Life is Beautiful

These are the words that Som, my new Nepali friend, muttered yesterday morning as we were leaving our hotel at 4:00 am in a monsoon. Of course, we were leaving that early to make up for lost time as the main north-south highway had been closed unexpectedly. I am learning to accept Nepali time, and even enjoying it quite honestly. My guides (three of them: Som, Bal and Kamal) keep asking if I'm going crazy because Nepal doesn't operate on Western time. I love not having a schedule to stick too! So, on our way to our destination we got a flat tire, and then another road was closed. That was a 300 mile detour. Oh well...such is life here, and I am not bothered because I have nowhere to be at any specific time.

The work that we are doing is amazing. I am traveling with ANSWER-Nepal, a U.S. based organization that sponsors "needy, bright kids with parental support" and pays for their private school tuition. It's a brilliant program, seriously. Check out the website above for more information, and even on how you can sponsor a kid and change their life for about $250 per year. I visited about 15 schools in 10 different villages in my unbelievabe tour of Western Nepal.

We have traveled about 1,000 miles in five days. In the last two days we have had FOUR flat tires. I don't think I've had that many flat tires in my life, but it's most certainly the result of the roads (which are terrible). Again, we pull up to someone's house, drink tea, talk with the family while the driver fixes the tire. It's much different than AAA, and much more cordial, I think.

Working with the children is absolutely amazing. In every single one of the villages that we have gone to I have not seen one other white person. The kids look at me like I'm an alien, then the smile, put their hands together in prayer position and bend their heads and say "namaste." I have so many photos of children that have touched my heart forever. Hopefully I can upload some of them soon (but not tonight as my internet cafe closes in five minutes). They all want their photos taken and then I show them on my digital camera. It's the most amazing piece of technology they have ever seen.

Tonight we are in Nepalganj, a small town near Lumbini where Lord Buddha was born. (They all like to remind me of that). Tomorrow we will visit two schools and then head back to Kathmandu, of couse, that is a schedule change because another road to western Nepal has been damaged by the monsoons. I'll bet this is our 12th schedule change...

UPDATE: Last night as I had just typed the above copy and was literally JUST pressing publish, the power failed. So here I am again, on my dial up connection, in beautiful Nepal. And, it just took me 45 minutes to get to the page to hit publish again. If you're reading this, it worked!

Ah, life is beautiful. And, not living by my watch is pretty magnificent too!