Greetings from Thamel!

Well it's the weekend, at that can mean one thing and one thing only.... parties in Thamel!!!! For thsoe of you that don't know, Thamel is the tourist district in Kathmandu. It's the most expensive place in Nepal and is full of good times around every corner. Basically you can buy anything here that you need, for example, yesterday I broke my sunglasses and bought a pair of Oakleys (fake) for 500 Rs (roughly $7 CDN).

This week was rather interesting. Bus strikes and road blocks caused grief for me most days this week. As I've said before, I live in a little town called Banepa and work in another town called Bhaktapur which is comparable to the distance between Coquitlam and Pitt Meadows. I ride the bus in every day sitting on the roof because I can't fit inside the buses in this country. Anyhow, on Wednesday there was a college student protest and my bus was forced to take a different route and I got lost.... I got on the bus around 9:30am and arrived at work at 1:45pm after walking around hell's half acre. Thursday was the worst because the bus system worked perfectly in the morning.... but in the afternoon there was a total strike going on. I left my work in Bhaktapur at 2:00pm and had to walk uphill all the way back to Banepa in the glaring sun (pretty bad sunburn). I got home around 5:30pm, but halfway there I was invited into this little old women's cafe for a drink. I had a coke (soft drinks here are always clean and harmless) but I was very embarrassed when she offered me water, because I didn't know if it was filtered or not. I closed my eyes, took a risk, and took a gulp.... it was cold and satisfying. It's been two days now and I'm just as strong as ever, so I figure I got lucky.

I'm heading to the Durbar square here in Kathmandu in an hour and then watching the Dark Knight with the other volunteers tonight.... should be a good day. Keep on making posts everyone, I love reading them all.