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.