First update from nepal

today's the 3rd day, am staying at sugandha's family's house (the coordinator of VSN), with his wife and his 2 daughters (susana and sophie), they're really nice people. the town we're in is called pepsicola town planning- simply because this is where the pepsi factory is, and the govt has decided to plan a town in this area. well...at the moment its far from reaching a town coz there's no tar roads leading in the area so we had to walk bout 20mins to the main road to this internet cafe. The houses around us are all half built and pple are just building their own houses, or farming etc. I think the house we’re staying in is considered one of the richer houses in the area coz at least we have flush toilets and even cable tv. But the sad thing is, there’s no hot water. And the water’s freaking cold….so bathing has sort of turned into a chore for us. We didn’t know there wasn’t hot water, so on the first day we arrived, Sunday night, we decided to have a shower after dinner….no joke…u start to regret having put so much soap on you. The quickest shower I’ve ever had. having a cold shower in hot weather is fine, but not when the weather's like almost 15 degrees or less at night and in the mornings. i've develoiped a routine of taking 2min showers at night and only washing my hair in the afternoon before languege classes, and will stand in the sun to dry my hair and thaw frm the freezing water. The weather here is rather cold, but in the afternoon under the sun, it gets rather warm. But at night, it starts to freeze again. Thankfully we got really thick blankets.

There’s also 2 other volunteers staying in this house. Sylvia –frm London, been here 2mths (teaching at a monastery) and then there’s marty – frm US, been here bout 2 wks (helping out in a community clinic). they’re really nice pple. Sylvia’s very funny, been talking to her a lot and she’s been telling us all her stories from traveling. there's allso brian (korean born US dude) who stays in sugandha's sister's house just 5mins walk frm our house. he came wif sugandha to pick us up at the airport when we arrived. very nice guy..does teaching at the monastery as well. we havent started any volunteer work yet bcoz we're having language classes for 2 hrs a day . its kinda hilarious coz both of us start to lose attention after the first hour and suddenly all the words dont make sense anymore. we're being taught by sophie and susana. and after the class, we do a bit of sightseeing.

Will only be starting volunteering work in bout 2 days time. on monday, after class, we went to new road, thamel and durbar square. new road's a shopping street where the locals do their shopping. thamel's the touristy area, with all the hippies and backpackers. this area would be sort of considered the main city area, but its really really really really dusty and dirty. there's no rubbish bins and u just chuck ur rubbish whenever u see a pile of rubbish on the road. we travelled back by bus which only costs 9ruppee. the bus ride was surprisingly quite tolerable. i think after a while, u sort of get used to the dust and dirt. the highlight of the day was when the bus was nearing pepsicola town, we realized a lot of the houses were in the dark, only lit by candles, so I asked sophie if these ppl were really so poor that they didn’t have electricity. Then she said that every Monday there’s a powercut for bout 2 hrs. so I thought we’re really lucky to be staying in their house. Only to realize when getting off the bus, that even their area also has a powercut. Darn…had to eat and pee in the dark. But it was all good…u don’t really need electricity here coz most activities don’t revolve around electricity. Everyone just sort of sits around to chitchat after dinner. And they go to bed at like 8 or 9pm. We’re also getting used to it coz we wake up at bout 6:30 or 7am just coz u start hearing pple waking up, doing things so early in the morning.

On Tuesday (yesterday), we had classes again, and suzan (sugandha’s nephew who works at VSN office as a language trainer), brought me, chase and another new volunteer (Anne from US) to Pasupatinath and Bodnath. Pasupatinath is a Hindu temple where pple do cremation. It’s a kinda weird place, there was a cremation happening when we arrived, and they just burn the body on this platform with wood and its open burning. If anyone ever asks how a burning body smells like…it certainly doesn’t smell like charsiew..its a weird weird smell. After the burning, they just sweep the ashes into the river where the platform is next to. And the freakiest part is, further down the river, kids are just playing in the river water. The water’s this gray tinge…and rather filthy, but apparently its supposed to be holy water. there was sort of this weird taste in our mouths after leaving the place…yeeks…but well…just had to ignore it.

After that, we headed to bodnath. Walking into the entrance, it was quite breathtaking. Saw the world’s biggest stupa and it had such a calming effect. This is a Buddhist / Tibetan place. (pls forgive me if i get some facts wrong). A great difference from the previous place. This place was really clean and very calming. Lots of pple holding beads walking around the stupa. And there’s this constant music chant playing from the surrounding shops “om ma ni pek me hom?” it was kinda familiar coz I think I’ve heard it been chanted before. Anyways, after that we had a quick bite at a restaurant which only had deaf and dumb pple working there and headed back on the bumpy bus back to pepsicola town. Had our dinner, and spent the whole night talking and laughing with Sylvia.

So that basically sums up our 3 days in Nepal. There’s so much more things to tell but I think such a long blog can get kinda dreary. The experience has been great. Nepali culture does require some time to get used to, coz they’re so laid back and u don’t really know whats supposed to happen until u ask. as for food, we just eat a lot of rice and daal baat (lentils curry sort of thing), with chillis and barely eat meat. i think we're both gonna lose a lot of weight...hmm...but maybe not, coz we bought biscuits and chips and stocked them up in our room coz we realised we get hungry quite fast here..heheh.,.... anyways, will upate again soon...here's our tentative routine till we start volunteer work in 2 days time...wake up in the morning at 7am, have chiyaa (nepali tea), then head to the internet cafe to type emails (8am-10am), then head back to the house for lunch, then llanguage class, sightseeing in the afternnon, and dinner and bed after. chase is surviving very very well....and cutting down on the ciggies...i think if anyone wanna quit smoking, they should come to nepal...the air is so perpetually dusty that she doesnt even really feel like smoking. we both dont really change much as well, coz trying to avoid washing clothes, coz i think looking at the conditions where they hang their clothes out to dry in the dusty roads, it probably doesnt make a difference not washing at all. =p