A very Sari night out.

The last couple of days have been so packed full of events and adventures that I haven't had time to record them all. It is Thanksgiving Sunday here in Nepal and I am very thankful to be here. Although our 'Turkey' dinner will not be the same, mostly because we are having chicken, we are trying to make the best of our Thanksgiving. One of the volunteers has even decided to make a no-bake pumpkin pie from scratch. I applaud her efforts even though it might not taste the same as my Aunt Susan's.

Anyways I will back up a bit to my Friday, Amazing Race day and Sari night out. All Volunteers at the end of Orientation week in their respective countries is paired up and given an afternoon of racing around their city in search of items, pictures, and people to complete an Amazing Race. I am a huge fan of the show and so as you can imagine I got quite excited at the prospect of running my own Amazing Race. Our tasks involved going to places on our own that we had been earlier in the week. We were given an allowance which we used for paying for Rickshaw rides and bargaining with local Sauji (shopkeepers) for items on a list. The entire race we were required to use our Nepali language, and if we failed to do so we would be docked two points. It was so much fun running through the streets like crazy people asking for certain market items and getting pictures of certain landmarks. My roommate, Emily and I came in third place, which was disappointing, but not as disappointing as it would have been if we had lost 1 Million dollars.

Later that evening we all dressed up in our traditional Sari's. Since it was our last night of Orientation we were taken on a private bus, all dressed up, to a local traditional Nepali restaurant. We ate Dhal Bhaat and Tibetan MoMo's on the floor in our Sari's and drank rice wine, kind of like Sake. It was very fun to be dressed up and out, but I think my favorite part was when we danced to traditional music in the middle of the restaurant to about three large tables of Chinese tourists clapping. We even posed for a couple pictures.

Yesterday morning we went on a day trip to an outdoor adventure place called The Last Resort. My group (of 6) decided to Canyon down waterfalls, the highest of which was 42 meters high. It was definitely thrilling to be that high up on the side of a cliff knowing that you will soon scale down with a waterfall right next to you. We were all very sore afterwards but excited that we did the whole 4 hour route.

Tomorrow I am going to my placement for the first time with my Orientation leader. I will hopefully have some funny teaching stories soon!