Day 33: The Weight-Loss Blues

Trip Start May 20, 2008

Trip End Aug 19, 2008

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of Nepal Kathmandu, Nepal
Monday, June 23, 2008

We joined the Brits on their daily shift at Landless Clinic today, if only to see and experience the riverside shantytown it serves. Landless (the neighborhood) itself wasn't quite as bad as I expected... many of the homes had brick or concrete walls, and the sanitary situation wasn't any worse than the whole rest of the country. Which is to say, pretty friggin dirty, but again the garbage was not piled up in noticeably bigger quantities. Or I've just become desensitized to neighborhoods looking like shiteholes. Landless Clinic itself was a tiny but efficient operation containing a holy gadget many of us have sought since the end of our first weeks here: a scale. We took turns weighing ourselves, seeing what toll the rice & bean-flavored-salt-water diet has exacted on our bodies.
The scores:
Emily = Upper 120's, Down 10lbs or 2lbs every week
Me = 137lbs, down from 146
Steve (who is sick w/food poisoning, courtesy of a Nepali attempt at Mexican food) = Down almost 10lbs, and he's a BUFF guy too
Forgot the rest.
Don't worry, it'll all be gained back in Thailand. Endless supplies of dirt cheap pad-Thai = mmm.

The rest of the day plodded on... We walked back to Pepsikola without sighting the blowed-up buses Andy & Kristal had seen the day before (I hoped to snap a picture of one), I popped onto the Internet & scribbled yesterday's blog entry, and began some long overdue work on ole Norman's pet project of extending the school canteen. With this extension, the kids will be able to play as well as eat under the shelter, very helpful during the monsoon. Speaking of the monsoon, a foul weather turn thwarted the orphanage slumber & Pixar party. 2h walk (that's how far OCRC is on foot) in a monsoon storm w/out chance of bus rescue = bad idea. The event has been postponed until Wed night. Work on the canteen will continue into the next few days, with my Nanny-time beginning immediately upon its completion.

Back home at the host family house, Sushaan discovered my camcorder's AV cable and figured out that it was meant to be hooked up to a TV. I caved in to his demands that I fiddle with it and successfully got the wedding footage playing on the family TV. This BLEW THEIR MINDS... I don't think the family even knew it was possible to see themselves in action on a TV screen. Their amusement alone made buying the camcorder worthwhile, as it was about to join the Rabies vaccine on the list of "worst trip-related waste of money." They watched all forty-odd minutes of random wedding footage, with constant giggles of "ooh look it's so & so! hahaha!" ignoring my "this is probably gonna get very boring, are you sure you don't want me to skip the tape ahead?" inquiries. Nothing on that screen could bore the family... never before has forty minutes of shaky, crappy footage of relatives sitting around conversing been so entertaining. Some embarrassing to me, hilarious to everyone else clips of my Hindi dance moves were no exception, nor were the hilarious-to-everyone clips of Sushaan trying to rap-dance. It was magical.

After poking our heads into the Hut and finding no one, Ladina & I pretty much called of the night, but not before lamenting about our mutually shrinking stomachs. She shared stories of Switzerland's yummy dairy cuisine, we both shared cravings for Italian ice cream, and I licked peanut butter off my fingers dreaming of better culinary days. This prompted Ladina to torture me by describing the Swiss version of peanut butter: chocolatey nutella with crunchy bits of crunch-bar-crunch-stuff mixed in. It was fitting revenge for my flashing a picture of a Swiss chocolate shop Mika took on our Eurotrip in her face earlier, fully intending on torturing her. Mwuaha.

A slow but pleasant day, overall.