So long, Chapagaun!

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Well, my time out in the village has almost come to an end. I’m taking Esther and Sarah to my favorite place (the leprosy hospital) on Sunday, and then Esther and I are heading into Kathmandu on Monday.

This leaves me just enough time to do my laundry and have it dry - it sometimes takes days because we’re constantly battling the monsoon. I’ve also only got three days to get my fill of high quality kid shows like ‘Tom and Jerry’ and three different versions of the Power Rangers series. I’ve finally gotten sick of dal bhaat, so luckily I’ve only got a few more meals of it to struggle through.

I’ve managed to wrap up almost everything I was working on at the Health Center. We’ve made about a zillion posters for the health education program, so we’ve only got one or two left. Our curriculum has been printed out, ready for the lucky volunteer who gets to teach all of it. Esther and I are frantically trying to compile data from the school health visits I had made earlier in May. We’ve been calculating BMIs and overall hygiene problems. Woohoo…thrilling. I think Sarah will be more than capable of tying together any loose ends we happen to forget.

There isn’t much else to say - the past week has been pretty same old, same old. We had a movie afternoon at Esther’s house, and her family loves when she brings her saathis (friends) over, so they make us tons of food. I was in the middle of munching on roti (flat bread) with orange marmalade and eating curried chickpeas when her host sister placed a small dish of questionable-looking meat in front of me. “Buff skin!” she said excitedly. Let me tell you - water buffalo skin is incredibly chewy and looks an awful lot like meat jello. Other than that, we’ve just been eating 10 rupee Kit Kats and trying not to drown in the monsoon.

I’m going to end this now and try to make sense of the mess that is my room. I have somehow accumulated a lot of things, and they’re all over my floor. I’ve got to figure out what goes in my trekking pack, what goes in the duffel bag, and anything else is getting shoved in my huge plastic-y Winnie the Pooh zip-up bag I bought a few weeks ago.

Be home in two weeks!!

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Comments

[Katie]

I GOT YOUR LETTER!!! And about a week later, I finally got your postcard, LOL! :) The yaks meandered to NJ finally! :) And omg I love your posters!!!

[John]

thanks for your blog
Thanks for writing your blog -- it was good to keep up with you and Nepal! And that's a lot of posters! Nice work.

[utsav]

great job indeed!
actually i am the boy of this village chapagaun, what so ever u have done for the uday kharka schools willbe rembembred by all the villagers .seeing this site in foreign lan in ukraine is indeed a great all the way! best of lucks!

[Ram]

Hello Kate
Hi Kate! Its Ram from Chapagaun! Nice to see your blog.