First day in Nepal!

Picture: View outside from outside my room at the Pacific Guest House in Kathmandu

I arrived in Kathmandu today after 4 planes, 37 hours of travel, no luggage lost, and surviving a 6 and a half hour wait in a holding (aka "transit") room in Delhi from 1:00 AM to 7:30AM. I studied up a bit on the most basic of Nepali, but mostly slept - recovering from everything I had been doing the last two weeks.

I was the first of the volunteers out of our group to arrive, and got picked up by the VSO driver, Prem, who said that he couldn't take me to the guest house right away, because there was a huge Maoist demonstration downtown and the streets were closed. He estimated between 300,000 and 500,000 people demonstrating - at this point, completely peacefully.

So I was plopped into a rented room in a hotel close to the airport and was told I'd stay there all day and wait for the other volunteers to arrive. But apparently the streets cleared, because someone else came a couple hours later and said we were good to go.

The guest house - where I'll be staying for the first while here - is nice. It's peaceful, has internet off and on (though it's quite slow), and is in a good part of the city to walk around in. Apparently quieter than it normally is today, because everyone was at the demonstration.

Nepal feels different in every way from Portland to me. The streets are loud and totally chaotic. There are dogs wandering the streets (they don't seem to belong to anyone at all), cows hanging out here and there. Men walking their goats. Street corner shops: simple, some make-shift, family run. And this evening, walking around in the dark, only one side of the street had electricity. The other side had their shops lit with candles, which made the street glow in way that I feel I have only seen in movies. There's not enough electricity to go around. The side of the street with candles tonight will get electricity tomorrow night.

I have 8 weeks ahead of me to get to know the other volunteers (from England, Phillipines, Uganda, and Kenya) through language and cultural training. I am the lone representative from the United States - which makes me think that I should be careful how I present myself perhaps. Or not.... :-) And 8 weeks to attempt to pick up as much Nepali as I can. I tackled the Devangari letter for A today and can now spot it in words. It is a sideways squiggle with a couple straight, perpendicular lines attached. And the hotel staff just taught me how to say one: ek. That gets me started...

Tomorrow we're off earlier than normal (7:00 AM) so that we can hopefully make it to the medical center before the streets are closed again. If they're already closed by 7:00, just means that we'll walk the few miles instead of taking the bus. But that way we'll get to check out the demonstration - which I'm curious about. And can't get much information about, somehow. No one seems worried in the least. Just how things go around here....

Off to sleep in my cozy sleep sack that the staff at MFS gave to me. Don't think I've slept more than 4 hours at a time for the last week - so this should be my first real nights sleep in a long time. :-)