The worst and best days

Hey everyone, I know it's been forever but i'm finally back and yet again have access to a computer (among many other things that i'll get into later) I can't wait to tell you all about Bigu and how wonderful and amazing and beautiful and enriching it was but there is so much to tell that I won't have time for it all tonight. I'll start with getting there and some of my earlier experiences and then i'll tell the rest tomorrow!

To be quite honest getting to the monastery was a miserable ordeal. Instead of the jeep ride and 10 hour hike we were expecting we ended up with a 7 hour bus ride and 20 plus hours of hiking which took us three days. The 10 hour hike is only during the dry season when you can take a jeep a good portion of the way up the mountain. We ended up taking the longest way - but since our guide taking us up there had extremely limited English we had no idea what we were in for. Not only did we have no idea that we would even be hiking the first day at all but neither me nor Hilary had gotten very much sleep and neither of us had had breakfast or lunch or a bite to eat by the time we got to Charikot (the town the bus brought us to). We got off the bus, thinking that it was Singati which is where we were told we would be spending the night. Our guide then said to us that we had to start walking (NOT hiking notice) and we were just thinking oh okay the guest house must be a little bit of a walk. Our guide then told us it would be about 3 hours of walking till we got to Singati.... thinking that wasn't too bad we didn't bother eating anything or buying more water (even though it was excruciatingly hot out). Well that 3 hour walk turned out to be a 7 and a half hour hike down a mountain then up another and back down again. This all would have been perfectly fine if we had eaten anything at all or it hadn't been a solid 95 degrees out with barely any water or we hadn't had to continuously climb over massive landslides. I actually got so desperately thirsty that I filled up my water bottle at a little families tap on the way, completely convinced that a parasite would be better than how I was feeling. A couple times throughout the the hiking and climbing and treading through rivers I had to tell myself that I needed to remember this pain and exhaustion (as if I could ever forget) while running the half marathon I'm planning on doing in a couple months because then the running would seem like a walk in the park. By the time we finally stumbled into Singhati it was already dark and I had to concentrate so hard on actually forcing my feet to move. It may sound pathetic but I can't even describe the way my body felt with the mixture of heat exhaustion, extreme hunger (which had turned into nausea at the mere thought of food), and aching muscles. The next day consisted of 10 more hours of hiking - with all of the same pain, extreme heat and lack of nourishment as the day before ( both me and Hilary could barely even stand to look at food and only managed to eat very small amounts for the next few days)with the addition of having to continuously climb over massive landslides. Some of which were fresh so that we would sink almost up to our knees in the mud or start sliding down the landslides which were a good few hundred foot drop straight down to the river. At the end of this day we stayed at a families home who were all extremely kind and they gave us all a bed and tons of food for dinner (which me and Hilary only had a few bites of and we felt terrible becuase that is insulting in Nepal so our guide had to explain to them that we were feeling really ill, not that we didn't like there food!) Early the next morning, not even bothering attempting at any breakfast, we set off again. We finally arrived at Bigu about 6 hours later that day - feeling so dead that i wasn't even able to conjure up a smile when we could finally see it and were within a half hour of being there.

Even though I felt like death those entire 3 days, going to Bigu was one of the greatest things I ever have and ever will do. It was such a beautiful place in every way. My daily schedule went something like this:

8am teaching english to the youngest nuns
9am teaching english to the teenage nuns
lunch
noon teaching enlish to the adult nuns
2pm teaching english to the 5-8 year olds at the Sherpa school
3pm teaching english to the 8-11 year olds at the Sherpa school
back to the monastery for tea
4-7 many various activities ranging from reading, playing with the younger nuns, helping to cook, harvesting potatoes, etc
7 dinner

It was such and enriching experience and it really helped me to grow in so many different ways and aspects of my life. Not to mention the friendships I made. I can't wait to give more details on my time there and share how remarkable of an experience it was - but it is late and this very long already!! Check back soon :)

Subha ratri!