Swayambhu and Other Adventures Around Kathmandu

I might have gone a little overboard yesterday. I got four pairs of pants, one t-shirt, one headband, postcards, stamps, flip flops, and a few groceries. Luckily my huge shopping spree cost me less than 25 USD. And now I have pants. I also got to go with some of the girls to buy new clothes for Dashain, a huge christmas-like festival coming up.

Also yesterday, since it was sanibar(Saturday) and all the kids have the day off from school, the children from both orphanages and all the volunteers went up to papa's house for tiffin (a light lunchtime meal) I remembered my camera this time and took pictures of Sushmita (on the right), one of my favorite girls from the home.

Today Sushmita, who works at the volunteer house to help orient volunteers, not to be confused with Sushmita in the picture, took Felicia, a new volunteer from Australia, and me to see Swayambhu- a beautiful Buddhist temple. I've never seen so many prayer flags in my life. We came to three huge gold statues-one of Buddha, one of the person who founded the Kathmandu valley, and one of the person who brought Buddhism to Nepal. Sushmita told me Kathmandu valley actually used to be a lake, the person who founded it had to drain the whole lake before they could settle it. We then climbed a lot of stairs up to a little monastery where there was a view of the whole Kathmandu valley. I did not realize quite how big Kathmandu is, but it is huge.

Perhaps the most important event today was choosing my first placement. Felicia and I decided to both go to an orphanage in the mountainous region of Dolakha for three weeks. No one from Volunteer Nepal has been before, but we're happy to be the first. We had to find an orphanage because we'll be there for Dashain and all the schools will be closed for at least two weeks. We also wanted to be in the mountains. I love mountains. We'll leave the day after tomorrow hopefully. 

Diving In

Traveling for periods of 30 hours straight can be extremely stressful. Like when the kid sitting next to you on an 8 hour flight pees his pants half way 

through. Or when you realize your mother was right, you really 

should have brought sweatpants in your carry-on because even when staying past security in an Indian airport, wearing shorts gathers looks equivalent to walking around topless in the West. Or when the people in the Indian airport assure you that you should be waiting in a sitting room, which they won't let you leave, to receive your boarding pass even when you keep bugging them because your flight is leaving in an hour...45 minutes...30 minutes...it's boarding...15 minutes and finally someone runs into the waiting room with your boarding pass and scolds you for not coming to get your boarding pass. For instance.

But all this makes it that much nicer when you're riding through a city that, albeit dusty and crowded, is so colorful and lively and fresh and interesting and full of promise that you know it was all more than worth it.

I almost went to a museum today with Sam, Sam, and Doug (three other volunteers) and Sushima, who works at the volunteer house. After piling into a bus meant for 10 people with 25 other people we weaved our way through the streets of Kathmandu. Driving in Kathmandu is an experience. People generally drive on the left side of the road, generally being the key word. There are little to no traffic signs, stoplights or lines in the road- or really any guidelines besides constant honking of people passing and cutting. With the amount of near misses, there should be a decent amount of crashes but the cars always just barley miss each other and motorbikes and pedestrians. I sort of felt like I was on the knight bus from Harry Potter the way we squeezed through some spaces. Anyway, we got there to find a Maoist protest just starting. While it was a fairly peaceful protest, we had to skip the museum and stay on the bus as it looped back home to make sure we didn't get stuck in blocked streets and huge crowds carrying red flags. It was sweaty and bumpy and uncomfortable and seemly pointless but also exhilarating and a nice whirlwind first tour of the city.

By far the best part of the day came later when the other four volunteer girls and I  walked the girls who live in the orphan house up the road back home from school. They were so welcoming and excited. They wanted to hold our hands and braid our hair and take pictures with our cameras and get help on their homework and play basketball with us and they were so warm and adorable and well-intentioned but also a little mischievous. Hopefully I'll get to visit the other girl's house down the road tomorrow. I'm also going shopping for pants tomorrow, so I can stop wearing the one long skirt I brought. Pants. That's key.