baby, i'm in love with possibility

So! A few of you suggested I write a blog, and it's a lot easier than writing half a dozen lengthy e-mails a day detailing what I'm doing, so. Here's a blog. That being said, I LOVE getting emails so feel free to email me still about anything and everything. I will attempt to reply promptly.

Anyway. Also, for those who don't know, here's a little bit of the backstory. I am taking a semester off before going to college, and decided that I might as well do something with that time, so I decided to go to Nepal. Being borderline insane, I figured, well if I'm going, why not make it a personal GTA trip, bring some computers and volunteer at a school. Somehow, I roped Nils into this idea also. So, here we are in Kathmandu, volunteering with the Pragya English School, and installing a lab of 9 iMacs. Currently the iMacs are stuck in customs and we are working to get them out. We are here until November 30th, working with the school, at which point we are leaving to spend a month in India. SO. Now that all of that has been covered, here goes with the actual blogging.

Today is the first day of Dasain in Kathmandu. It goes for a few more weeks, and is one of the larger festivals of the year. I don't entirely understand what the significance of it is, and when I asked what is was celebrating today, the clearest answer I got was "celebrating the past". Anyway, almost all the shops in our district were closed this morning, which is very unusual. The only other time I've seen them all closed is during a strike, and that was short lived. To celebrate we went to one of the major temples in Kathmandu - it's the highest point in Kathmandu (~600 ft above the rest of the city), and it's also a monkey park. You have to be careful at the monkey park that you keep a good hold of anything you don't want to lose, because the monkey's will swoop down out of the trees on the prayer flags and steal stuff off of you, from sunglasses, to food, to cameras, to jewelry. The temple is on top of this gigantic hill, which you walk 200 steps to get up to. I made the mistake of attempting to jog up them - the fast altitude gain plus exertion ended up making me see spots. The view was entirely worth the climb up though. It's AMAZING and pretty much overlooks the entire city of Kathmandu. On a clear day you are supposed to be able to see the entire range of mountains surrounding the city, but unfortunately today was not a clear day. It was still an incredible view though, and the temple itself is gorgeous. There were huge prayer wheels which supposedly if you spin three times, you are blessed. We all spun the lines and lines of prayer wheels along the sides of the temple. Perhaps it will bring good luck with getting our computers out of customs.
Anyway, it's finally bedtime now, so more writing will have to wait til tomorrow.
Cheers!