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Today Mike got to Kathmandu hooray! I spent the morning at the hospital doing some more shadowing and working on our project that we now realize is not very feasible (very hard to measure the effect of hand washing on hospital infections when the hand washing program has already been started and there are few patients).
Anyways, after some time at the hospital I went back to Thamel to prepare for Mike's arrival. I got him a SIM card (it's a big deal to get-- you have to give them a copy of your passport, a passport photo and your thumb prints! It seems like overkill!) and cleaned up the room a bit. I had to take a fan from one of my classmates who's here, Graham's, room because it's really hot here for Mike. It would cost us an extra 5 bucks a night for a dinky little fan... So luckily Graham had taken one out of the hall and we borrowed it for a bit. I spent an hour or so sitting in a cafe called Pumpernickel (very western cafe full of hippies and expats) just reading about the trek we're going to start on Monday. After this
I went to sit in the garden with Katie and Graham and relax. We were joined by an interesting Swiss guy that just came back from the Himalayan mountains where he'd been doing research for his thesis in geography. Then Katie, Graham and I went for dinner at OR2K which is another very hippy type place to eat in town.
At 9:30pm, I met with the hotel driver who was going to pick Mike up from the airport. They are supposed to have free airport pickup but because I've been staying for awhile, they still charged me... I fought it but at the end of the day, $5 is not going to break the bank (they gave me a 50% discount at least). Anyways, he took me along with him and we picked up his friend (who I know just came along to get a tip from the foreigners. Lots of times in Nepal when you are getting a ride from someone, their whole circle of friends comes for a ride too. I guess they have nothing to do anyways and maybe it will land them a tip). In any case I didn't mind because they made Mike's pick
up so easy. They spoke to me in English the whole way (this was Saturday, their holy day so they were dragged out of family festivities). When we arrived at the airport, Mike's plane had already landed (it was an hour early!! Unheard of!!) and me and one of the guys went to wait for Mike in the arrivals lounge. We waited for maybe 15 minutes and Mike walked out. I called him and then we went back to the car and that was that. Easy peasy. Very different compared to when I arrived. In fact, it wasn't that same crazy hectic scene of taxi drivers. I think that's because the flight was so early that they hasn't gotten there yet. One guy in the parking lot was trying to get money out of mike for a tip. Mike was about to give it to him but I said to the guy "what did you do, you did nothing so why should I pay you?" The guy said because I'm working here and it's Saturday night or something like that. There was no way I was going to give him money so I said a firm no and said we don't pay for nothing and that was that.
It's nice for Mike, he shows up at the airport and I'm there and already know what's going on so it's easy for him. I had water for him, a simcard with money etc. We got back to the hotel and didn't need to get checked in, so he was able to settle into Nepal very easily.
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