I have pretty much gotten into the routine of thing around here, some days I forget that I am only here for a little while, and one day I will have to go back to my real life. Every day here is amazing, the tourist season is ending, which is nice because there are a lot less people around and now I feel I can enjoy the real Pokhara.
Sense I talked to you all last we have moved guest houses. We are now about 10 mins away from the orphanage (instead of 40 mins) so I feel like we can spend more time with the kids. They love when we have dinner with them and they always try to teach us how to eat with our hands and not get rice all over ourselves.
The orphanage has been able to buy a large piece of land that they are going to build the Namaste Village. It will be a place with the orphanage, a women center, and apartments for volunteers and room for a garden. This last weekend we all went to the land (that is currently a large rice paddy) and had a picnic. It was so much fun. We took some games to play, we went for a walk round the little village, and we ate lots of food. The didis and house mother are so great at having everything so organized. The volunteers put together a game of “Pass the Parcel” where the kids sit in a circle and pass a wrapped gift around the circle, and like in musical chairs when the music stops the child holding it gets to open one layer of wrapping, which had a candy in it. In the end the last child got the present of some stickers and pencils. They had a great time with it. They also played a game where they are blindfolded and have to walk; with a stick along a path about 20 ft and try to break a clay jar on the ground. Kind of like a piñata. The last game we got to play was tug of war, first the kids did boys against girls, the boys won the first time and the second time when the boys were pulling really hard all the girls let go of the rope so all the boys fell down, so I count that as a win for the girls. Next we did male staff and volunteer against the female staff and volunteers (we outnumbered them 2 to 1). The first go the girls beat the boys no problem, and I don’t think the boys liked that very much so the second time around they got some of the older boys on their team to even it out. Once again it looked as though the girls were going to win so all the rest of the boys jumped on the rope and started pulling, seeing this all the girls jump on our side. In the end the girls won again. All in all it was a great day and by the end everyone was very tired. Most of the kids fell asleep on the bus ride home. But I must say the road to and from the picnic was one of the scariest roads I have ridden on sense I have been here.
On Sunday Tor, Tasha and I hiked up to the Peace Pagoda, which is on at large hill overlooking Pokhara and Phewa Lake. The hike is not an easy one, all uphill with rock steps. It took about an hour to hike up, but the view when you get up there is amazing. I will probably go again because the day we went was over cast and on a clear day I’m sure it would be even more amazing.
As some of you may have seen I have created an event on Facebook to do some fundraising for a little boy named Pranam. About a week before I got to the orphanage he had an accident and caught the sleeve of his shirt on fire, which caused severe burns to his arm and back. He has been in the hospital from over a month now and about a week ago got a skin graft on his back. The volunteers here are trying to raise some money to help cover some of his hospital bills so the orphanage doesn’t have to worry about covering it all. If you want to know more send me a message and I will send you a link.
I just want to thank everyone who has helped out with this, we are getting a better response then we could have ever imagined. If you haven’t donated and are planning to please remember a little bit goes a long ways here.
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