Blogs from Lazimpat, Kathmandu, Nepal, Asia

Today was my last day volunteering at the hospital. I'm fine with that though because I feel that I've exhausted what I can learn from this experience. Again not too much happened today. Dr. X spent much of the morning quizzing us on random facts and also asked us some relevant medical questions. It was just us U of T students in there today though, and since we've really only studied normal anatomy and physiology up until now, it was hard for any of us to answer his questions. He must have thought we were pretty dumb, but at U of T we learn all pathology in 2nd year. Now that we got back from our trek, I wanted to spend the last four days starting up another project I was supposed to be working on, ... read more

After what will be a year that we have been on the road, in late April, we will be heading home to Sydney. We are very excited to be with friends and family and it will be very interesting to see what our next adventures will be. But before we land in Sydney we are off to Nepal to trek in the Annapurna and Lang Tang regions for 3 weeks. We leave beautiful Chiang Mai knowing we will definitely be back. We can't wait to post photos and adventure snippets from our 2nd trip to Nepal. Happy trails. Ciao xxx ... read more

Pictures are of visit to Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology and up to Kopan Monastery for a few days .................................................................................................................................................................. Back in the lap of luxury....well civilisation at least....I heart Hotel Tibet. Where the doorman takes your big bag, not the monk who announces that he will take your small bag... Where they have a doorman.... Where they call you ma'am Where they bring you a cup of tea at check in (albeit undrinkable sweet milk tea) Where they ask you if you would like anything else for breakfast Where they clean the rooms Where the room has a SEPERATE shower and toilet, and where the toilets flush Where there is somewhere to sit other than your bed Where everyone knows your name.......... Anytime of year...... ... read more

Check out the wire-work, network, the web-work, the interlocking cables... A friend shares his story relating to the photos. Sac, the friend, was standing where the mom and daughter are standing in the photo "web work" waiting, like the duo, for public transport. His phone rang. As he took the call, he ambled away (few feet) from the pole. :BLONG: He hears explosion like that of a firework but still scary enough. A wire comes down crashing. He lives to tell the story as I show him these photos. If you're loafing around in Kathmandu, PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THESE "fWIRE WORKS". apart from that, just enjoy your stay here... XOXOXO... read more

Kathmandu is fantastic, and my job here couldn't be any better, but these past 10 days have been beset by sickness and frustration. Fieldwork isn't always fun and games, so it seems. The sickness was due to parasites--I must have made some malignant little internal friends during my village stay (the subject of the next post--I promise), and they kept me in bed with a bucket nearby for some days. The frustration is largely due to the ridiculously oppressive scheduled power cuts terrorizing the whole country right now, and they only promise to get worse. The euphemism is 'loadshedding,' and it means that Nepal doesn't have enough electricity for everybody all the time, so we'll have to ration it with power cuts until the rainy season starts and the hydroelectric reservoirs fill up again. The irony ... read more