New country

Kenya!  Awesome!

Earplugs

Why do I feel like I am always wearing earplugs..?

UBC Medical Students Going to Nepal

Wow!  I am so envious of the students from UBC medical school who are going to Nepal this summer.  I wish I was going there again too!  It would be great to be there at the same time.  I just had a great meeting with them about what to expect in Nepal.  It was so fun to talk about it with them - I could have stayed for hours.

It made me remember so many little details of my time there and it was fun to reminisce.

I came up with a few things that I would tell anyone traveling to Nepal to bring and to think about:

• bring slippers - the houses and rooms are chilly and it's nice and warm to have them
• bring a warm hoodie or sweater - same reason (PAHS is COLD!!!)
• earplugs - the dogs bark all night and you won't be able to sleep well without them
• hand sanitizer
• shoes you don't care about as they will get very worn and dirty (or buy some cheap ones there)
• don't bring white clothes that you love - they will get dirty and stay pretty dirty
• lights (headlamp etc) for walking at night and for load shedding (power outages)
• bring a few passport photos - for your visa at the airport, cell phone purchase, trekking, other?

Things to think about while in Nepal:

• Buy a cell phone (there is a place right across from Patan Hospital) + SIM + recharge card - you will need a photocopy of your passport photo page, your visa passport page and a passport photos - it's worth it because everyone communicates by cell phone
• momos are fantastic!
• The food at the cafeteria in the hospital is very good

So many more things - I will have to write a document to send around I think!

More countries!

Switzerland
Latvia
China

Sorry, but I am amazed by this!

Water Bottle in my office at PAHS

There was a water bottle that was left on the desk in the office that I shared with Prasil at PAHS.  This is what it said on it:

The Flower spoke

of Gods

In Languages

of Rainbows.

I would stare at it everyday.  Many people seemed to have this same water bottle.

Home

Well I have been home for a couple of days now and it's been a bit sad.  Jetlag is hard to get over and coming back to reality is always hard.  After being away in a place so different than here I am finding it hard to readjust.  I have to go back to work tomorrow and have a very busy week ahead of me.  Then I am leaving again for a conference on Sunday.  I think my cats are going to hate me...

Now that I am home I am even more struck by the differences between teaching in Canada and teaching in Nepal.  Joan and I are running a PBL Tutor Training workshop today and Thursday and it will be interesting to see the contrast.  I will write about it all later!  I am also meeting with some UBC medical students this afternoon from all 3 sites to talk to them about Nepal before they go there themselves this summer.  It will be fun to discuss these differences with them too!

Countries viewing my blog to date

I really love the stats option on my blog.  I love imagining the people in those countries around the world reading it!

Here are the countries that have viewed my blog:

Canada
Nepal
Unites States of America
United Kingdom
Germany
France
Australia
Malaysia
Russia
Japan
India
Vietnam
Kuwait
Israel
Thailand
Belgium
Finland
Norway
Spain
South Korea
Singapore
Hungary

and counting..!

Sonrisa Orphanage

After coming back from trekking with my guide Bishnu, we planned to meet up again the next day at his orphanage in Kathmandu.  Sonrisa Orphanage Kathmandu

I fell in love with the children instantly!  What an amazing group of kids - so talented and sweet!  They played music and danced for us and it was fantastic to watch.  We only had a little bit of time to spend there with them and I didn't want to leave.

I am planning to spend time at Sonrisa when I return to Nepal next year.  I just heard from Carol-Ann that some of our UBC medical students will split their time between PAHS and Sonrisa when they go to Nepal this summer - so great!

I thought I would share some photos from our short visit of Bishnu and the kids.

Leaving Kathmandu-strange airport procedures

I am in yet another airport lounge here in LAX waiting for my flight to Vancouver. I am reminded of some of the strange things that the security at the airport in Kathmandu did.

As soon as you walk in the airport, your bags have to go through a large x-ray machine. Then you have to check in and go upstairs. We went to the lounge and it was actually pretty nice! Then you have to go through security before heading to the gate. The security line splits people based on gender. Although it is strange, I could understand the rationale. If there needed to be a pat down, I would need a female security officer, so we all might as well be in the same line. Okay. After going through the security, and not having to take out your laptops by the way, you head over to female officers who then root through each bag you have and stamp your boarding pass. So, my bags have been through 2 machines and now a 3rd manual inspection. So we go down to the gate and people are lining up at a door that heads straight out to the tarmac. Suddenly, a man signals for us to follow him and move up in the line! Great! No, not great, strange. Only the women were being herded that way. They were once again separating us based on gender...to board the plane? Does that make any sense? No. No, it does not. But wait! Just before we head out to the tarmac we were subjected to yet ANOTHER manual pat down. Seriously. What could have happened from the security point upstairs?

I guess I just don't understand the wasted manpower, wasted resources and wasted time. Can't there be SOME standardization at international airports? Just a little bit?

The Long Journey Home

I am sitting in the Travelodge at LAX on my way home from Nepal. It has been a long day or 2 so far but it has been pretty good. My long Bangkok to LA flight went really fast again. I'm getting great at sleeping on planes!
I am here for the night and then I catch a plane at 11:15 am for Vancouver and then a few hours to wait there until I fly home to Victoria! I think tomorrow will feel longer than today because I will be so close to home. It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed and have a long, hot bath. Thankfully it's also the Easter long weekend so I can recover from jet lag a bit.

Thai Lounge in Kathmandu

I am sitting in the Thai Lounge in the airport in Kathmandu waiting for my flight. Right after my last blog post I had a wonderful surprise. Shambhu showed up at the door of the flat to say good bye. I went by PAHS yesterday and saw Shambhu and said good bye to all of the faculty and some students but missed Sushila. It turns out that there were gifts for me and Daniel and I had to sign the guest book too! So Shambhu, one of the busiest and hardest working faculty members I know, came over to my flat to hand deliver all of this and then walked back to Patan Hospital.

This might give you some sort of idea of the type of people that are here in Nepal and working at PAHS. I have never met or worked with people like them before. They are so caring and thoughtful and really let you know that you are important and valuable and appreciated.

This just made me even more sad to leave.

Good bye Kathmandu!

Well, this will likely be my last entry from Nepal.  My ride comes to pick me up at 10 am and I am getting on my first plane of many before I get home tomorrow (Saturday) night.  It has been a great time and I will really miss this country, city, medical school and all of the people I have worked with, taught and met here.  It seems like I have been here a long time and yet not long enough.  It will be great to get home and see my cats and my house and my bed (!) and my friends.  And then I head to Toronto for a conference and a visit with my sister and her family and celebrate my 40th.  Hard to believe!

Thanks for following me on this journey and I will continue to add things after I get home.  It was hard to have the power (with 16 hour daily power cuts), the internet and the time to write everything that I wanted to, so there will be more to come!  I will definitely be adding more photos.

Thanks to everyone at PAHS who made this such a great experience and made me feel comfortable and welcome and part of the team.  It was so great to be a small part of such a great project.  I am really looking forward to coming back next year to see how things have progresses, changed and grown.  It will be really great to see the students!

Thanks to AHED for providing the bulk of the funding to get me here as a volunteer.  I so very much appreciated your support and commitment to higher education in the developing world.

Rock climbing at Astrek

Katie, Sabita and I went rock climbing in Thamel. It's an outdoor plywood wall at the Belgian Embassy. It was a lot of fun. The wall is much higher than I am used to and the ropes sit out in the elements all the time so they are hard and stiff and really dirty. We climbed a few climbs each and then had dinner at Fire & Ice. Great pizza and a Nutella calzone with ice cream for dessert! :)

Swayambhunath...the monkey temple...

This was an older post that I could not post at the time but here it is!

Well, let me start by saying that I ventured out today to see how my stomach and legs were feeling.  With high hopes that I will feel better for the trek.
Next, let me say that I was a bit nervous to go to the "monkey" temple...those of you who read my previous blog will understand.  I know that Olivia, Liam and Ruby got a real kick out of me being attacked by a monkey, but I was afraid it might happen again.  So I wore long pants and hoped for the best.

I am now uncertain why THIS temple is called the monkey temple.  There were a few monkeys there, but I would say not more than 20.  At Pashupatinath Katie and I saw 20 monkeys the moment we arrived.  They were EVERYWHERE!!  THAT should be called the monkey temple.

The monkeys at this temple were very cute!  I saw a baby monkey and his Mom drinking out of a fountain, watched a monkey steal some rice and other offerings from a small temple and took a cute picture of a baby with his family.  For some reason I always think about Olivia and Liam when I see animals in other countries.  It probably started back when I went to Australia and made frames of animals for you two.

It was a great time of day to go to Swayambhunath - just before sunset.  The view of Kathmandu is amazing - we had to climb a lot of stairs to get up there.  I'm glad that I finally made it there.

I am feeling a bit better today – I emailed Bishnu and am really hoping that we can make a shorter trek happen.  I just don’t want to be weak and pathetic...

Helambu Trek

Well I just arrived back late last night from  the Helambu trek in Nepal.  It was amazing, beautiful, hard, hot, cold, fun, exhausting, long and short!  I have a million things to do today so I have to make this entry short, but I wote this entry on my iPhone while I was on the trek so I thought I would post it now.  I will tell you more about it later.  Glad to be safe and sound back in Patan, sad and happy to be leaving tomorrow for home.

Trekking in Nepal

Helambu with Bishnu, Daniel and Cheta

April 18-20, 2011

Sitting in Thetapati tea house after the 2nd day of trekking. We walked for 6.5 hours today. We left Kutumsang at 7:30am after a great night's sleep. We were SO tired!!!  The day started off very tough. A lot of uphill and I felt very iron deficient. My legs felt like lead and I was a little worried. We walked for a while to a tea house and rested for a while. I needed it. Then we headed off for our lunch stop-Mangingot. That was at about 2500 m. It had started to rain about 20 minutes before we got there and even a bit of snow!  But when we walked in the door it started pouring. Like monsoon rain!  So of course we stayed inside by the fire and warmed up and waited it out. It didn't take too long before it completely cleared up!  We could see fresh snow on some amazing and close mountains. Unreal.

I have to mention that just before we got to the lunch stop we ran into a little girl who was so adorable. She reminded me so much of Ruby!!!  It was unreal. This past summer I was at my Dad's cottage with Amy, my Dad and the kids. Olivia and I were goofing around and I was taking photos while Olivia modeled her "polare". When Ruby saw us she started copying us and pulling her arm out of her shirt and I have the photos. It was so cute. Well this little girl was doing that!  I couldn't stop thinking about Ruby!  Then I saw a horse on the trail (which is actually insane...) and then I started thinking about Olivia. And then I couldn't stop thinking about Liam and the lizard and turtle!  I miss you all!!

So we arrived here at Thetapati just as the rains started again!  We have had some great luck!  This is a nice place and warm. I have a bad feeling that Bishnu and Cheta do not have a room though and that makes me sad...

I should also talk about our first day. We met with Bishnu, Cheta and the driver Ram at Patan Hospital at 7am. They came and picked our stuff up and we headed out. We took the jeep for a few hours to just past Chisopsani where we started our trekking. We got started at about 11:30 am. We stopped for lunch where we ran into a guy from Spain trekking and traveling in Nepal and India for 3 months on his own. We trekked for almost 7 hours that day!  It was amazing that I felt okay after being sick for 5 days.

Anyway, it has been a fantastic time so far and I'm sad it had to be shortened. Bishnu is fantastic!   I will definitely trek with him again and recommend him! 

I have eaten SO much rice it is hard to believe. The food has been great!  I have had a Mars bar deep fried into a spring roll and as a momo!  Delicious! 

I am so glad that all decided to do this despite my fear that I was not going to feel better.

We have seen quite a few other Western Trekkers. Most of them French. Likely from France. But a guy from Quebec gave me a flower just as we were leaving our lunch tea house yesterday and he was heading in. I shouldn't be surprised to run into a Canadian but I was. Right now there are 2 other groups here. Both with 3 trekkers. One group are German and the other group seems to be a mix of people from Germany, England and Australia?  It's a full house!

This has been a beautiful trek so far. It is truly amazing being in the mountains like this. I cannot believe how close we are to them. Right now we are so close it's hard to believe.

We will head down tomorrow and get picked up by the jeep that will drive us back to Kathmandu.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure that I wrote some of this down before I forgot it all.

It is REALLY really cold here. It's going to be a cold night!  So glad I brought my Down sweater!

Bye for now!

Trekking

I am leaving very soon for my trek! It's shortened due to illness but still happening! Helambu! Be back late Wednesday evening.

Teaching in Nepal

I received a great compliment from a PAHS student on Tuesday. She said that she wished that both Katie and I could stay and be their Professors full-time. She said that it would be great for them and that they were learning a lot. Of course I am here to help the PAHS faculty and to train new PAHS faculty too and I hope they have found my time here helpful, but for me, it is always about the students. It made my trip!

Patan Durbar Square

I spent the late morning and early afternoon on Wednesday at Patan Durbar Square. It reminded me of being there with Carol-Ann over 2 years ago. I ate at the same rooftop cafe! It was a beautiful sunny day after a morning of pretty serious thunder and lightning.

Internet problems in Kathmandu

The Internet has been giving me some problems for the past few days...especially at night when I could be blogging. So I haven't been saying as much as I wanted on here. I feel like I am missing a lot.

Last day teaching at PAHS

Well today was my last day of teaching at PAHS. It was so sad and hard to say good-bye to the students. They were so sweet.
As you know, I am sick. So I just could not get up and go to PBL or my lecture. Katie stepped in for me. Thanks so much to her! Right after her lecture the students asked her if I would be in. I knew they were planning something for Katie and I to say good-bye. So I dragged myself in and went to the case wrap-up. I am so glad I did. It took a lot out of me but it was worth it in the end. They had us stand at he front of the class and applied tika to our foreheads-lots of it-then gave us each a pashmina, a scarf, a Nepali flag, a Buddha carving, a PAHS t-shirt and a kukri keychain. They had 2 students come up and present each thing. It was lovely. Then we had to say a few words. It was sweet and sad to have to leave them. I promised I would be back next year. I intend to be.
I am home now, still feeling sick and surprised at how fast the time went. I just need to rest and hope I will feel better soon. I postponed my trek for a day so I'm crossing my fingers!!