Settling into Kathmandu

Today I'm going to put up a bunch of pictures to give you an idea of what my first few days in Nepal have been like.  I feel much better and less overwhelmed than I did when I first arrived, thanks to all of the wonderful people I have met.

This is my room at the RCDP volunteering hostel.  It is very cold here at night, so I am very thankful that I brought a -15 degree sleeping bag.








 
This is Maria and Santiago getting ready for breakfast.  We will be eating here every day until we finish orientation and leave for our volunteer projects.  We also spend a lot of time up here sitting in the sun and warming up, because it is much much colder inside than it is outside. 

This is the view of our neighborhood from our kitchen.  We live in an area called Kalanki, which is southwest from the main part of Kathmandu.  The tourist part of town is called Thamel, and it takes about 30-45 minutes to get there by taxi or bus.  Krishna (I wrote his name as Christna in the last post) took me to the Thai embassy on his motorcycle today to get a visa, and we went through Thamel on the way home.  Thamel is very nice and orderly compared to where we live.  There are lots of pretty things and western-looking products that you can buy in Thamel, and it seems a bit cleaner with less traffic.  Hopefully I will go there on Saturday, and I will post pictures of it.  In Kalanki the main industry is auto shops, but there are also some temples and other shops (which are much cheaper than the ones in Thamel).  On the airplane, I met a guy named Jeremy who has spent a lot of time in Kathmandu over the past 3 years, but he only goes to Thamel while he is here.  I realize that I am having a much different experience of Kathmandu than he has had or that most tourists might have.  I sort of feel bad for him because there are some very special places outside of Thamel.

This is a lovely Buddha statue that sits above us as we eat our meals.  Most people in Nepal are Hindu or Buddhist.  Last night after dinner, Keshav (our Nepali teacher) spent a long time telling us stories about Hindu gods.  My favorite part was that the stories make (in Keshav's words) "big things seem small and small things seem big."  For example, the gods Ganesh and his brother (who I forget the name of) went out to "travel around the world."  While his brother went to many places far away, Ganesh just went in circles around his parents, because his parents are his whole world.  So such a little thing like love for your parents becomes a big and important concept, while things like the ability to fly or disappear or grow 8 arms are not a very big deal at all.

So, on Wednesday (I think?) we went on a walk with some kids from the orphanage up a really big hill and had a picnic.  The kids were excited about my camera, so they took a  lot of pictures with it.  This is a picture of the responsible young man who carried most of the food up the hill.  To the far right is Max, one of the French volunteers who works at this orphanage.

This is the woman who runs the orphanage.  She was very friendly and had a lovely smile.

This is Maria, a Mexican volunteer who arrived the same day as me.  She will be teaching English in a monastery north of Kathmandu for 3 months.  You can see on her forehead that she has a tikka, which is a red mark that Nepali people sometimes give you to bless you.  I think that it's a Hindu thing.

This man was my boyfriend for the day.  He was very welcoming when we got to the orphanage - he helped set up chairs and lead us all to sit down so that we were comfortable.  He then took my hand and we ran up the mountain together.  He was a speedy one, and we basically pushed everyone out of the way until we were in the lead.  He took about 5 million close-up pictures of his face so that I would never forget him.

We stopped at a Hindu temple dedicated to various gods.  I have a ridiculous number of pictures of this guy, and every single one is unique.  This is his "I'm-relaxing-at-a-temple" pose.  He also did spiderman, tree-hugger, cute little boy, extreme climber, and so much more.

This is Santiago getting really excited for our hike.  He arrived at the same time as me, and he will be volunteering teaching English at the monastery with his cousin, Maria.  I can't say enough how much his and Maria's positive attitudes and constant laughing is helping me relax and adjust to life in Nepal.

This is the youngest child of the bunch.  I was amazed at how she scrambled up the hill even though she is so tiny.  With all the other energetic kids, it was even hard for me to keep up!

There was Buddha statue and prayer flags near the top of the hill.  We stopped here to have our picnic. The little guy on the right was another one of my very good friends on this trip, even though he barely said a word.  We spent a lot of time quietly holding hands.  Aww.

There were lots of self-portraits taken with my camera.  This guy was an aspiring photographer and took lots of creative pictures, like putting a metal mesh in front of the camera or taking a close-up of his glove.  He was also very fast, so once he got ahold of the camera he would disappear and you had to wait patiently until he decided that he was done running with it.

There are two volunteers from Taiwan, Abby and Julia.  Unfortunately, no pictures of Julia were taken with my camera.  This is Abby, and she will be teaching English for 3 weeks at a school in Kathmandu.  Lying on her lap is the nicest little girl in the world.  She can't talk, but she has a lot of character and taught us her sign language.  At the end of the trip, she and I had a really fun time skipping/running down the hill together.  All of them had soooo much energy.

Speaking of energy... The kids climbed right up the trees!  This is a picture of at the bottom of the tree, but they would wrap their arms around it and basically walk up to the top.  I was very nervous that someone would fall off or they wouldn't be able to get down, but I apparently they've got it under control.

This is the start of our picnic.  The kids were really well behaved (until the sugar appeared...).  They also never took anything for themselves - they always waited for someone to give them food or drinks.  The woman getting food out of the backpack is Nawel, one of the French volunteers who works at this orphanage.

This is me and one of the staff from the hostel, Krishna.  Something I found interesting: Krishna recently had a baby boy who he gave a sacred name to.  Because his baby's name is sacred, he isn't allowed to call him that.  He and his wife are trying to think of a name that they can use in every day life.  The baby's already several months old, but it seems like it's not a big deal that he doesn't have a name yet.  In any case, Krishna's a very nice man and has been answering my endless questions about Nepal.  He's also been a huge help by driving me around on his motorcycle to anywhere I have to go.  I think he is also the only Nepali man with light green eyes.

This is Nicole cooking hot dogs on the fire for the picnic.  She has already been here for 3 weeks working in another orphanage.  I hope that someday I might know as much as her about Nepal and how to get around.  She's very good at the language already and has somehow figured out lots of important details about Kathmandu (like how to use the buses, which is not trivial!).