Monday 14 December 2009

UniBreak Nepal - Helen and Leanne on their time so far


Survived our first week!



Things have been pretty crazy here but we have survived our first week. When we arrived finally, our first day in the country there was a strike that means that everything is closed and no cars or buses or bike are allowed on the road. So we slept in the hotel then visited the monkey temple!!

We then had an interesting 5hr (7and 1/2 hr) bus trip through the hills to Pokhara to where we are living. On our first day there we went sight seeing to a few temples, a cave, a gorge, underground waterfall and a gurkha museum. We were also lucky to see 3 bollywood movie scenes being filmed. Then we moved in with our family. Helen, Anouskha and I have taken over one whole room of the two room house, our family is lovely!! We are staying in a tibetan refugee camp called Tashiling. We are very well fed, it took us a few days to negotiate appropriate portion sizes. We mainly eat Dahl Baht and vegetables but we have tried a few other Tibetan traditional dishes, sooo tasty!!

On Thursday we were lucky enough to be part of a national Tibetan holiday celebrating the Dalai Lama winning the Nobel Peace prize way back... We sat through alot of speaking and chanting (3hrs) but then we played musical chairs, western vs tibetan women tug-o-war (we won!!) and in the evening we partied to 8pm (which here is quite late!!) Helen and I are now known in the village as "hello, dancing, you good".

The orphange where we are is aweswome, all the children are happy and healthy. We teach the unsponsored kids who dont go to school, social studies, maths and english. There are also around 7 other volunteers here from all over the world so it been awesome to hangout and get shown around the city.

We get around here on bikes, which are something resembling ones out of the sound of music. We will have very powerful legs when we get home as the roads here have many potholes if they are sealed at all, traffic too is very exciting. Though sadly only the other day a girl got hit outside out village and did not make it!

Yesterday we hiked to the World Peace Pagoda, from there we could see a clear view on Annapurna, Fishtail and Annapurna 2 (Very large mountains). Best view I have seen in a very long time. We then paddle back across the lake and walked home, altogether we were walking about 6-7 hours yesterday!!

Life here is pretty relaxed. No one is ever on time and the power goes out each night for atleast two hours, but that is just normal for us now though make emailing difficult at times. Only thing we are both missing is a hot shower, currently we have an ice shower most days.

Next weekend we are hoping to go paragliding and the following white water rafting, but there is soo much to do that we are already planning to come back, especially to bring some supplies for the orphanage.

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