Okay so alot has happened the past week and half

I can't believe it's almost a month. I have a hard time figuring out what day it is.

Let's try to re-cap my week:

The children are now back in school, this is their second week. But BEFORE school started I wanted to do an activity with my boys so they have one last day of fun. I created a "Photo Scavenger Hunt." I brought 3 cameras with me (yeah yeah) and had 2 groups of boys participating, 12 boys on each group. I made a list of things that the boys had to take a picture with; monkey, temple entrance, taxi cab, monk, volunteer from Umbrella, 2 dogs, swings, a buddha, Sugar Loaf House, and boys in a tree.

They didn't seem interested in the activity, that is until I told them that I would take the winning team to the cinemas. Their response was like "mmm...nahhh...I'm tired...oh...oh...uh...ohhhh...ahhh, cinemaaaaaa?? ahhh...yeeeees...yeeeees!!!" I got them locked dowwwwwn. So they're getting antsy to leave the house and start this game. I thought it would take them the whole day because a lot of these destinations are far away from each other. So I went back to the volunteer house to do my laundry. I got on the roof to hang dry my clothes and I heard a lot of boys yelling. I looked over and saw some of my boys running to each place, I even saw one of them limping. 20 minutes later, both teams came back to me at the exact same time. The winning team got 6/10 right, and the losing team got 4/10, mainly because they were missing one boy in the picture. So Team 1 triumphly won the activity and were jumping around the volunteer house.

photo with a monk.

Watching a Nepali film with the boys was an adventure. We walked to the bus station and rode for 15 minutes, and another 10 minute walk to the theater. Bought our tickets and waited for another hour till they open the theater. The line was crazy! I mean...these people are aggressive and eager to get good seats. People are pushing and cutting in front of each other to get into one single line. One stupid bitch tried to shove me and cut, and I was like "Oh hell naw," so I shoved her back at the end of the line and she shouted something Nepali to me. I turned to my boys and said "What did she say?" she then noticed that I was a foreigner and not a local and walked away. -sigh- I love my boys, they're so protective over me. After that shove and yell with that lady they formed a circle around me so people wouldn't touch me. It was like having an orphan boy bubble.

I saw a typical Indian film dubbed in Nepalese. The actors can't fight Van Damme style, so when they do an elementary round-house kick, the victim backflips to the ground and agonizes in pain. All of sudden it jumps into a 15-minute bollywood sing & dance segment. They do this sing-a-long 3 times during the movie. All and all, the film sucked, in need of an editor, but the kids loved it and they love me for taking them.

This is the line at the cinemas.

A few days ago I met a Nepalese guy named Sushil. He was an orphan since he was 6. He is now 19 years old and creates films, music videos, and helps street children stay out of trouble. He invited me to his little school located in Kalimati, 15 minutes from Swoyambhu. We walked into a square and he unlocks 2 rooms, inside was a classroom and a rack of clothes and shoes. He told me that it took him almost 2 years to get this organization happening; he wants to help street kids that live in slums to have an education. There are 22 rescued children, before they were picking plastic bottles in the slums, where all the city trash is. Now they spend half the day picking bottles and the rest at the learning center. All this is paid by Sushil. I also met Divia, she is a Nepali school teacher that is donating her time to this organization.

I didn't get to meet all the children but I was able to help the organization prepare for the 2nd week of school. We moved furniture, brainstormed how to paint the walls, and hand-washed their school clothes. Sushil is a very interesting Nepali country boy. I mean, the way his mind works and his goals are so not Nepali style. I think he is the only Nepali in Nepal that is independent and follows his own dreams. Hopefully I can visit this orphanage again.

Past weekend most of the volunteers and I went on a retreat to Begnas Lake, Pokhara. It took 5 hours to get there by bus. I paid $15 for 2 nights of camping accommodation, dinner, lunch, snacks, BEER, and transportation. Score. A great relaxing weekend. Appreciating beauty each second.

Begnas Lake.

Between those days I work at the volunteer house, creating a new logo, and layouts for the new website for the organization. Also I visited another orphanage in Bouddha that my family friend's own. If you can remember my second post, I visited a Tibetan temple in San Francisco, and the monks there told me about their friend Takaihashi that owns a Lama learning center in Nepal. I phoned the secretary Pachung and I met up with him in Bouddha. He took me to one of their orphanages that had 17 children, 8 boys, 9 girls. He leaves me there for 20 minutes so he can grab his motor bike and take me to the Lama learning center. These children speak Nepali, Tibetan, and good enough English. We played a game of tag and they seemed to enjoy my presence.

Pachung picked me up and we rode to the Lama learning center. Currently there are about 20 young monks in the school with 2 teachers. In May they will have 40 more monks attending and will need more teachers. I'M GOING TO TEACH TIBETAN MONKS! This is what I want to do. I'm already living my dream, and now this is a dream on top of another. I will start in 2 weeks.

I would like to blog more often and upload my videos, but electricity here SUCKS. 8 hours a day we don't have electricity. So it has been technically difficult. But please check out my flickr, I've been uploading low-res files.

love you guys.