My name is Aashaa, and I live in the jungle.

It's not as bad as it sounds.

First thing: The five of us were given Nepali names by the guys at the hostel.  Santiago, Maria, and I are all starting a long period of travelling, and we decided that these would be our "travel names."  The name I was given is Aashaa, which means hope.

Next thing: Nepal has three main regions.  The north is the himalaya, which is obviously mountains.  The middle of the country is hills, and the south is jungle.  Chitwan is one of the jungle states, and this is where I will be volunteering.

I feel infinitely happier since I left Kathmandu.  You can't breathe in Kathmandu.  The air is black and the chaos suffocates you.  Now, I'm sitting in a hammock next to a grass-roofed house in the jungle.  There are birds chirping in the banana trees and kids wrestling with goats in the mustard fields.  I feel happy.

Getting from Kathmandu to Chitwan was an adventure all on its own.  If you go straight by bus, Chitwan is a 5-6 hour drive.  We started our trip to Chitwan in a "tourist bus," which is labeled with "TOURIST" in huge letters and is much nicer than the local buses.  People are not subtle in Nepal.  After a few hours, we got off the bus and did a 2 hour river rafting trip.  The river runs along the road, so Keshav took our bags and met us a little ways down the river.  After that, we got on a local bus for the rest of the way to Chitwan.  This picture is me and Abby on the bus.  Like, ON the bus.  There was no space inside, so we sat on the roof with our bags.  It was one of the coolest things I've ever done.  We spent two hours lying on top of the bus driving between hills next to a beautiful river.  Every time we passed through a town, all of the kids would start yelling and waving.  It was sort of like being in a fairytale.

This is a picture of the town we are currently staying in.  It's a tourist town called Sauraha on the edge of the Chitwan National Park.  It's a really nice town, and they have a ridiculous amount of wildlife.  The most abundant are elephants, goats, buffalo, ducks, camels, chickens, and crocodiles.  In the jungle, there are also rhinos, deer, peacocks, and lots of birds and bugs.  

We're staying at the Chitwan Park Cottage which is run by two brothers named Krishna and Santos.  Last night, we hung out with Santos.  It was by far the most awkward and confusing night of my life.  First, we went to a cafe by the river and drank tea while waiting to see some rhinos walk by.  As we sat there, it started getting extremely foggy.  Apparently, dense fog is the norm at night when you live in the jungle.  After our tea, Santos convinced us to come with him to his friend's house to watch him get a tattoo.  His tattoo was something like this: [picture of jesus's face] SAYS ! WHO R U ? [picture of girl's face]  ... I'm not too sure what that means.  In any case, when we arrived at his friends house, the whole family stood up with horrified looks on their faces.  I think they were really confused about why Santos had brought over a bunch of white people, but he didn't seem to notice that everyone was terrified of us.  There really wasn't much that we could do about it, so we hung around until his tattoo was done and tried not to look too scary.  It was a very awkward experience, and it made me realize the extreme cultural differences between us.

The next day we went sightseeing around Sauhara.  We went on a walk through the jungle, a canoe ride, an elephant ride, to the elephant breeding center, to a Tharu dance show, and to a really creepy museum.  This is a picture of one of the elephant fetuses at the museum.  I just wanted to post it to show that people here care about science in their own special way...

And now, just to end on a happy note: This is a peacock!  During the elephant ride through the jungle we saw lots of different birds and animals.  I thought this was the coolest.

Tomorrow, I'll finally be with my host family.  I'll be living in a town 15 minutes away from Narayangarh, which is a big town in Chitwan.  This means that I should be able to find internet quite often, so I'll be in touch.