Annapurna Journals

We've been back in Kathmandu for nearly a week now (time flies!!) and we've been busy busy busy!

Amongst other things, I've been preparing the hundreds of photos I took on the trek and cherry-picking the best ones to post in the Gallery section of nepal.ethanfsmith.com. In lieu of writing a lot about the experience here, I decided to try writing a photo-journal on this trip, and wrote captions for just about every photo while we were on the trail. At the moment the photos haven't all been uploaded, but you can explore our first few days here.

Coming back into the chaos that is Kathmandu was surprisingly pain-free after our 19 fantastic days on the trail and an uber-relaxing 18 hours in Pokhara. After unpacking a bit at the boy's home and recovering from an exceptionally long bus ride, we celebrated Christmas eve by grabbing yummy coffee, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate croissants in Thamel (Kathmandu's touristy district -- and home to many yummy bakeries, including our favorite: The Pumpernickle Bakery), and then splitting up for a few hours to do a little Christmas shopping for eachother. We even bought knit stockings ahead of time so Santa would have something to fill :)

This was our first Christmas away from our families, and we are very thankful that we had the opportunity to have multiple video-conferences with loved ones during their holiday festivities and our own. Still -- we missed being around friends, family, and egg nog, and made us excited to be around for the holidaze next year...

Only 5% of Nepalese are Christian, and in Kathmandu Christmas is acknowledged, but not heavily celebrated. At Papa's House, on the other hand, Christmas is a much anticipated event, and the boys here were treated to presents galore under a small tree (at 5am no less), hot chocolate, Christmas movies, and a very festive spirit. The star of this Christmas was a new puppy, a very cute, very soft, very small female mutt the boys decided to name Snowball (picture to come). While we (and the other volunteers) were a bit dubious of this idea at first, Snowball is acclimating to this place very well, and has been under the very good care of Vinod, the 20-something Nepali man-cub who looks after the boys here.

In the days since, Ashley has been researching and visiting a nearby Ayurvedic clinic that she hopes to take a comprehensive course from, and has spent a few days playing with the babies at a government-sponsored orphanage here in Kathmandu (I visited for a bit today -- the babies are so responsive to any attention that is given them that even spending a few hours there was a very rewarding experience).

Meanwhile, I've been compiling photos, piecing together data from research I did on the trek for a pending report, conceptualizing new ideas with Sanu at FoST, and laying the groundwork for the next four months we have to play with here in Nepal (where time is already flying).

We'll reside primarily in Kathmandu for at least the next few weeks while I work closely with FoST and Ashley (hopefully) takes courses at the Ayurvedic clinic. Then we're off to Narti and Trisuli Bazaar to implement FoST products, help with basic health care, and teach what we can about basic resource conservation.

Back in Pokhara

We arrived back in Pokhara a few hours ago from a wonderful 19 days on the trail. We had an amazing time and have many stories to share. We're taking an early bus back to Kathmandu tomorrow and I'll be posting a recap within the next few days.

For now, we're basking in the glow provided by our first hot showers since Thailand, and are about take our guide, Peter, out on the town for his thirty-somethingth birthday.

Namaste!

To the Hills

It became apparent during the our first few days in Kathmandu that Ashley and I needed to escape to the hills sooner than later in order to get a true taste of rural Nepal. While our initial plan was to jump straight into work here, we found ourselves a bit stuck while trying to define and schedule our time over the next five months. The problem? We're hoping to accomplish a myriad of things in rural Nepal, but have no context to base our direction or decisions on. Several people recommended we go on a trek (tourist-speak for 'a long walk') to experience another of the culture here. We first planned on a short week-long self-supported trip in the mountains of Langtang, to the north of Kathmandu, leaving November 29. However, when another volunteer at Papa's House, Krish, invited us to come with him on a guided trip around the Annapurna Circuit, we quickly decided we didn't have any good reasons to say "no." We were planning on doing this trek in the spring because December is a bit past the recommended season for this route, but since weather here has been holding a pretty nice sunny pattern, we all figured (guide service included) that we would be good to go.

The guide service we're working with, Alps in Nepal, has a deal with NOH, in which 10% of the fees from volunteers who trek with the service go back to NOH. After spending a bit of time talking them down to an all-inclusive fee we could all chew on, we were told a realistic start-date for this 20-day trip wouldn't be until the following Wednesday, December 3. As we soon found, we'd need every one of those extra days in Kathmandu in order to learn some basic Nepali, visit a few of the tourist areas (finally!), replicate our documents, extend our visas, replace my walk-around lens (the aperture stopped working intermittantly .. probably due to some Thai & Nepali grit), buy snacks for the trail, do laundry, track down some Nepali kayakers who will be here in the spring, and have a few more meetings with Sanu at FoST. The horrible traffic, short days, and unpredictable power outages in this city make errands take a LONG time, and getting around is a bit draining.

We miraculously managed to finish up all of our tasks tonight, and are all packed and ready for our 6 AM departure towards the west.

Being a client on such a straight-forward hike is really strange for me .. I have almost always been a guide or independent in similar situations .. and I'm really weirded out by the porter-factor. Granted, we're going to be lodged and fed in small villages every night of this journey, so we don't need tents or cooking equipment, and we're not doing any climbing, so we don't need any technical equipment, but these guys are still going to be hauling our gear from straps on their foreheads as we, the clients, bobble merrily along with nary a care in the world on our 'holiday.' Perhaps even weirder than the porter-factor: I don't need to worry about ANY logistics.. we all just follow directions and relax. While I feel like all this service takes away from the adventure a bit, it's also the established norm on the Annapurna Circuit, so by partaking in the guide/porter option we're actually getting the 'whole' experience?? Either way, I'm stoked on our guide, Peter, and am really excited to get out of the city for a while.

I'll still be doing some volunteer work while trekking, and had good conversations with Sanu the past few days about things I can start sketching, learning, and sharing while on this mini-adventure. At all of our stops, I'll be interviewing cooks and lodge-owners about the alternative technologies they use to cook food, heat water, purify water, deal with solid waste, etc.. in order find out how some of these technologies can be improved. We're packing a few kgs of Sanu's briquttes to demonstrate where appropriate, and have a host of leaflets, videos (believe it or not, many of these remote lodges have TVs hooked up to solar-panel-powered batteries), and price lists we'll use to try and hawk Sanu's wares. In addition, I'll be experimenting with new solar-cooker forms, and sketching a bunch of ideas that I'll have the chance to build at FoST's shop in Kathmandu upon our return. I'm looking forward to this side project, and think this location will be a great place to learn and think.

A grand schedule for our time in Nepal finally began to emerge from the woodwork today, as Ashley, Sanu, and I sat down in front of a calendar and projected our goals forward. For us, this whole trip has been a study in creating our own multi-faceted adventure, and we're finally at a point where we have enough knowledge and context to start pinpointing some specific projects and needs.

At the moment, we're looking at spending another few weeks in Kathmandu upon our return, during which time I'll be primarily working with Sanu on refining existing designs and (hopefully) creating a few new ones, and Ashley hopes to take a two-week course in Ayurvedic healing. In late January through early March, we're looking at spending time in and around Trisuli Bazaar and Narti. In Trisuli, Ashley will shadow in a clinic, and I'll focus on introducing and implementing Sanu's briquette stoves to one of the schools NOH supports in a village that is a two hour hike from the main town. NOH helps support a home for rescued Kamlari girls in very-rural Narti (located in south-central Nepal), and we will help arrange a FoST workshop there, so that the rescued girls can learn to make briquettes from waste and produce a fantastic alternative to the wood currently used for cooking and boiling water.

Come mid-March our former housemate, Austin, is planning to visit us for two weeks, and we'll probably go off on a fun climb somewhere. We're saving April for project wrap-ups .. and who knows what else .. there are a lot of cool potentials in the pipeline.

We won't have any computer or internet access while we're on the Annapurna Circuit, so wish us the best, and check back just before Christmas to see pictures and read stories.. We should be back in Kathmandu December 23.

Cheers!

FoST Workshop

We spent our first three days here observing a workshop put on by FoST (Foundation for Sustainable Technologies), one of the organizations we're planning to work with, on how to make cooking briquettes from waste materials. The workshop provided us a wonderful way to get to know Sanu Kaji, the founder of FoST whom I've been corresponding with, become acquainted with the briquette-making process, and interact with the nearly forty urban and rural Nepalese men and women in attendance. The workshop was held at a building that was still under construction at the new bus station in Kathmandu (Gongabu Bus Park), and we took over one side of the concrete roof (soon to become the floor of the second story).

The workshop was sponsored by two Rotary clubs, and most attendees were members of various Nepali organizations who received a stipend to attend the conference with. Nonetheless, it was encouraging to see just about everybody get down and dirty on the Bus Park roof as we manually pulped office paper, cut up long grass and sticks into tiny bits, mashed it all into a slurry with our bare feet, squeezed the water out and created briquettes with simple presses, and left everything to dry in the hot winter sun. The resulting briquettes are far more efficient and long-lasting than wood, create 70% less smoke than wood, do not contribute to deforestation, are the least expensive fuel option on the Nepalese market, and can be produced by rural villages from their waste materials and other quickly renewing resources (grasses/nuts/etc..).

On the first evening of the workshop, Sanu Kaji invited Ashley and I over to his place in Thamel for a drink and dinner. After a taxi-ride through the worst grid-lock of my life, a stop the butcher, and a harrowing game of follow-the-leader through more dark-crazy-crowded-narrow streets, we sat down in Sanu's sitting room and ate a delicious traditional meal prepared by Sanu's wife (using a chicken we picked up from the butcher just before), drank deliciously smooth homemade whiskey, and talked about projects to come in the months ahead.

By the end of the workshop Ashley and I had made friends with a bunch of Nepalese folks, two other volunteers (a Frenchman who seems to be involved with every NGO in Nepal, his Japanese
girlfriend, and a Shell employee from Singapore who is helping Sanu with marketing), and the FoST crew. It was great to watch the pride participants took in their work, and they were properly rewarded during a closing ceremony, complete with certificates signed by the dignitaries from the Rotary.

All in all, this was a really fun way to be introduced to 'real' Nepal, and set us up well for a productive experience with FoST.

Beruit by day; Bethlehem by night

Looks like we made it through the airport in Bangkok just in time! A few days ago the anti-government protesters blocked a main highway to the airport, two days ago saw two blasts in the terminal, and yesterday both of Bangkok's airports were shut down, delaying hundreds of flights and putting the whole region on edge. Meanwhile, we've spent the last week getting into the on-again off-again groove of Kathmandu.

On the surface this city is large, noisy, and dirty. The smog is thicker and more acidic than I ever imagined smog could be. The roads are a chaotic honking free-for-all where pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, cows, goats, and dogs all compete for space. You can't drink the water, the showers are cold, the power is sporadic, dogs bark all night, and most buildings aren't heated. Yet there is something about this town and its people that has been drawing me closer day after day, a warm embrace that beckons us to extend our stay and return often. The people here are kind, thoughtful, skilled, and remain deeply connected to their cultural roots. A lot of delicious food (from rice to wheat to cows, goats, and chickens) is grown and raised within the city limits, and I imagine that the bulk of our intake the past week has originated within fifteen miles of here. Because the bulk of the population is poor, material possessions are often prized and taken care of, and almost nothing (except for packaging) is discarded.

The inherent problems of pollution and waste that have come from diesel engines, brick-making factories, incinerators, and western packaging seem insurmountable. The costs involved to institute a waste management program and clean-air standards are beyond the scope of this poor nation. But with small groups of committed citizens at work all over the Kathmandu Valley, I feel there is some hope that this city will one day have clean streets and be clear-aired.

We've been staying at the volunteer hostel portion of NOH's Papa's House 2 (above the boys home--a girls home, Papa's House, is just up the road). Here we've shared the top two floors of a very nice building with between five and seven other volunteers hailing from the States, England, France, and Sweden, and here for a variety of durations and purposes. Most of us share a common bedroom, and we all share a bathroom, kitchen, and office. The place is actually much plusher that either of us had imagined it would be. Downstairs live 24 boys between the ages of five and fifteen, supervised by their "daddy," Vinod, a native of Kathmandu in his early 20s, and several didi's (female caretakers). The boys are a riot, and have been a lot of fun to play with, teach, and learn from. Most of them speak pretty decent English, so they've been easy to communicate with, and have helped us learn our first few Nepali phrases.

As I write this Ashley is over at the girls house with another volunteer, Tamra, helping to teach an art class to the girls who haven't yet been admitted to the local private primary school, Skylark, where most of the boys and girls spend their days Sunday thru Friday (Saturday is the day of rest here). With the exception of Michael Hess (Papa), males aren't allowed in the girl's home, so my only interactions with the girls have been in their courtyard and on the way to school. They seem like just as much fun as the boys.

Vacation Squared

A frustrating series of logistical miracles led us from a relaxing oil massage in Ton Sai to a missed shuttle connection in Ao Nang to an overcrowded taxi-pickup to the Krabi Bus Terminal (home to lots of buses) to a last-second taxi ride to the Krabi Port (unlikely home to only one bus -- ours) to a nearly missed VIP bus towards Bangkok to a 2:30 am transfer to a local government bus in Pran Buri to a much needed and fantastically comfortable bed at our friend Rob's house in Hua Hin.

Our time in Hua Hin proved to be an unexpectedly luxurious vacation from our vacation. Our hosts Rob (fishes with Ashley's father in Alaska), his girlfriend Jai, and their golden retriever Tuk-Tuk, took on the role of tour guides as they showed us around town, introduced us to their favorite haunts and restaurants, watched hours of movies with us in their beautiful house, and woke at an ungodly hour to drive us to Bangkok for our flight to Nepal.

Hua Hin itself is a popular but quiet weekend beach getaway for Bangkok's middle and upper classes, and is home to the vacation palace of the Royal Family. It also hosts quite a few European and American retirees, who can be found wandering the streets at all hours in their Hawaiian shirts, khaki cargo shorts, and faded loafers. Lots of small shops and restaurants line the streets, and a few small malls and markets host hundreds of merchants hawking the same merchandise that can be found all over town.

We found an exceptionally large ratio of ice cream shops per capita .. no matter where we were, a Swensons (really good sundaes), Haagen-Daaz, Baskin Robbins, or Dairy Queen was never far. Of course, a two-scoop cone at Haagen Daaz cost about twice as much as one night of lodging in Ton Sai (but it was sooo worth it)!

Thailand's road systems are all influenced by silly British ideas, and getting around town was a really weird experience. While everyone drives on the 'wrong' side of the road (I can handle this), and traffic rules are rarely heeded (I can also handle this), there are only rarely places to turn right across any main highway, and streets off the highway are rarely interconnected. Thus, u-turns were a mandatory and very frequent maneuver wherever we were going. I see the advantages to this system........ but it was just so weird.

On our second day in Hua Hin, Rob and Jai took us an hour south to Prachuap Khiri Khan, home to the 'Monkey Temple.' A hill sits between a monastary and the sea. Sitting at the top of 396 stairs sits a small temple/shrine complex with a beautiful view of the surrounding area. Living on the hill are roughly 4,000 monkeys, many in dubious health, and ALL of them very interested in tourists and their food (imagine being inside the monkey-house at an old school zoo...). A six or seven year old Thai boy, Pun, adopted us as soon as we got out of Rob's truck and served as our 'tour-guide' as we hoofed our way up the stairs to the temple. This kid was practically a monkey himself, and dealt with the more aggressive monkeys with far more panache than any of us could have mustered. Although a large male approached Ashley on our journey to the top and forcefully stole a bottle of juice from her, most of the monkey's were a bit more passive-aggressive. It was all great fun, but the unpredictability of the monkeys left us all a bit on edge.

That night we were all tuckered out, and after a few rounds of Johnny Walker, we wound up getting sucked into 'The Holiday' and 'Bank Job' from the comfort of Rob's huge and awesome bed/couch. We were so lethargic that we decided to call up a local Italian restaurant for delivery, and gorged on hot linguine, calzones, and gnocchi. For all we knew that evening, we had been magically whisked back to the US.

Food with Rob and Jai was actually pretty funny... for breakfasts and lunches we went to places with traditional Thai dishes, while for dinners we wound up eating Mexican, Italian, and Indian cuisines (as I write this entry from Kathmandu, I am VERY happy we took this world food tour while we had the chance)!

Our inital plan had been to spend a day or two in Bangkok with Rob before flying out. However, we were all having such a good and relaxing time in Hua Hin that we bagged that idea, and drove up the morning of our flight. After getting stuck in a massive traffic jam, retrieving our big bags from the hotel we stayed at our first night in Thailand, battling countless other traffic jams, and driving 180kph at every chance, we made it to the airport with only minutes to spare. Rob -- you rock!

Ton Sai

One week really isn't long enough to fully experience a place, its geography, its food, and its people. So we decided ahead of time that the Thai portion of this trip was going to be focused on relaxing .. a full-on vacation. Ao Ton Sai provided the perfect eden-like setting for just that. We only stayed in Ton Sai for three nights, but eons seemed to pass in that time. The tropical paradise (refer to Di Caprio's 'The Beach,' filmed on a nearby island), complete with multiple species of monkeys, tropical leafy plants and flowers galore, and world-class white-sand beaches, was like a dream .. a world apart from our lives in Portland the week before.

There are no roads to the relatively undeveloped Ton Sai, or the nearby beaches of slightly more developed Railey. Long-tail boats act as taxis between these mainland beaches and Ao Nang, the touristy beach-hub of the small Krabi Peninsula. Powered by diesel engines pulled from old trucks, these long-tail boats (like big gondolas) create quite a racket on the main beaches, but in Ton Sai, only a few pulled in and out each hour.

Ton Sai is surrounded by lush jungle and jaw-droppingly beautiful limestone karst topography. The beach and surrounding area is perhaps best known as a destination for world-class climbers, and everywhere we looked, masters of the sport were making their way up 5.10-5.13 pitches (6a-6d,e,f in the local ratings). There are bolts everywhere (many of them looked pretty sketchy), and anchors usually consisted of a sling wrapped through small natural tunnels the wind and salt had burrowed through the rock. Ashley and I came to Ton Sai with climbing shoes and harnesses, thinking that we might hook up with some other climbers who had a rope and draws. However, we soon realized that most of the climbing here was way over our heads, and we resigned to slightly less-extreme and significantly more relaxing pursuits like reading on the beach, sit-on-top kayaking around the nearby islands and headlands, eating copious amounts of delicious Thai food, and indulging in hours of Thai, foot, and oil massages.

The cost of living in Ton Sai is so low ($8-15/day for a bungalow with toilet, $2-5/meal, $10/hour massages) that many folks come to live and climb here for months or years on end. We talked to one climber from the States who had come over after getting laid off from his job in April, and was living on about $5/day. If I ever decide to focus my life on advancing my climbing skills, this place seems close to ideal.

Of course, there is no questioning that Ton Sai (and the entire region around Krabi and nearby Phu Ket) relies primarily on Western tourism to drive the local economy. Nearly all services are provided by low-paid Thai workers, while the vast majority of those enjoying these services hail from Europe, Australia, Canada, and the States. This juxtaposition was most apparent in West Railey Beach (Ton Sai's next door neighbor), where Europeans enjoyed 4 and 5 star accomodations near the beach, while many of the service workers who tended to them lived in small run-down shacks on the outskirts of the town. While this happens in every resort-oriented area I've ever been in, the phenomenon seemed amplified here because of the contrast in language and skin-color.

Regardless, knowing that this place exists will forever make me smile, and I look forward to the day we might return.

Krabi Town

Since the whole 'fly-to-Krabi' idea only entered our minds a few days before we started our trip, we never had the chance to do much preparatory research on the area. As such, we were geographically blind once we landed, crediting what little we knew to a few paragraphs in a Lonely Planet that had been loaned to us. We'd kind of gathered that we wanted to make it to Ao Ton Sai, one of the least-developed beaches in the area. However, after jumping on a bus (chosen primarily because the ticket-girl for the bus yelled at us a bit less than everyone else) and learning that Ton Sai was a one-hour bus ride plus a 15-minute longtail boat ride away, our waning energy levels and disorientation demanded we get off as soon as possible.

So we found ourselves in Krabi Town, the semi-run-down commercial hub for the surrounding beach-centric tourism industry. In our tired haze we begrudgingly agreed to take the first room that was hawked at us from a few guys sitting in an open-air hotel lobby. At first glance, the place was a total dive. At second and third glance, it was still a total dive. But its saving grace was its distinct lack of bugs, which meant that after a quick internet session and dinner at the night market down the street, we slept like rocks.

The next morning we woke up with the sun to a chorus of our squeaky oscillating ceiling fan and a neighbor's crowing rooster. As necessary as showers were at that point for both of us, the state of the bathroom left us both waiting for a better option. We made a trek around downtown Krabi to find an ATM and check out the scene. The town was just waking up, merchants were slowly opening up their shops, and commuters were buzzing about on scooters, a few tuk tuks, and pickups galore. All the infrastructure was pretty run down, but for the most part, the city was fairly clean.

We stopped at an internet cafe near our hotel that advertised American, English, and Continental breakfasts. When I asked our young waiter what his favorite breakfast was, he reported that he was fond of dim-sum pork and honey, and that no, they didn't serve that (or ANY Thai food) at this restaurant. Promising ourselves a more authentic breakfast soon, we enjoyed a 60 Baht (a bit less than $2) American breakfast instead, complete with eggs, toast, bacon, and instant coffee.

Soon after we rode a bus (really a pickup truck with seats in the back) out of town towards Ao Nang on our way to the promised land: Ao Ton Sai.

More to come...

One Night in Bangkok

After 30+ hours of travel door-to-door, Ashley and I met at 12:30am after the customs rigamarole in Bangkok's glitzy Suvarnabhumi (pronounced Suh-wan-a-poon .. which still boggles my mind) Airport. Since Ash and I used other peoples' frequent flier miles to pay for the trip to Bangkok, we wound up flying on different airlines all the way.. and as chance would have it, our itineraries were exactly the same; we even got to enjoy an overpriced lunch together at San Francisco International! Ashley definitely won out on airplane service with Japan Air though.. with multiple seats to herself, tetris, and frequent ice cream sandwiches throughout! I was a bit jealous of the ice cream......

As I write this fifteen hours later, we're back in the airport about to fly out to Krabi. We'll be back to explore Bangkok with our friend Rob after some much-needed beach-time, but this layover of sorts gave us a great preview of the city, largely defined by cab rides to and fro.

Cab Ride #1 - The Driver/Pimp:

Freshly reunited, Ash and I waited in the longest line of our trip for a cab to take us the 30km from the airport to our hotel. Our driver was pretty quiet, but introduced us to the flock-mentality of driving in Bangkok. Lines on the road? Merely a suggestion. Rear-view mirrors? Only for the meek. Blinkers and horns? A language unto its own.

As soon as we got off the new airport expressway, our driver took us down a dingy industrial street with the largest population of hookers and 18-year old pimps we'd ever seen. He slowed waaaay down a few times and we both silently worried that he was going to pick up one for us ;)

Cab Ride #2 - The Narcoleptic:

After a better-than-expected continental breakfast at our hotel, we hopped into a cab for what we thought would be a quick ride across town to Khao San Road, a street-market and cheap-hotel mecca for low-budget backpackers. Luckily for us, there was bumper-to-bumper traffic nearly all the way there (except for a short stint on a toll-highway), and our driver fell asleep nearly every time we came to a stop. In what turned into a fun game of two-man driving, I had to make a noise to wake him up every time traffic started moving again.

Cab Ride #3 - The Geography Ace:

We quickly accomplished our missions on chaotic, crowded, and fun Khao San Road: talking to a travel agent about flying to Krabi, finding a scarf for Ashley, and buying a new battery for my watch (which I've never really worn before, but am definitely appreciating now).

It was easy to flag our third cab down, and our driver somehow took us back to our hotel in less than half the time it had taken to get out to Khao San Road. Bangkok's geography? Continues to be very confusing.

Cab Ride #4 - Gobama:

We picked up our Thailand-oriented bags from the hotel around 1:30 pm and headed back to the airport. Our driver was the youngest and most talkative of the four, and used his limited English to ensure that we were Obama Supporters, decry McCain as "just like George Bush (boom boom)," and teach us how to say hello, thank you, and good-bye. Awesomeness.

Penny Pinching

On Saturday we headed up to Timberline on Mt. Hood for some very early season turns on Palmer Glacier. It was the first weekend of the season the lift was turned on, and there were a fair number of people doing quick lift-accessed laps (including our three friends Austin, Cara, and Aubrey).

Since we're doing our best to save all our money for this pending trip, Ashley and I decided to avoid the $39 lift tickets and hiked for our turns instead. I'm usually against hiking for groomers, but the cost savings combined with the workout (which we both sorely needed), was well worth it. The beautiful sunny day didn't hurt, either.

(Okay, I have to admit: we did poach one little tiny run from the Palmer mid-station after hiking to the top of the chair twice...)

Matchbox Cars

*Shamelessly stolen pic from Matchbox.com

Yesterday I asked the folks we'll be working with in Nepal if there was anything they'd like me to bring over from the states, such as clothing, med supplies, construction materials for Sanu's technologies, etc..

This morning I got a response from Boo Hess, Michael Hess' sister-in-law who is in Nepal this month with her husband, Peter (Michael's brother, who is the stateside director of NOH). Her report from the orphanage:

". . . As for your offer to bring items. One thing I have thought of as I watch the boys play, and perhaps the others will think of more necessary items, but I see some of the boys have a little Matchbox-size vehicle to play with. The toy is barely in one piece and usually is pulled along by a length of string found on the garbage-strewn road. If by any chance you have a little room in your bag for a few of these little toys, I think the boys who do not have one would really be pleased. . ."

Mom, watch out. I'll be coming home soon to pillage my old basket of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars!

Unexposed

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