside. One of the girls Sarmilla always takes the longest to do anything she dawdles and is in her own world the entire time. Pangum loves to clean up after school she takes forever and will slick back her hair several times and make sure that it looks perfect and and puts clips in it. Nitisha who is 5 and the youngest loves to laugh she is so super giggley and is always so happy to be around. She is constantly singing and dancing around and talks about a mile a minute. Sujan was sick the first couple of days that we have been here so he was home with us. The first day I asked him if he wanted me to read him a book. When I started reading it to him he interrupted me and read the whole book to me. He is so sweet and always hollars SEESTER!!! To me to come and help him with is school work or to read books to the other children or finds stickers to share with the others. Rajesh is the oldest and always looks out for the other children. He is a great older brother to them. He loves to play basketball and we will dribble the ball and steal it from each other in the drive way. I think that he could play all afternoon. It is hard to do that here with 5 other children demanding attention all the time. He is pretty good at sharing the time though. We did get a chance to sit and play Uno together last night and talk just the 2 of us I think that he really enjoys time like that. Sangum is the shyest child here I have not spent a lot of time getting to know her yet but she is super sweet and looks out for her sisters she is the oldest of the girls. The more time that I spend with the children the less I feel sick for home. They are really making this experience fantastic.

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

Nepal

I will get stuff on here soon I tried tonight but the word processor on here is not working for some reason. I am doing great though. I have pictures on Facebook check them out. Miss you all

Amanda

Hong Kong May 2009

Our flight here was very smooth and we were able to sleep. On the flight from LA to Hong Kong they served us two strange kind of asian kind of not meals. We also had access the the movie bank and could watch as many movies on demand for free as we like. I ended up watching Benjamin Button, Yes Man, and 4 Christmases. It was fun. Right now we are at the airport waiting for our flight to Nepal to start boarding. Josh is sleeping I am working on staying awake till we get to Nepal and I think that I will have avoided jet lag for the most part. We shall see!!

We made it safe to Hong Kong and spend the whole day in the city today. Our first stop was to a giant Buddha in the foresty area above Hong Kong. We took a tram ride to it that took about 30 minutes it was so beautiful and lush and the whole way up you could see different shrines on the mountains that are really difficult to get to. We spend a while walking through the small museum in the bottom 1/3 of the statue reading about the enlightenment of Buddah. On the other 2 parts are more museaums and a restaurant. After we finished at the statue we took the tram to the old part of main Hong Kong. The city here is amazing and so different depending on what part of the island that you are on. In the old part it is tall skyscrapers that are older and poorer looking. We had to take a ferry across the water to get to the newer part of Hong Kong were the richer area is. The difference between the 2 areas was amazing. On the newer side of Hong Kong we found the LDS church visitor center and we are pretty sure that the temple is close by. We spent a large part of the day traveling around on the public transportation here. To use the public transportation you have to get an octopus card and put money on it. Then you just scan it on scanners everytime you board and exit busses, trams, and ferrys. The cards can also be used in local stores like 7-11 which are everywhere that you turn. I think that I spent more time on public transportation that I have my entire life (minus traveling to school on trax).

(Sorry the pictures are in a weird place I will figure this out in the next couple of days I am running out of time and energy to figure it out right now.)

Thank you everyone for your love and support. Happy Mothers Day!!

Amanda

24 hours to go!!!

There are only 24 hours until i will be boarding the plane that will take me on this crazy adventure. Today has been full of packing and preparing but I think that i have almost everything ready to go just a few things to pick up tomorrow and then i am out of luck. The kittens have been watching me cautiously all day trying to figure out what is going on. Hopefully they will be good while i am gone and not cause any problems for toni and spencer. Anyway off to see a few friends before the craziness beings. Check back I am hoping to blog something while we are in Hong Kong. That will be sometime Saturday evening if it works out how I want to. If not somthing within the week for sure. Wish Me Luck!!!

Traveling Differenty

I found this excerpt by Paulo Coelho and I love it....it is from his blog www.paulocoelhoblog.com written February 7th 2008. I hope to remember these things as I am traveling in Nepal and learn as much as I can from the native people there.



By Paulo Coelho

I realised very early on that, for me, travelling was the best way of learning. I still have a pilgrim soul, and I thought that I would use this column to pass on some of the lessons I have learned, in the hope that they might prove useful to other pilgrims like me.

1. Avoid museums. This might seem to be absurd advice, but let’s just think about it a little: if you are in a foreign city, isn’t it far more interesting to go in search of the present than of the past? It’s just that people feel obliged to go to museums because they learned as children that travelling was about seeking out that kind of culture. Obviously museums are important, but they require time and objectivity - you need to know what you want to see there, otherwise you will leave with a sense of having seen a few really fundamental things, except that you can’t remember what they were.

2. Hang out in bars. Bars are the places where life in the city reveals itself, not in museums. By bars I don’t mean nightclubs, but the places where ordinary people go, have a drink, ponder the weather, and are always ready for a chat. Buy a newspaper and enjoy the ebb and flow of people. If someone strikes up a conversation, however silly, join in: you cannot judge the beauty of a particular path just by looking at the gate.

3. Be open. The best tour guide is someone who lives in the place, knows everything about it, is proud of his or her city, but does not work for any agency. Go out into the street, choose the person you want to talk to, and ask them something (Where is the cathedral? Where is the post office?). If nothing comes of it, try someone else - I guarantee that at the end of the day you will have found yourself an excellent companion.

4. Try to travel alone or - if you are married - with your spouse. It will be harder work, no one will be there taking care of you, but only in this way can you truly leave your own country behind. Traveling with a group is a way of being in a foreign country while speaking your mother tongue, doing whatever the leader of the flock tells you to do, and taking more interest in group gossip than in the place you are visiting.

5. Don’t compare. Don’t compare anything - prices, standards of hygiene, quality of life, means of transport, nothing! You are not traveling in order to prove that you have a better life than other people - your aim is to find out how other people live, what they can teach you, how they deal with reality and with the extraordinary.

6. Understand that everyone understands you. Even if you don’t speak the language, don’t be afraid: I’ve been in lots of places where I could not communicate with words at all, and I always found support, guidance, useful advice, and even girlfriends. Some people think that if they travel alone, they will set off down the street and be lost for ever. Just make sure you have the hotel card in your pocket and - if the worst comes to the worst - flag down a taxi and show the card to the driver.

7. Don’t buy too much. Spend your money on things you won’t need to carry: tickets to a good play, restaurants, trips. Nowadays, with the global economy and the Internet, you can buy anything you want without having to pay excess baggage.

8. Don’t try to see the world in a month. It is far better to stay in a city for four or five days than to visit five cities in a week. A city is like a capricious woman: she takes time to be seduced and to reveal herself completely.

9. A journey is an adventure. Henry Miller used to say that it is far more important to discover a church that no one else has ever heard of than to go to Rome and feel obliged to visit the Sistine Chapel with two hundred thousand other tourists bellowing in your ear. By all means go to the Sistine Chapel, but wander the streets too, explore alleyways, experience the freedom of looking for something - quite what you don’t know - but which, if you find it, will - you can be sure - change your life.

So much to Do!!!

I am realizing in the last couple of days just how much there is to get done before i leave for Nepal. Some of the major things are surgery and finish school. I have class up until May 6th I think that I will be going crazy up to that point. I just need to remember to do thinks as i think of them. Rather than just mentally make a note that it needs to be done soon. HAHA!! that never works. only49 more days.

Nepal 2009

I AM GOING TO NEPAL!!!

I will be in Nepal from May 8th to July 20th (10 weeks). While I am there I will be working in an orphanage located in Kathmandu. This is the city where trekkers of Mount Everest meet up and get their supplies and head off. Because of this there should be a wide variety of people there to meet. This will also be good because there are lots of English speakers here. I am going to be traveling with my friend Josh. He has done a lot of traveling and will be great to be with as I am new to traveling. I will be updating all things Nepal here as often as I can. As I find out more about the orphanage before I go I will also post that.

2 Kittens in a Christmas Tree

I had the lovely surprise last night to awake to find my kittens climbing in my Christmas tree. I knew that they had been up to something previously, because, there are always ornaments on the ground in the morning when i wake up ( Thank Goodness for Plastic Ornaments). But I had just thought that they were shaking the tree from the bottom. Nope They were full on climbing in the branches of my once presentable Christmas tree that i was quite fond of. Oh well at least someone is having a fun time playing with it.