I am here!
At the monastery! This is actually happening. I am in the yellow buildings,
eating Tibetan food and surrounded my monks and chanting. It’s been a crazy
couple of days…
The past
three days were VIN’s “induction” period; three days spent learning about
Nepali culture, getting health advice, presentations about the amazing projects
that VIN is involved in, a crash course Nepali (~mero naam Charlotte ho~ TA-DA)
and a crash course on how to teach English (I know all the nursery rhymes in
English now).
The first
of June was the first day of the induction. I had set my alarm to 7:30 am to
make sure that I would be downstairs at 9:30 am; the time that I would meet the
other volunteers and go to the VIN office. I had had quite a bad night; I was
wayyyy too excited to sleep once I arrived at the hotel… clearly I was running
on adrenaline from the great journey I had just undertaken. The hotel was
surrounded by sounds and I swear the pillow was about a meter high and rock hard.
I only got a little bit of sleep and at 7:30 am I woke up as planned… after 30
minutes I was done. There I was with one and a half hours to kill, I was
feeling too insecure and overwhelmed to go wander around the city (by the way,
the hotel is in the middle of Thamel – the tourist Walhalla of Kathmandu) so
instead I just read one of my thousands of books.
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| And of course the first restaurant we go to is a Middle Eastern one... |
At 9:30 am
I went downstairs, I was first, then slowly but surely other volunteers started
coming in. Taylor, a girl from the US, who is studying plants!!! And she’s
doing the internship at the organic farm; which I would love to do someday.
Patrick, also from the US, who had just gotten back from Mt Everest base camp
and is teaching at a public school in VIN’s community. George the eldest of the
group, from Sweden, who is super smart and who I can have the best
conversations with; he is going to be one of the volunteer coordinators. Spyro,
also from the US, whose name I still have trouble pronouncing. He’s self-proclaimed
Buddhist who is also going to be teaching English at a monastery (a different
one). And last but not least Rachel and Colten, two best friends from the US,
who I swear act like an old married couple, they are both going to teach
English at a monastery as well (also a different one from me).
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| George, Pat, Spyro, Colten, Rachel, Taylor and I on the first day! |
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| Doing the obligatory touristy stuff (organized by VIN), Boudha |
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| Obligatory touristy stuff vol. II, Durbar Square |
The evening
of the first day my roommate from the UK, who, funnily enough, is also called
Charlotte, arrived. She was super sick! And I don’t mean sick as in awesome
(well that too) I mean sick as in coughing and barely able to talk sick. And of
course on I went all sister nightingale. Oh my, I swear I am such a freaking
mother… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Remember at graduation when I was
fixing everybody’s hair? Yeah, similar sense of duty I have here, I mothered
over Charlotte the whole three days… when I left to the monastery she was all
like “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you…” AND even more mom-ish, my
backpack literally has everything in it. Need hand sanitizer? Ask Charlotte.
Need wet wipes? Ask Charlotte. Need a light snack? Ask Charlotte… YEP. Actually
no, I’m not like a mother, I’m more like Dora the Explorer, with this short
hair and the bag which magically contains everything… all I need is a monkey,
you just wait till I get to the monkey temple…
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| VIN's director, Bhupi receiving the money that my little brother Mathijs spent 2 months making pencil cases for! |
We spent
the three days at the VIN office getting all these presentations and learning
Nepali. By the end of the days my head was ready to explore from information
overload. And more, it felt as if it was impossible that I had only met all the
staff and volunteers three days before! The volunteers are all so interesting,
and the conversations we have vary from hilarious to very deep, I am glad that
there’s such an awesome group. The VIN people are also really great, I swear,
every Nepali person I’ve met so far is so nice; I don’t even know what to do
with myself. I had a whole conversation with the man at the front desk of the
hotel the first morning. Then there’s the driver, Akkal, who has the best music
in his car, you can hear his car blasting music from a mile away (we may or may
not refer to his car as the party car), I asked what music it was and it turns
out its Nepali folk music (what else would I be interested in…). I told him
that I loved the music and he’s all like “oh just bring a USB and I will put
all the songs on it for you”… well if you insist sir. Then at the VIN office we
had lunch each day during induction. The food is SO good! I went to find the
cook so I could give her some compliments. I get to the kitchen and we end up
having a whole conversation. I asked her if she had the recipe of the food we
had that day and she goes “no, no, it’s in my head, you come one day to the
office and I will teach you how to cook”! Is this really going to happen? I
don’t know. But HELLO I’d love love love to learn how to cook the food… ahhh…
So yes, the
Nepali people are wonderful, and don’t even get me started about what Nepal
looks like. Although Kathmandu is a busy busy city filled with dusty polluted
air (I even got one of those face masks, stylish for life~~~) the country side
is to die for! And although there is poverty everywhere the people manage to
keep a smile on their faces, the culture is just so different, so much more
relaxed. I love it.
Charlotte x
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