The Journey

S'up everyone? I've arrived safely in Kathmandu, after 3 long and arduous flights through various parts of the globe. Some comments:

Frankfurt:

You could see some of Germany's many windmills from the plane, which was pretty. Way to be environmentally conscious, Germans! Also, employees ride around the terminal in bicycles, and haagen daas serves stuff like coffee and pastries there. There was a suck factor though with them not wanting to tell me my gate until 10 minutes before boarding time, and some really ostentatious rich Germans who I think were laughing at a group of women in burkas.

Qatar:

Same as last time, but I did manage to sample some exotic local food:

It's the Emily special!

Of the three airports, I'd say Pearson was actually the nicest, which is sorta depressing in a way.

Anyways, more about actual Nepal laters!

Hello again!

So, if you're reading this, you're probably aware that I will soon be returning to lovely Kathmandu. As such, I will be returning to blogging as well. I've decided not to blog specifically about my internship, as I'm a bit worried about confidentiality rules, but please do not take this to mean that I'm not working hard. I suspect, in fact, that I will be working so hard as to make this blog less frequent and less interesting than last time, but que garne?

Anyways, for my return to blogging I thought I'd post some lists: top 5 things I miss about Nepal, and for my proud Canadians, top 5 things I missed about Canada when I was in Nepal.

Top 5 things I miss about Nepal (besides people):
1. The liveliness -- everyone seems to live life much more in the open than in Canada, hanging out on streetcorners and lounging on steps everywhere. Most people who are outside in Canada seem to be on their way somewhere.
2. The amazing food, and tea.
3. Feeling a little bit like a rock star walking down the street, with everyone wanting to smile and wave at the foreigner, and little kids calling out "ha-lo!" and giggling.
4. Motorbiking.
5. Pure novelty -- all the landmarks, music, holidays, etc. are new and exciting, and how often do we experience things for the first time past the age of 21 or so?

Top 5 things I miss about Canada when in Nepal (besides people and kitties):
1. Diet coke! Oh, sweet nectar of the gods, why are you not available there?!
2. Consistent electricity, hot water, and heat.
3. There is something to be said for familiarity and routine, and being able to do things such as grocery shopping easily.
4. Also, the flip side of the above rock star comment -- anonymity is also nice sometimes.
5. TV -- sad, but true, sometimes there is downtime that needs to be filled. Ditto, high-speed internet.

Merry Ol' England

So I left Nepal with many tears at the end of March. I had the bestest time ever there, as you all may have been able to tell by the blog. But all was not lost my friends: I still had a week in London with my BFF! April and I did the whirlwind tour, and managed to do London fairly cheaply. We stayed in a single room together (bow chicka wow wow) and managed to cook in our little kitchenette for many of our meals. We also chose not to pay for tours to most landmarks, choosing instead to walk around the outside and take photos for free instead. We also walked for hours upon hours each day and became quite adept at the Tube, if I do say so myself.

Sunday
For our first real day in London (the traveling pretty much wore us out the day before) I really wanted to go check out Picadilly Circus. Which turned out to be kind of lame. Pretty much one building with electric billboards and a statue. But we also went to Trafalger square, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, and poked around the National Gallery. We also managed to have ice cream with a flake (did I mention we had a whole list of foods to eat in England?) and lunch at Prêt à Manger. These are little sandwich-type restaurants that you can find every 15 feet in London. They are worse than Tim Horton's in Canada! Which, by the way, we also saw one of in London. Also that night we walked around Soho and Chinatown. Soho was also not quite as exciting as I was hoping, but it was a Sunday night, after all.

Buckingham Palace. You cannot actually get close enough
to tease the guards. Lame.

Monday
Monday was crazy. We walked for a very long time. We started out with the Tower of London, which was pretty cool. Then I wanted to walk across London Bridge, which turned out to be so boring! Tower Bridge was much cooler. I had a meat pie (also on the food list. Is it wrong that Sweeney Todd made me want one?) at a pub, and then we went to see Shakespeare's Globe and walk on the bank of the Thames a little bit. We actually payed to get into the Clink Prison Museum, which was both cheap and hilarious. We toured the awesome Tate Modern for a while, then walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral by way of the Millenium Bridge. We looked for cold Diet Cokes for a good half hour, and finally way over payed for them at a Yo! Sushi. Unfortunately we were unable to go inside St. Paul's, as the last service of the day was over by that point, so big boo. So we got some groceries at Mark's and Spencer's Simply Food, and went home for dinner, before doing some walking in Notting Hill and around Portobello Road that night.

Me on the bank of the Thames, where I collected some
lovely sea glass

Me, on the steps of St. Paul's, enjoying a Diet Coke.
Even though we didn't get to go in, that was still
pretty cool.

Tuesday
We started off by going to Big Ben/Parliament, which was pretty impressive. We also went to Westminster Abbey, which was of course beautiful. Once again, we didn't pay to go in, but we did go to the shop. I think the fact that they sell Westminster Abbey shot glasses is hilarious, btw. Then we got lost a bit but finally found 10 Downing St. It's essentially a guarded fence, and in the distance you can see a blue door with a tiny 10 on it. Then, we actually paid to do something! The London Eye, which was totally worth it. The views were amazing! Afterwards we went "shopping" on Oxford St. I use quotations because we didn't really intend to buy anything. Still, going in TopShop and other stores just to browse around was cool.

We got a bit lost looking for the Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Soho, which Kelsa told us we had to try. While looking at our map, a man yelled at us for sitting on the steps of his business. But he was really unreasonably angry, and continued ranting at us as we were halfway down the block! We were exhausted after all this, and our feet were killing us. Also, I was freeeeeezing! I forgot that I'd be out until after dark when I decided I didn't really need a coat that day. But we soldiered on and went on a guided "London Walk" about Jack the Ripper. Which was really interesting and totally creepy. Seriously, the guide was like, "and they found her mangled body 5 feet from where you are standing!".

April, looking teeny in front of the very impressive
Westminster Abbey

A view of the city from the London Eye

Wednesday
We did things a little differently on Wednesday. We got up early and took a train to Brighton to visit our old friend Carol! It was quite nice there, and I was excited to see the water (y'all are aware I'm a fan of water, right?). We walked around the pier and ate fish 'n' chips on the beach of the English Channel. Then we took a super cheap train to Lewes, this little adorable medieval town nearby. Lewes was fun because we got to walk around this old castle (though the towers' spiral staircases were a bit scary) and also we finally found Party Rings! These were cookies (on the list) which we had been looking for for days, and they were awesome! Way better than Jaffa Cakes or Penguins.

April, Carol and I playing dressup with the clothes provided for
that purpose at Lewes Castle. I am a princess, Carol is a knight,
and April is some bizarre cross of a princess and a page...

Thursday
We spent the morning at the British Museum, which was amazing, and way too big to see in the time we had. They had the Terracotta Wariors from China, but the exhibit was sold out, to April's great dismay. But we did get to handle actual artifacts, although the lady who told us about them was a bit snooty. Sorry if I didn't know that only Islam used 8-pointed stars with lustreware surfaces, lady! Then we left the Museum to have lunch (Prêt à Manger again) and take another London Walk, this time on the Blitz, which I was very excited about. However, we went to the wrong Tube station, so we missed it. But that did give us more time to spend at Harrods! It was waaaay too much fun to poke around there and pretend we were rich. I went into the shoe boudoir (!) and held some very expensive heels (some awesome pink sequined Christian Louboutin heels that cost 650£) but did not try any on, despite wanting to. I am, as we all know, very clumsy and would probably have broken the heel of some Jimmy Choos! We also did some shopping in the amazing food halls. The variety of cheeses alone was worth the trip. Then, for our last hurrah, we chilled out and walked around Kensington Gardens for a while.

Me, in the British Museum, admiring the God Shiva. He's
manifested as the Lord of the Dance, and is crushing the
dwarf of ignorance under foot. Take that, ignorance!

So now I'm home, and despite there still being snow on the ground in Ottawa, am happy to see everyone! Colleen has insisted that I inform everyone that I'm alive and well after all my adventures, so, um, hi guys, I'm fine. This will probably be my last post for awhile, as my travels have come to an end for now. But hopefully not for too long! I've developed a bit of a taste for this travel thing, and I'll keep this up when I next manage to jet away. Until then, thanks for reading!

Buddha fest, Amazing Race, and Holi War

Buddha Fest
Yet another festival took place recently. No, it's not actually called Buddha fest, but I forget the actual name. We all (including the 3 new volunteers: Amy, Lauren and Paige) went with Rajiv to Patan to watch this festival, wherein people craft and decorate giant buddha puppets and then wear them around Durbar square. It's a competition between neighbourhoods to see who has the best Buddha. It was pretty crazy, but very beautiful.

There's a dude under there, struggling to keep upright under

all the weight.

Amazing Race: Kathmandu

This is an activity that normally closes orientation week for the new volunteers. Essentially it's a scavenger hunt around Kathmandu where you practice your Nepali and test your knowledge of the city and culture. However, the arrival of the 3 aforementioned volunteers meant that there were enough volunteers to do it for the first time since we got here. And it was hard! Even for me, a seasoned veteran. Fun though, except for the part where I was force-fed daal bhaat and almost choked.

That's me, wearing a doko basket as part of the race. You

wouldn't believe how blatantly people laughed at the silly foreigner.

Holi

I've been looking forward to Holi (the colour festival) since I first started researching Nepal for this placement. Essentially it's a festival, where people douse each other in coloured water and powder. What no one told me was that for a whole week leading up to Holi, little boys throw water balloons at girls and women. And sure, it's funny at first. And then you're on your way to your volunteer placement first thing in the morning and a balloon smacks you in the side of the face rather hard. Or hits you in the boob as you're headed out to dinner. I swear I developed mini Gulf War syndrome, scanning the balconies wherever I went and ducking when birds flew overhead!

But the festival day itself was super fun. We were in a rooftop water balloon war with at least 5 other buildings, and got slammed by people on the street with coloured paste. It was the craziest thing I've seen since I've been here, and that's saying something.

Me, battling the neighbours

Then, Neer (of course) had the hookup for this great outdoor Holi party in town, where we danced and people sprayed water and colour over everyone and it was sweet glorious chaos!

Holi par-tay!


And by the end of the day, we all looked like this.
That's me with Ronnie and Amy, btw.

Canyoning, beer pong and naked babas

A few more happenings that have taken place recently:

Shiva Ratri
This is an annual festival to worship the god Shiva (the destroyer). Because he is the destroyer, this involves big fires. In order to get wood for these fires, children block the roads in the mornings and won't let people pass without giving them money for wood. No one warned me this holiday involved extortion! Anyways, we went to the Pashupatinath temple, where literally tens of thousands of Hindus and hundreds of Sadhus (sometimes naked) gathered to chant, hang out, and smoke massive amounts of ganja. It was pretty awesome to witness, though I almost got trampled by a bull, and Ronnie had to remove a potential thief's hand from his pocket.

One small section of the 'devotees' at Pashiputinath

Rajiv's birthday
To celebrate darling Rajiv's 28th we had our own little momo-mania in the house, where we made and ate about a million momos. Then we had an impromptu dance party. Then Ronnie introduced Nepal to the game of beer pong. And let me tell you: Nepal loved it. Until you've seen 5 drunk Nepali guys arguing in Nepalglish over the fairness of a particular toss, you cannot understand how hilarious it is. Anyways, super fun evening.

Badri, inexplicably blue-steeling for his shot (with Neer)

Last Resort

Last weekend Karen, Jesi, Ronnie and I headed up near the Tibet border to this resort called (cleverly) Last Resort. It's kind of an adventure resort. Getting there was a particular adventure. The roads, as always, were very twisty, and a Nepali guy on the bus got sick more times than I would have thought the human body was capable of. There's not always room to pull the bus over, so at one point he leaned right over Jesi to puke out the window. Once we did get there, Jesi and Ronnie bungeed into this huge canyon, which Karen and I flatly refused to do. Then Karen and Ronnie and I went canyoning down a series of waterfalls, totalling 210 vertical metres. The longest abseil was 45 metres! Karen and Ronnie, being rock climbers, took to it immediately. I, however, slipped and slid and banged my way down all the falls, at one point falling completely upside down, but was always caught by my belayors. It was really fun though. The next day Karen, Ronnie and Jesi went for a 4 hour mountain bike to the Tibet border. I opted out (again, biking uphill for 3 hours is not my idea of a good time) and instead made friends with a British couple and a college group from Montana.

That's me, in one of the brief moments I wasn't slipping

and smashing into the cliff face

Chitwan!

Hello sports fans, I'm back. Sorry for my long absence, but our internet was being bitchy. Anyways, the weekend before last we did the funnest (and cheapest) thing we've done so far: visited Chitwan national park. If anyone out there is planning on travelling to Nepal, I highly recommend it. For a 3 day, 2 night stay in a nice place, all food, and all activities, it was 85 bucks each. Yepper, I love this country.

So Chitwan is a national jungle preserve, and houses pretty much all of Nepal's remaining wildlife, including endangered tigers (but those are pretty rare, and I was actually glad we didn't see any, cause: scary!). A rundown of our activities:

Day 1: Getting there
So everyone's aware of how Nepal's all mountainous, right? Good. This makes for some very twisty roads, and quite a few prayers to the god that is Gravol. Poor Rajiv hurled a couple of times, and Brian wasn't doing so good either. We made it in one piece, and in time to see a hilarious Nepali commercial shoot for cement that was filming at our hotel. We also got to see a Tharu (local ethnic group) cultural program, which involved yet another dude dressed as a peacock dancing around.

Day 2: Crazy amounts of activities
So our day started at an ungodly hour (all the better to catch wildlife) with a jungle safari on elephant back. This was super fun, until our elephants started throwing a tantrum, growling (I swear, elephants growl), pushing trees over, and running. If you've never been on a running elephant, let me tell you: it's both painful and scary.

Our elephant, pre-tantrum

But it did let us get up close to some wildlife, like these

white rhinos.

Then we got to go down to the river to participate in elephant baths! This is seriously one of the funnest things I have ever done you guys! You climb up onto the elephant (quite the feat), and then he sprays you with water from his trunk. Then he shakes you off. Then you climb back up. Repeat 5 or 6 times. Then, because Karen, Ronnie and I were pretty excited at the first water we'd seen in Nepal, we went swimming for awhile. And we tried to teach Rajiv and DC how to swim. Let me tell you, the sight of two men in their late 20's frantically dog-paddling like little kids in about 2 feet of water? Priceless. Then Karen got sick all night because it's hard not to swallow some river water when you're being hurled from an elephant's back, but even she agrees it was worth it.

Ronnie and I getting bathed, elephant-style.

That's some serious trunk-strength, right there.

Then (yes, this is still day 2), after lunch, we took a canoe-ride down the crocodile infested rivers while Brian screamed like a girl every time the canoe rocked 3 inches.

Front to back: Brian (freaking out), Karen, DC, random

Japanese girl, Ronnie, Me, Rajiv and Ram (our guide)

Marsh mugger: they actually do kill quite a few locals, so

maybe Brian was justified.

We followed up the canoe ride with a very hot and tiring jungle walk, where we saw a few giant deer and got bit by many mosquitoes. The walk ended at the elephant breeding center, which was awesome.

1 day old elephant baby omg!!!

After that day we were exhausted, as you can imagine. We went down to a river-side café and chilled out, and then fell into bed.

Day 3: Chilling and driving

The last day was spent wandering around the town and taking photographs. I managed to hold a puppy, a kitten, and a baby goat all in one morning. These incidents were in no way related, but it seems Chitwan is a baby animal paradise. Then we managed a puke-free ride back to Kathmandu. All in all, a freaking amazing time.

Banda, unclean souls, and near-death experiences

Banda, banda, banda
So 'banda' in Nepali means 'shut' or 'closed'. It's often used to describe when streets or stores are closed for various reasons. Well, we've been in the midst of a perfect storm of banda lately. For one thing, the maoist protests have amped up as the April elections draw nearer. On the way out of town Wednesday to visit PA's other children's residence in a nearby village I saw quite a few busses filled with 15 year old boys with lots of red flags, chanting. Everything was blocked, but we finally made it back to Kathmandu pretty late in the day. Another reason for all the banda is the gas shortage. I'm not entirely sure on the cause of, or possible solutions to, this problem. Basically, no one has any gasoline, so no one can go anywhere. This has led to several cars and trucks being abandonned on highways, blocking the routes, and also protests blocking any cars that do have gas. This led to Karen, Ronnie and Rajiv taking a 5 hour trip to Bhaktapur (nearby village) last Monday, which usually takes 45 minutes. Finally, Bhaktapur itself was totally banda Thursday and Friday because there were riots in response to a murder within the town, so Ronnie was trapped there and got tear gassed when he accidentally wandered into the middle of the action. Everyone (mom) calm down, none of this is really dangerous, it's just life here in Nepal.

Bhaktapur police station (on fire)

PA Nepal

Everything's still going well. I managed to do an on-the-fly diagnosis of ringworm for one of the kids last week. I noticed a sore on a girl's neck, e-mailed a photo to Karen at the hospital in Bhaktapur, she passed it on to a doctor, who e-mailed me back a perscription. Bizarre, but efficient.

Me with some of my favourite kids: (left to right) Samir,

Jennie, Robin (being squished by Jennie), Apa, and Sushma.

Sanku

Remember I said we went out to a village? Well, it's another home PA runs for older kids, and they learn village life skills, like farming, handicrafts, brick-making, basically practical stuff they'll need to live in this country. It's really beautiful out there, too, with a waterfall right behind the house where the kids bathe. It was a nice visit, where I got to do a little bit of help with the fields and Rajiv and I took a couple of kids up to this temple nearby. This temple has this bizarre feature: a tiny window. It's said that if you can squeeze through this window, your soul is pure. So I guess skinny people are really pure? One of the boys we were with managed to get through, and then Rajiv tried. Now, Rajiv's pretty skinny, but that window is tiny. He tried bravely for a good 10 minutes as I took pictures and laughed really meanly at him, but no dice. Then the kids wanted me to try, and I had to explain that my soul (or ass) was not nearly teeny enough for me to even try.

Rajiv: not so much with the pure soul

Oh, and check out what grows wild on the hills of Sanku!

Bowling

On Valentine's Day, we went bowling. And Dad, get this: I won the first game! With a 103. Yep. That's pretty much the whole story. Oh, except that Jesi, the country coordinator, finally returned from her massive Christmas holiday, so we have someone else in the house now. She seems pretty cool so far.

Back: DC, Karen. Front: Rajiv, me, Jesi and Brian.

Mountan Biking (subtitle: Neer's a liarface)

Everyone wanted to go mountain biking on Saturday. I told them they should go, but biking up a hill's not really my idea of a good time, thanks anyways. But then Neer tells me that a truck will take us up to the top of this big hill and we'll bike down. That appealed to me much more. So I said cool. We start biking uphill. Alright, I think, the truck stop is somewhere up this hill close by. After the next curve, or the next, or the next. After an hour I made Neer pull over, so that I could (breathlessly, cause: hard!) yell at him "Neer, I show you nothing but love, why the lies?!" And he said the truck has no feul (banda) and it's "just one more hour uphill". So I somehow managed, and the coming back downhill was pretty awesome. Although we were going so fast down such rough terrain that I remember thinking to myself, wow, if I fall right now I'll seriously injure myself. Huh.

DC (front) and me (behind) risking our lives. And that was
before we went off-road.


However, the ride did afford views such as this one. God, this
country's beautiful.