a day straight out of the lonely planet TV show!

Its impossible to find internet around here with only 8 hrs of electricity a day and with no structure you never know when those 8 hrs will be. I've never seen anything like it, driving back into the city today it was pitch black...last night my lights came on at 3am until about 8am, great timing...not!

Anyways, I finally got a good sleep last night in my jail cell like hotel room! it was great! I woke up and went to the VSN office where i met a very nice aussie named rick who was volunteering last month so he gave me the culture shock 101 lesson and told me where to go for the day. I ended upgoing to Bhaktapur which is about 50 kms from kathmandu...but in a place as crazy and crowded as this, it takes much longer to get there then it would in Canada. The drive there was once again very overwhelming...the sides of the road and the river are covered with garbage, and people and cars are everywhere. I even saw a man with his barber shop on the side of the dusty dirty highway, he had his mirror hanging on the barbwire fence with one stool, there are no walls for shops like this here, they set up wherever they can! As you're driving you begin to think that there is no amount of manpower that could help a country like this, it's absolutely nuts!

I arrived somehow alive in Bhaktapur and immediately a beggar girl grabbed my arm...beggars here typically have some type of disease, a lost limb or some type of deformation, so I got away from her as quickly as possible and grabbed a guide for the day (if anyone has read the book A Fine Balance, this entire area is exactly how I pictured the setting in that book, if you havn't,you should!) My guide showed me several temples, the royal palace, different areas where festivals occurred, aperson being cremated and several people bathing in the streets from only a bucket of water! The first temple he showed me still had fresh blood on the stairs from the cow that they had killed that morning The cow is the hindu goddess...so this is where it gets good...I'm not the type to love touring big cities but would rather see the countryside, I mean the temples are quite amazing and intricatelly carved but they're all very similar and the loudness, dirtiness and buisiness really gets to me. My guide was a very kind man and completely trustworthy so when he offered to take me to his house i decided to go. We walked through the true parts of Bhaktapur, not the touristy stuff and then caught a bus to the rural area where he lived, buses are much different here! It was really neat to see the non-tourist part of this society. We were dropped off in a beautiful area, still very very poor but the landscape was gorgeous and it was finally quiet and peacefull!! The landscape had a very Tuscan feel to it, with lush green fields and terraced hills. My guide just started up a school for english on his property, where his whole family also lives...I needed to use the toilet, which was different...it was ceramic on the floor with nothing but a bucket, i choose to air dry We then visited the school, it was one of the nicest buildings i've seen in this country and contained the cutest kids on earth! He kept trying to get me to come volunteer for him, so if anyone ever comes here I have a contact for you. We then went back to his house where his wife had made lunch for me, there was one unidentifiable substance that i was not too fond of with a texture something like what i imagine an eyeball would be like, but other than that it was delicious! His house was kind of like living in a cave...clay walls, a couple of very old beds and a couch is about all it contained. He showed me pictures of his family and I showed him some of my family and friends, and he taught me some of the nepali language while his wife made us chi (milky sweet tea). He demanded that I come back at the endof my trip so they could make me a feast, we'll see if I go. Everything they eat is from their own land, potatoes, rice, chicken,eggs, goat. The countryside was so beautiful, i can't wait to be placed out there! We headed back into Bhaktapur where i caught a taxi with a very nice guy from Holand. I'm really glad that he was in the car since we talked the whole way and I was distracted from the insanity. Especially this time, our driver decided that the road was too small so we took the undeveloped, major pot hole city sides of the road, where we encountered several pedestrians. Never a dull moment here! I think Daniel and I are going to go try to grab something to eat, that is if we can find a place with electricity.

later, love kels