Arielle and Sophie's Guide to Thailand's Transportation System

Hello from Thailand! We know you're jealous, but hey we've been living in mud huts/crazy cities in Nepal for 4 months. Welcome to this special edition of Arielle and Sophie's blog. We figured since we're living the same life at the moment we might as well just write one post :)

Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen a lot, learned a lot, sweat a lot, and eaten a lot. But most importantly, we have ridden on ever single mode of transportation Thailand has to offer.

The beach

Sophie arrived in Thailand right after TbT ended in Nepal. After a cancelled flight, and an interesting bus ride out of Bangkok, she quickly learned that Thailand really is the "Land of Smiles" as a good 5 people offered to help her find her way via iphone, ipad, cell phone. Her journey finally ended in a ride in a family van to her friend's motorcycle to her house. Soph spent a week exploring Bangkok, making new friends (friends=tuk tuk drivers, random travelers, a security guard or 2...), and chilled out on the beach with her friends from high school.

The Himalayas

                                                                                       

Arielle decided to spend another week in Nepal in the tourist town called Pokhara. What was supposed to be a 6 day trek turned into a week of doing absolutely nothing on the lake (this was due to ankle injuries and sickness, none of which happened to Arielle surprisingly). After arriving back in Kathmandu, Arielle took an insane taxi ride through the city to the airport (there was a nepali festival and it was basically impossible to drive through the streets), almost missed her flight, and then sat in the airport for 3 hours cuz of a delay. Might as well leave Nepal in style!

Upon arriving in the Bangkok International Airport, both Arielle and Sophie totally forgot that Thailand is a developed country. We kind of expected something more like Nepal not like NYC. We have basically spent the whole week comparing everything to Nepal (prices, transportation, language, people). There are real roads here with real cars and road rules- its a shocker and makes America seem a little too developed for us...

Scary real street!

Sadly this made us feel a little more at home

On our first day together in Thailand, we took a train into Bangkok to see the sights. We rode in style in the 3rd class compartment on the train- basically the only genuine Thai experience we have had in this country. The best way to see a foreign country is to ride with the locals! We had planned on visiting the Grand Palace  so we took a local bus over to the area only to discover it had closed an hour before. SO we got amazing bubble tea instead and hopped on the famous Bangkok Ferry and rode around for a bit. We explored the Chinatown market and went back over to the train station for a 14-hour overnight train to the north.

The ferry

Chinatown

Arielle on the train!

"Air conditioning" in 90 degree weather

Sophie on the train!

the open bus/truck thing

We arrived in Chiang Mai in the afternoon. Sophie got lost in the city looking for a hostel while Arielle sat patiently in a cafe knowing Sophie would eventually make her way back (she always does). We found a nice place (by our standards as in it had a toilet and running water) and spent the night exploring a really cool market in town. Its going to be weird shopping in supermarkets again. The next day we rode even more exotic forms of transportation. We became best friends with a travel agent at the hostel who got us a good deal (we hope) for a day trek. There were 10 of us- 2 americans, 1 canadian (2 if you count arielle), and 7 Frenchmen. We started out on a weird open bus/truck thing that took us to a random trail that we hiked up to a beaufitul waterfall where we swam and relaxed for awhile.

the crew

 Then we went to a river where we went "white water rafting" (it was really just floating down the river) and bamboo rafting. THEN- we rode elephants!!! We both rode 1 elephant with the other Canadian girl which explains why there is a random girl in all of pictures. The whole day was epic and we got in everything we wanted to do in Chiang Mai. That night we went to a bar and met some Spanish-speaking Frenchmen so we spent the night practicing the 4 words of Spanish we learned in high school. The point of that story is that we have met some really amazing and interesting people on this trip- we love introducing ourselves to people on the bus/train and hearing their own stories.

feeding the elephant!!

tobacco farm- thats what we get for asking what they grow

The next day, we went to Tiger Kingdom to play with tigers!!! This place stresses that its purpose is to protect the endangered species and they don't harm the animals. We had worked out a deal with our best friend travel agent for a ride to get there. We expected Thailand's version of a Tuk Tuk but then one of the guys who worked there drove up in his huge white SUV just for us! It was our first ride in a real car since the ride to the airport in America. Anyway, at TK you can choose to go in a cage for 15 minutes with baby tigers medium, or large. We decided to play with the large ones cuz it seemed really hardcore (go big or go home). And cuz it was cheaper...hey we just graduated ;)

the mush face!!!!

little baby tiger!!!! we just want to take it home :(

our pimpin ride

The Pai Night Market

After our adventure in Chiang Mai, we headed up to a town called Pai. We had heard from a lot of people that the drive there in the minivan was insane and windy. We thought "we rode in the worst buses in Nepal on unpaved roads- this is a real van with airconditioning on real roads- we can handle it". We were waaaay wrong. Everyone on the bus wanted to die and one of us may have gotten sick on the way back.... (not telling who! rhymes with shmarielle) Pai is pretty much a toursity, hippy town where people walk around barefoot all the time. There was a great night market that we hit up both nights- awesome food (not daal baat!!) and some very cool people.

During the day we rented a motorbike that we had planned on driving to a waterfall. Almost everyone living in Asia drives a motorbike and its a big thing for toursits to rent them for the day to get around. Sophie was pretty good at driving it, but then one of us (cough shmarielle) crashed. Don't worry, just a little scratch on her toe but after that we decided to rent regular bikes :) 

We had heard that the ride to the waterfall was uphill but again we waaay overestimated our abilities. About halfway there on these dinky little bikes with picnic baskets we had to leave them at a hostel and we got a ride in a pickup truck down the road. Along the way everyone kept telling us 2km, 1km (we really have no idea how much a kilometer is) but suddenly we saw a sign that said 4km... About 2 hours later we FINlALLY got to the waterfall. Luckily it was worth it. We swam for awhile, walked around, and then began the journey back. 

We got a ride on the back of a motorbike with some random Thai guy. He was quite the character- showed us that he could drive while standing, go really fast and make people on the street stop to talk to him. We finally got back to our bikes and it only took 15 mins to bike back as opposed to the 2 hours it had on the way! Craziness.

The bamboo hut we stayed in for a night

We went back to Chiang Mai (super fun ride! not) and got on a tourist bus to Bangkok. This was a much better choice then the train. We got into a tuk tuk who took us to Wat Pro- a beautiful temple with a ton of Buddahs. We explored a bit more and then got onto our final train back to Saraburi. Again- rode 3rd class, made some crazy friends, almost died from the heat, but had a lot of fun. 

reclining buddah

When we got to the train station we tried to explain to the motorbike-taxi driver where we needed to go but we were usuing the wrong accent so no one understood us. we spent the next 15 minutes going around the station asking everyone "English? English?" Finally we got that we had used the wrong intonation, they all laughed at us, and we made it back to the house :)

Long story short, if you ever need any advice on how to travel around Thailand using the public transportation system- we are experts.

In 8 hours we are off to Vietnam!!!!

Our best friend (don't worry, we made sure to go off the beaten path all the time!)

     Now that the program is coming to a close, it is time to finish up our groups and start thinking about the leaving process which I will dwell more on in next week's post when it is really the end. For now, just a few anecdotes from the past couple of weeks! We recently had a campaign for women's rights in which the women brought up gender discrimination conflicts in their areas and we brought a speaker to explain what options the women have. About a hundred women came and listened to the speaker and shared how their husbands only send the boys to school, lock the women in their homes sometimes, and continue to use the family's only money on alcohol for themselves. The speaker was a very strong woman herself and encouraged the women to join together and confront their husbands or go to the police because if they do not try then who will. The next day I was at another women's campaign against domestic violence where a police man spoke about these same options. One woman in the group stood up and said that half the time the women go to the police they have to bribe them or the police are friendly with the husband and do not listen. Recently, one of the chief police in Nepal killed his wife which doesn't really send the most "come tell us your wifely problems" to the women of Nepal. Another woman mentioned that when the police do come, they try to mediate between the husband and wife but in these cases after the police leaves, the abuse usually gets worse because he is angry she called the police in the first place. I certainly do not have an answer for these women as didn't the police man but these are all conflicts to consider and only make me want to work in this field even more.
  We recently also made a breakfast with the women from the stone quarry and over 40 women came to our house. They work cutting stones everyday so it was nice for them to take a couple of hours out of their day and come and cook and dance. Some had to walk over an hour to get there and probably lost some money that day for not breaking as many stones but they came anyways and stayed for over 4 hours. Being around these women probably empowers me more than I am able to do for them but either way it was a wonderful day for everyone there. I could talk all day about cultural differences I have experienced but the most clear one came that day when the women could not believe we forgot to bring chilis to put in the salad and one went and came back with over 40 chilis that made my mouth swell and eyes water just looking at them but proceeded to cut them and put every piece in the salad and rice. Women came who had never come to a meeting before and the next day when we had our weekly women, 20 women came instead of the usual 10 and they only came a half hour late instead of an hour! (You take what you can get when it comes to time in Nepal)
  Dancing is something I have never been so good at except for maybe the chacha slide and the salsa I pretend to know but since coming to this village I have learned that when it comes to Nepali dancing, I really don't know  what I am doing and yet I find myself being corned everywhere I am to move my arms and hips to music that does not exist and then watch as the women laugh. At the beginning I thought maybe I was getting the moves and they wanted me to dance because they were impressed but I quickly learned that they woo me with their "Please dance chulebule, you're so good!" (chule bule: naughty goat in Nepali which they still call me eventhough I explained my new name is princess but that just doesn't have the same kick to them) just so they can laugh and then show me the actual way. I soon learned however that because our language barrier is so great, that dancing and laughing are ways to connect without words and the women so want to connect with you that they use these methods. When I looked at in this way, I started to appreciate the beauty of these moments and will actually miss being stopped on the street and be asked to dance. It used to embarrass me but once you have danced on a rice field in front of 40 farmers or at a women's event in front of the Chief of Police of the district, you learn to forget about the fact that you look like you swimming in the air and just have fun with it and dance to the laughter and clapping of the women surrounding you. I may not be able to always tell the women how much I appreciate them and the work they do, but I know I can always make them smile by a simple sway of my hip and for now, that will have to be enough.

New year

Hello again, and happy New Year! There is so much to write but this will be a short one with a few spelling mistakes do to the fact that the internet  and power here have a habit of turning off right before you press 'save'. It has been getting more busy here and now that we only have about a month of volunteering left we are trying to fit in as much as possible. The concept itself seems strange to be throwing lots of events together so we can get them all done before we leave when the people we are working with are here all the time and who have to handle one event every week and then no events for another long period of time. On the other hand, we are trying to provide as much as we can with the time we have and at least most people enjoy the events. Our latest event was a campaign to stand against domestic violence. Women from all of the women's groups we lead all came together and we had speakers from the health post, a police man, as well as a couple of women wjo work in NGOs in the area to come and speak. Each women's group did a song as well and my girl's group (girls age 14 to 20) prepared a small play about the topic that they performed. Many of the problems in this area come from husbands who drink too much and either use most of the family money for alcohol and/or come home drunk and abuse their wives and children. Ironically during the event, a drunken man came over and started yelling and laughing at the women which only proved the importance of the event. one challenge we faced was how to present the part about what to do about the problem. there are few (although it is increasing) places for women to run to and most will not so I am still not sure what a good solution is. I was lucky enouigh to wear a Sari that one of the women lent me and felt like a Nepali queen (minus the Reebok sneakers on my feet, waaay too cold for flipflpos). It was definitely a challenge to walk gracefully in, and I was definitely put to shame as I moved like a penguin and looked up to see 15 women coming down the mountain as if it were a runway. Despite the complexity of the topic, the women seemed to enjoy themselves as did the volunteers and any excuse for the women to dance and for me to wear a Sari is one we all will take.
    Two weeks ago I went to visit a very interesting NGO that helps women who have been burned by their family members and it really threw me for a loop. When some women in Nepal get married, they move into their husband's parents house and there is usually problems with the mother- in-law, in terms of jealousy, or it may be that the wife's family was not able to pay enough dowry for the husband's family's liking. In the most extreme cases, women are doused in kerosene and lit on fire by their husbands and the mother in law is usually there to encourage it. If the woman does not die, she is sometimes taken to the hospital where she is dropped off. Some women have no one to even come back for them and the hospital tries to find some alternative but let's just say the social services int his country are quite minimal. The women are told to say it was a suicide attempt as to not get their "families" in trouble and they are usually shunned from their communities. The woman may be blamed for not being a good wife or daughter-in-law and the topic is very taboo. When I asked the nurse at the hospital what the leading cause of the burning came from she replied, "Poverty". Last time I checked there are plenty of poor people all over the world who have nothing to do with burning at all and it is a shame that the nurses cannot even talk about what is really going on. Luckily there are a few NGOs to help the women and the burn ward int he hospital looked like they have some good services. To be fair, this also only happens farther out in certain villages and the number is decreasing. I am not really sure what to make of it all but it certainly made me appreciate my family relations a lot more and think about the concept of divorce and marriage as well. As crazy as it may be in the United States, at least for many there is a way out. Since divorce is also somewhat taboo here, extreme measures can be used and a common theme I keep running into is how important lucky most of us are to have the power to choose most aspects of our lives (more to come on this topic in the future).
       This past weekend i went to a Nepali festival for New years and it was nice to see that most of the people there were actually Nepali, and the tourists were outnumbered. On the bus ride over, there were no seats so I sat on the floor. As time went on, I moved positions four times as each time someone tried to make space so that my seat would be a little more comfortable. Each time I found myself next to someone else with a different story and it was so nice to see how many people were looking out for me so I would be more comfortable. My most terrifying spot was the one next to (or should I say on top of) the driver in which he let me help him move the gears. For those of you that do not know, I just got my license, and let me tell you that road test is nothing like driving a Nepali bus on a road where there are no lanes. After a couple of nervous giggles and just slightly avoiding a crash, one of my first friends who was sitting on the seat net to me from the floor offered to share with him and the person next to him and I figured it would be better to be smushed than, well who knows. the long ride was worth it because that next morning i was able to see the sunrise over the Himalayas in colors that I did not even know existed and it was a very special new years. I hope you all have a happy and fulfilling New Year!

The NGO race

Internet is getting less and less for me so I apologize for the infrequency but I will do the best I can and just make them a little longer. I have now been living in my village for about 3 or 4 weeks and most of the projects and groups are underway. I am working in a girl's group twice a week in which we meet with about 18 girls from the village to have fun and also discuss more womanly topics that the girls do not necessarily have another outlet for. Many are very shy when it come to sharing their own experiences, but when you say something about yourself or how you feel they are always interested and agree if they feel the same. In one of the women's groups we decided to paint with the women and give them some time to just sit and look at the beautiful surroundings and paint what they saw. We come and look around and take our pictures and sit in awe at how green and serene the setting is for us but for these women this is their home and their work and probably do not even have he time to appreicate it. At first some of the women stared at us with these brushes and then they began to paint and paint. With only two or three colors for each women dropped into the egg cartons we had been using for our breakfasts, each woman did her own impression of the tree in the distance or the flower next to her and it was so nice to watch. We tried to play some soothing music (for the record Nepali women are not the biggest Adele fans, I know, shocking), but it was slightly hard to set the mood when there are 19 women painting with 10 children, two babies, and three machetes for cutting the rice surrounding them. In the end we had over 30 paintings of all types of aspect of nature, each one more impressive than I could ever make (which does not say much because I can barely even draw a circle, but you get the idea). They all seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves because for once the activity was just about them and although it is not likely hey will go home and become the next Van Gogh, maybe a few of them were just a little bit more proud of themselves for the work they had done.
  I am teaching English to a couple of the girls from that group at six in the morning because that is the only time they have free and it is so refreshing teaching students who want to learn.  Many of the girls had to drop out of school to help with the family at a young age so although they are 16, they are much behind other people their age. I am also teaching teachers at a public school nearby ( meaning n top of a half hour hike up a mountain which for Nepalese people seems to mean right around the corner) and I have to come to understand how truly difficult English really is. There are so many rules and exceptions to the rules that are so ingrained in my mind but so challenging to teach. The class is made up of the principal and five other teachers who all have different levels of English and it is fun to watch this role reversal of teachers as students copying each other's work, shouting out answers when it is not their turn, and of course every time they want to reenter the classroom asking us "Miss, May I come in?" just as their students would do.
  I am still trying to figure out the balance between where we as volunteers fit into the community and even more so into the volunteering role in general. NGO's have set up a complicated relationship with communities and in some areas have almost put organizations against eachother instead of working together. While at a women's group in the stone quarry I work with, one woman told us that another NGO has given the women pigs for income generation ( a term that gets used many times by a lot of people in this area but only few know what it actually means) and that our organization has only provided knowledge and questioned where that has  gotten her. She wants physical and monetary things and looked at us in that moment as if she was the queen and we had not brought her the shiniest jewels. To me, it seems as if the process of giving in many respects is dis-empowering the women because it makes them dependent on the NGO and also makes some of them believe that money will be the key to fix them all of their problems. In many cases it will, being able to provide more food, better education for their children. However, it will not cure the HIV that they may have and not even know about it and it certainly will not stop their husbands from beating them at night. This is where knowledge does become a key role and if they know about where to get tested or how to use self defense, that could also greatly improve their lives. We are trying to slowly work with other NGOs in the area so that maybe a joint program with an emphasis on knowledge and with some financial backing so that a more sustainable, well rounded plan can be established and it is not a matter of which NGO is giving the best deal but rather a group of people with a common cause (The NGOs and the women), all working together. I will keep you updated on the progress ( if there is any).  Sorry about all of the run on sentences and spelling errors! I can just see my sister's edits she would make. Miss you all!
Food for thought: At one of the girl's groups this week, we discussed the body of a woman, in regards to hormonal changes, the period, and pregnancy. Although the group is shy, we still asked if anyone had questions and I was surprised to see that one girl raised her hand. She asked "Why do so many babies die at birth?" The doctor we had invited to speak paused for a moment, not sure how to answer such a question and then used the only approach she saw fit, the medical, doctor voice we all hate to hear "There are many factors that can cause..." Although the answer was certainly appropriate, those of us in the room knew that in that moment the girl was probably thinking about a lot more than just the medical reasons for the loss of so many babies.

A mud hole

I know it has been a while since last I posted and they will only become less frequent because I have finally moved to the village of Mahadav Besi! There is no internet there so I will post when I have access to a computer. The village is really beautiful, hard to describe but there are rows of fields that almost look like green pyramids carved into the mountains. There are seven of us in one mud house. When we arrived it almost felt like we were young children who stumbled across an old house in the woods and decided to make it a play house only we decided to actually live in it for almost 3 months. The monsoon had ruined part of the house, and no one had lived there
in over 5 months, so it was time to clean things up. There was a hole in the roof of my room as well as the ceiling of the people below me and as fun as it to play will I fall through or won't I, we needed to close it. It turns out that one of the best muds to make a sturdy floor is, you guessed it, buffalo manure, which can only be properly mixed by, you guessed it, our hands. My friend reminded me to really get out all of the "lumps" as if this experience wasn't scarring enough but in the end, it was kind of exciting to help build my own floor, whatever materials may have been used.
  Most people in my group are extremely proactive and have worked really hard to make the house a home and someone even made a small clay oven outside along with a hammock. Someone even tried to create a tap in the bucket shower so it could be even closer to taking a real one. Every night the power goes out for about an hour and a half right as we are cooking dinner but everyone wears their headlamps and just keeps on chopping, and I must say I have become quite the master of peeling potatoes in the dark and still have all of my fingers.
Sometimes I feel like I am in one of those museums that has the exhibits where you can dress up and pretend to cook in a kitchen from the 18th century but then I realize this is how all of my neighbors in the village are living today. We have three Nepali staff who work with us and come with us to all of the meetings to translate as well as
provide their own knowledge. They are so warm and helpful and the people love them just as much as we do. We have not started actually working in the groups and communities yet because we are still observing them all and trying to figure out what role we will play and how helpful we can be in such a short amount of me. I will be working
mostly with a girls group in which they can hopefully speak out things that may be embarrassing or not openly discussed in their society normally in a safe place, working in a theater group and choir at a school, and in 3 women's groups as well discussing a variety of topics. One of the women's groups is located in the stone quarry in
which the women work to break stones everyday to be sold and they are migrant workers that live in very small tin and plastic structures near the quarry. They lead a  challenging life but today we had our first meeting and the women shared a lot and even laughed for most of the time and told us they felt very comfortable in this setting so I am excited to see what we can accomplish or at least provide an hour a week for them to relax and talk about any issues on their minds.  Although some of us feel at times that we do not have so much to do in the village and that our groups meet so infrequently, there is something so comforting about being able to walk around the village and have people call out your name from fields away just to say hello and how are you, knowing its the only words you truly know in their language. Although some of the bigger goals I had in mind might be harder to accomplish in the amount of time I have here, there is so much for me to learn here about myself, the land, and of course the communities and I look forward to see what the next 2 and a half months will bring. 
     Food for thought: We had a couple of girls come over to the house during our last days of training from the youth group and they asked us to share what the youth do in our own countries. One group of Israelis did a small skit showing games they like to play and explained about strong the youth groups are there to which one girl said " That all looks like fun, but when do you all find time to work in the day?" No one knew how to answer and then someone finally tried to begin to explain how in Israel and America a lot of children do not work at such a young age and for those who do it is sometimes more for their own "piggy bank" and rarely to pay for the groceries for the family. There are obviously many who must work as well but for most of us in our group and in our social circles this is not the case and it made a lot of us think about our own childhoods and how working at that ice cream shop in the summer to pay for a new iphone maybe was not so bad after all.

A Winding Road

    This week we finally had the chance to visit the third location that some people may be working at. The village is 8 hours outside of Kathmandu and the only way to get there is go through a winding road in which there really is only one way. Buses honk their musical horns to let others know they are coming around the bend and if another one is coming also then both must slow down and pray that they both make it through because the alternative is one going off the cliff. When we finally arrived in the village, we looked around at the beautiful scenery and realized just how high in the mountains we really were. At this point we were used to the welcome ceremony in which we receive tika, usually a red powder mixed with rice, placed on our foreheads (and my nose somehow every time) and flower necklaces. We were staying with host families which I was slightly nervous about with my lack of Nepali language skills but excited about as well. The family lived in a beautiful mud house that the father had built and had two sons who spoke some English that made it easier to communicate. The mother used an open fire in the middle of the house to cook the food and to warm the house as well which caused a lot of smoke to fill the house, so much so that I had to leave the room when I went down the small stairs to breathe in some fresh air.
    My favorite member of the family was the grandfather or Hajur Bua, a small man with just one tooth, who wore an old  blazer from who knows where, and a pair of shorts, in 10 degree weather, and still managed to smile and laugh every time I said any word in Nepali. We learned so much about life in the mountains and how much agriculture controls these communities' lives. We met the incredible youth group there that has meetings once a week and have already helped reduce alcoholism in the community just by raising awareness of its causes. The school we visited has to be moved within the next 6 months because if it is not, it will be washed off the area with the next monsoon season. It was inspiring to see how far they have come but there is still a lot of work to be done. With no internet and very unstable electricity, we were able to really understand the power of disconnecting and focusing on the moment, and see how much more it brought families together.  There were definitely no TV dinners in sight. On our way home we stopped at a hospital hat seemed to be quite impressive and supposedly offers lots of free treatments for all kinds of needs. I couldn't help but think if they had this kind of hospital ion a place like Ghana how many more people could use and deserve (especially one very special boy) that kind of care but hopefully this is just a model for future cheaper hospitals in many places in the world. This week we find out where we will be placed and I would really be happy in either village, even if one is an 8 hour ride to the capital city so I shall keep you updated as I find out as well as add more photos.
   I seem to have forgotten to mention the monkeys that live near our house here. At first they seem exotic and exciting as previously mentioned but after the latest attack, I know longer hold that special love for them. I had been warned that they like to take people's biscuits or plastic bags but did not think much of it. As my friend and I were walking to the Monkey temple, I was carelessly swinging my biscuits in the air until a monkey jumped in front of us. he basically put his monkey hands on his monkey hips, just like the high school bully in Full House waiting for Stephanie's lunch money ( for those of you unaware of the reference I apologize but you get the idea). I naturally started shrieking which led him and his monkey accomplice to start circling us until I threw the biscuits in the air as he jumped to catch them. He then proceeded to eat every single one in my face and lick the wrapper just to be obnoxious. For the rest of the day I had monkey anxiety and could not be near them without wondering if I would be jumped or not. I know this is all part of the process and hopefully next time I will be able to keep my biscuits and teach the monkey a lesson. For now I'll just hide my food under my coat. Monkeys: 1 Sophie : 0

Another interesting and thoughtful week. My Nepali language teacher gave me the initial Nepali name of "Bhuddimaya" which if said correctly could mean wisdom but if said with the wrong emPHasis on the wrong syLLable (yep, just quoted that movie), means old lady. The good news is the Nepalese people I spoke to got a great laugh this past week as I tried to say my name, the bad news is I do not know how to say it correctly, so I just asked to change it. My new name then became chulbule, meaning small goat, implying someone who is chatty and always moving around (later found out to mean naughty). My teacher laughed a lot and hugged me as she gave it to me, which one would think would imply a good name, but as I slowly started telling local Nepalese people what it was, they were just laughing, no hugging, so it may be time to just stick with Sophie. Finally, a girl in the village we visited gave me the name Imani, which was the name of a princess I am told so that sounds like a safer bet to me.
      The big adventure of this week was bungee jumping off of a bridge about 4 hours from here. Ten of us went and it was quite an exhillerating experience. I went last in my group and spent a half an hour on a bridge with 10 Nepali men, 2 girls from China, and 2 from India. We all did not know each other but had this commonality of potentially jumping to our deaths in the upcoming minutes. There is nothing like a little fear to connect everyone real fast. I suddenly pretended to know meditation as I led a small exercise that people actually followed. We started singing (okay I started singing) "I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid, to take a stand.." and the boys started singing a Nepali song. By the end we were all cheering for each other and there is nothing like standing at the edge of  a bridge as 10 random people shout Sophie, Sophie! The empowering moment was slightly interrupted by the man in charge who could see my attempted confidence and properly shut it down with the comment "Great day to fly, even better day to die"....but overall it was completely worth the fear and the free falling feeling is one I highly recommend.
     Yesterday we made our way to one of the villages that 7 people will be working at, Mahadebesi. We danced with the women's group, visited a school, and saw many other products of all of the past volunteer group's work. As we watched how far the village has come, I wondered what work was still left to be done and what could I personally provide that hadn't been thought of already. When we visited the stone quarry, one of the women asked us, " What are you here to actually do? Or are you just here to take pictures?" After spending a day going to so many ceremonies in which everyone was clapping and explaining all of the wonderful things people have done it was a slight slap in the face, but a very honest question that caused many in the group to think about their true purpose here. Hopefully as we actually start working in the villages the answers will become clearer but regardless the village was a beautiful place with lots of strength and lots of potential for growth which was exciting for them to show and for all of us to see.