Monkies!

Yes, I know it's misspelled.

Anyway....

My whirlwind first day in Nepal is over, and oh what a day it was!

Britni and I woke up at 9:00 after a non-jet-lagged sleep and had no idea what to do with ourselves. Breakfast? Do we get it for free? What do we order? Oh, it's a buffet. Nice. Powdered coffee or tea? Do we leave a tip?

Anyway everything went very smoothly, besides the fact that the orange-colored liquid was orange drink instead of orange juice, which wasn't a problem beyond the fact that I had expected orange juice when I started to drink it.

After seriously contemplating the location of various items in the various pocketsof my cargo pants (read: wallet in snap pockets, pen and paper in regular pockets, etc) I left the hotel (which will be described in more detail when I get around to posting yesterday's less-than-thrilling blip) with Britni unsure of where we would go or what we would do, beyond maybe walking around for an hour or so before our lunch meeting.

After about 20 seconds of walking we were approached by a man (about our age) who said he didn't want anything but to show us around and practice his english. He took us on a tour around the local district and explained to us the many various ways of worship in the nepali/indian/buddhist cultural center that is Kathmandu. We received tilakas and blessings and learned, in our tour guide's words, that when we do nice things for others, pray, we get good karma and "Happy is God."

He then took us in a cab (which are insanely cheap and exciting) to a temple very near his home. After visiting the temple, he took us to his house. It was made of sticks and a tarp in the middle of an empty wasteland and surrounded with other houses of similar construction. We met his younger sister and brother and a few of the other children in the slum (who were very small and very interested in us) before he told us he had to visit the hospital, where his mother was taking care of his sick brother and we parted ways.

So, after only 2 hours of being in Kathmandu, we had experienced more than I had expected to experience in an entire week.

From there things slowed down a bit. Britni and I met a few of her colleagues for lunch and traveled to the maternity hospital to work on testing for her device (which is essentially a cheap alternative to testing protein levels in the urine of pregnant women for more effective early detection and treatment of preeclampsia) and got acquainted with a few of the hospital staff. I took a few photos and then we left to come back to the hotel and meet the rest of the team from CBID.

We took another taxi trek to the Monkey Temple where we saw some breathtaking views of the Kathmandu valley and, of course, a bunch of monkeys. They roam free inside the temple grounds and vendors sell bananas and coconuts of tourists to feed to them. Amazingly, they seem to get along pretty well with the people.

After negotiating the cab driver down to 200 NR (~$3) for the cab ride back to the hotel, we piled in and came home for a quick pause before meeting up with a doctor from JHU's CBID masters program, with whom we enjoyed a hookah, and then met up with another member of the team for dinner. The local food is delicious, but we'll see how well my stomach holds up!

That's it for today, hopefully I'll have interesting things to report tomorrow as well!