My first week

I have now been in Pokhara for a week and I am loving every minute. The kids are so great. We get up every morning at 7:30 have breakfast at the house and leave for the orphanage at about 8:15. When we get there we help the kids brush their teeth and get ready for school. That is always a crazy time because you have to help the little kids get dressed and most of the time they are missing a sock or they can't find their belt so you have to go hunting for it. The girls need to have their hair braided and ribbons tied. This whole process take about 45 mins. When the bell rings we go down with them and help them get their school shoes on and they line up by the front gate. The walk to school takes about 15 mins. On the way the girls have been trying to teach me Nepali songs, I have some of it but it may take me the rest of my time to get it all right. After we drop them off we go back to the orphanage and help the house sisters clean and mop. This takes until 11. Then we have a little time to ourselves. Most of the time we go have a little lunch and sit by the lake. There are so many little cafes and restaurants, we go to a new one most of the time. We head back the orphanage at about 2 to help peel potatoes and cut veggies for dinner. At about 3 it is time to go pick the kids up from school. When they get back we help them change into their regular clothes and they have a little snack. Then they can play for about 30 mins. At about 5 it is time for them to do homework and reading. I have found that I am not very good at math, some of the kids are doing fractions and I have never been very good at them. One night I ended up asking one and then two other volunteers how to do it and none of us could remember how to do it. It looked something like this. [3 x 5 {3/4+5/8} 6 - 2+(3/8 x 6)] so I guess I need to practice my math skills a little. We usually leave during homework time (about 6:30) we have a 30 min walk and it gets dark. But after homework the kids have dinner after dinner some of the kids do more reading. Then they go to bed around 9 or 10.

I have been learning some of the stories about the kids and why they are in the orphanage, and I am amazed by how happy they are after everything they have been through. Two of the girls came from prison, because their parents had been arrested and they had nowhere else to go. One of the girls came because her stepmother killed her birth mother. One of the boys is there because the bus he and his parents were in drove off the road and landed in the river, before it landed his mother threw him out the window into the bushes. He was the only survivor of the crash. So many of them have scares from abuse or neglect. I don't ask them what happened or why they are there. Some will tell you their story and others just don't want to talk about it, and that is fine with me. I feel good knowing that me being there and talking to them or just holding their hand makes them smile.

The local kids around here are great too. When they see us walking down the street they stand on the side of the road yelling "hello! namaste! (Nepali for hello)" and they will yell it until we are half way down the street.

Thank you everyone for the e-mails and posts, it really means a lot to me. Keep them coming!

Love you all