Rose Tinted Glasses

July 19 2007

Yesterday I took them off... and I saw shit. Literally. It is everywhere. I had a bad day yesterday I realised that Nepal has a serious problem with shit (please pardon my swearing). Everyone is always getting sick and it is no real mystery why. There is primitive saanitation here at best, we walk down the streets in the centre of town with rivers (well not quite rivers) of raw sewage floating to our left and huge ten metre long piles of rubbish (food refuse mainly) on the other. Street vendors and shops in between sell food and drink flies are everywhere and the smell.. well I will not even go into that. Sorry! I had to get that off my chest, it is really sad because as far as I can see before any real change can happen here Kathmandu needs to clean up its act.

Ok apart from all of that yesterday was a great day we had our Nepali lessons in the morning - verbs, a bit hard to be honest - and in the evening we went to visit the ophanage for the first time. We were nervous as we didnt know what to expect or how to act, we were taken there at four just to meet everyone but didnt end up leaving until 6.30! It is a really small orphanage in our village only 12 kids there between the ages of 4 - 12. They are SO CUTE!! We played with them - Jon taught them how to play the stopwatch game... these things are universal! I taught them maths.. (?!) then we ate mango and came home. It was lovely they really are such sweet kids. VSN wants us to work in a school as teachers also but I am not sure we are up to the job - lets see how this goes for now. From now on we report for work before and after school so I will post some photos as soon as I can.

Today more language classes and also we are trying to plan some excursions. There is a rock climbing school that we would like to get involved with but it seems really exensive, but I guess when a hotel room costs just over $1 a night then everything seems expensive. We have also been trying to run in the mornings but it is hard.. it's hot and by the time we have been running for ten minutes it's a bit like the pied piper in that we usually have a few street kids (and adults) following us around the rice fields!!

Caroline