A recap of my first full day

Yesterday was amazing, plain and simple.

When I woke up I finally got a shower in (it had been much too long) AND it was even hot!! I was ecstatic, but it is a rare treat so hopefully I can get warm water again soon. It is only warm in the morning if it had been really sunny the day before, becuase the water is held up on the roof so not only does the sun warm it but they also have a small solar panel that helps to heat it as well. After that I met with some of the directors and head of different orphanages - they were all such nice and wonderful people. I then had a nice breakfast of rice and vegetables..... so odd, but they don't really eat lunch here so I guess they need a filling breakfast. (I'm not quite use to the long wait in between meals yet so I had to have some other volunteers take me to get a small lunch later in the day) After all that I went into town with 8 other volunteers to the Thamil district, where we shopped around for awhile (Mom that part of town reminded me a little of cusco, but still not quite - the rest of the town is Definitely Iquitos on steroids) There were so many beautiful crafts and scultptures art work and clothing and I wanted to buy it all haha but I resisted and only got my self 2 new books to read, since I finished my only one in the Delhi airport during my long wait. I also went in to talk to a trekking agency that Jesse - one of the other volunteers who has been here every summer for 5 years (he's fascinating) - told me to go through, he is good friends with the owners and says they are the most trustworthy around and are great people - which I could tell by talking to them. Another volunteer is going to be coming to Chitwan National park with me so i'm very excited but we don't know exactly when would be the best time to go yet. After being in town for a couple hours we went Papas house - one of the orphanages. The kids are having exams right now so they go to take them in shifts, so when we got there only half of them were there, but it was a blast. The children are unbelievably friendly and out going and I was so impressed at how much english they knew - even the little ones. I played basket ball with about 7 of them for a good hour, which was funny becaise I tower over even the older boys by at least 6 inches, some as much as a foot and a half. The Nepalese in general are very short. But it was a blast, It was kind of a make shift basketball hoop and a deflating ball, but I don't remember the last time I had that much playing basketball, One girl in particular was quite a little spitfire and was actually an extremely good basketball player - she couldn't have been more than 14, but she was better than all the boys. Once I got too hot and sweaty I went to another group of kids were I taught them thumb wars and rock paper scissors - They were having a ball and it was wonderful. Then I walked down to the school to pick up the rest of the children. It is a 500 person school and Nepal Orphans home supports at least 150 of them. When we got back to papas house it was study time and I was helping with english work, not that I really needed to, I was extremely impressed with their english as I said before. Then it was more basketball, puzzles, a little girl showed me all around her room and took pictures of absolutely everything in it with my camera, it was adorable and the girl stayed glued to my side untill we left around 7.

Another Volunteer here is interviewing each kid for a book he is going to be writing and some of the stories of these children are so heart breaking. A group of the boys were rescued from a different orphanage where the head was an alcoholic and would beat them multiple times a day with a stick, whether they misbehaved or not. A boy told me he had big ears, because the head of that orphanage would pull them so hard everyday. A lot of the girls used to be Kumlaris (slaves) they were sold at young ages and some of them worked for the same family for many years and some of them worked with over 14 families for 8 years. All of them mentioned being beaten, the worst I heard was that one girl had not finished washing the families clothes in time so they beat her badly, tied her to a tree and left her there for 2 days. These stories are heartbreaking, but so inspirational at the same time. It really shows you how wonderful and Crucial Nepal orphans home is for them. Many of the children had such wonderful and large aspirations - a boy wanted to be the first Nepali astronaut, he had even received a letter and a singed picture from NASA (after a volunteer wrote to them telling them about him), some want to be teachers, a little boy wants to a scientist, one boy, Vishnu, wants to be a Nurse, some of the girls want to be doctors, or teachers, or pilots,or Veterinarians. Seeing them now you would never guess the horrors that a lot of these children went through, and I'm so glad I can be a part of keeping their childhood alive and their future promising.

After many hours with the children I was sad to leave, but me and the other 2 volunteers that had been there stopped for ice cream on the walk home, and we had great talks about the children and how different there lives may have been and how wonderful they are. When we got back, we knew we had missed dinner because we played too long, but me Jake and Jordan went a couple doors down to the Momo place (where I had had my little lunch earlier in the day - steamed water buffalo MOmo's. They're like dumplings or pot stickers and you can have them steamed or fried with your choice of a bunch of different meats. They were delicious!) This time I got a snack portion of 'chicken fry' as it was called, but I don't even think it was fried - it reminded me of if you would have taken the little chunks of chicken out of a stir fry - it was delicious.

To finish off the night I went up onto the roof with Jake Jordan and Hillary, and just talked and listened to Jake play his uechalayli (still have no idea how to spell that) it was wonderful, and all of the lights of the city were beautiful. The volunteer hours is up on a hill called Dhapsai heights, like a 15 min taxi ride from the heart of down town so we have amazing views.

Now it is almost 8 in the morning and I'm about to have breakfast, then my first Nepali and cultural lesson and then I get to go visit some temples down town (I'm very excited) I'll learn more about all the different placements still and then I'll go back to papas house again for some more playing and studying.

So this is so long, and probably terribly spelled, This keyboard doesn't have any letters on it because it's so old, so i'm sure i'm making a lot of mistakes. Please bear with me!