So much has happened!

---

Hey everyone!

I really need to start writing blogs more often because now I have soo much to talk about lol ! Ok let me start a couple days back. On Tuesday we had orientation in the morning but in the afternoon Puran and Bikash took us out to get to know more of the city. We saw a few more temples just in Kathmandu but the really exciting part is there is this temple/house where a living god stays in! I can't believe that there is still living gods around here. Anyways the god is actually not a god and more a goddess.. who is nine years old!! It's insane, this little girl is supposively god like because when she was really young I am guessing the other living god must have died so they took a bunch of the newly born children and what they do is they lock them in a dark room and see which one doesn't cry and which one doesn't have any cuts or scrapes on them! So now this little girl has to stay in this house and is only allowed out at certain festivals and is not allowed to play with other children!! It's just so fascinating to me. So you can walk through the first door of this temple and it actually opens up into like a little garden, and there is a couple windows high up on the walls that you can sort of see inside the house through. Well apparently this living god only sometimes comes out to the window so people can see her and luckily for us she did!! I got to see the living god, she looked so unhappy and annoyed that she had to walk up to this window so people can stare at her. It was kind of sad.

So after that we went to the prison because there is a lady there whom Puran knows and brings all the volunteers to meet. I think we were in the all woman part but all the women who were behind the bars did not look like criminals! They seemed so nice. Anyways we went to go visit Perscovia, she is a lady from Uganda and she is in prison for something along the lines of trying to smuggle drugs into Nepal for some extra money to send her daughter to school. This lady is amazing! She has not been able to see her daughter for 3 years and she hasn't even told her daughter that she is in prison she told her that she is in a really nice place but will be home with her someday! I had to hold back tears Perscovia just has this beautiful smile and the nicest heart and its so sad to see that she can't be there to watch her daughter grow when all she was trying to do was be able to send her to school. I am definitely going to go back to visit her and bring her some goodies!

After the prison it was momo night for dinner!! MMMM so delicious. Momos only happen once during orientation week so the other volunteers were excited to be able to have them again. They are basically steamed dumplings filled with veggies and spices and dipped into this delicious spicy creamy sauce. Yummm I want some right now. We all got to help out and make them into whatever shapes we wanted, and we invited the placement co-ordinaters to come eat with us as well and that way I got to meet the guy who runs NCCH (nepal child conservation home). It was such a fun night.

Now for a quick talk about Wednesday. We had to get up at 5 in the morning to walk up to Monkey Temple to see the sunrise and the beautiful temples over there. It is situated on top of a hill and oh my, I did not think that I was going to make it up all the stairs!! There were soo many and so steep, of course the other volunteer Alex she was handling it no problem and I thought I was going to faint once I got up there haha. But it was definitely worth it to get to watch the sunrise and to see at least 100 monkeys!! Then we also went to this other worshipping spot nearby which had these 3 either Hindu or Buddhist, I'm pretty sure Hindu, statues that were massive! They were so neat. Later on that night after dinner Rebecca and Cassandra, two of the other volunteers here that have already been here a couple months, took us to Bhat Bhateni's its like a nepali/western supermarket and I was able to get some granola bars, instant noodles for saturday when we cook our own food, and some popcorn kernels for a late night snack! We also went out to this restaurant in Thamel and got hot chocolate cake... it was sooooo good!! It was like chocolate souffle, it was crispy on the top and underneath it was all gooey thick yummy chocolate. Definitely got my fix of western food!

That's it for now!! Today is our last day of orientation yaaay and we get to go out for a super nice dinner wearing our saris so I will take lots of pictures of those and put them on facebook!!

---