Tuesday June 19th

Already on week 2, can't believe how quickly time is passing by! Nepal is never boring that's for sure. it is constantly stimulating all your senses: sights, sounds, smells and tastes. Over the past few weeks we've become quite accomplished at learning to cross the street, a skill that should not be belittled here in nepal as the many "vehicles" never seem to slow down and swerve impossibly in and out of traffic. We've also become better at drowning out the constant cacophony of noises that seems to follow us everywhere in the city.  A simple walk to school has proven to be a bit of a game, as we hop from incomplete side-walks to dirt mounds trying to avoid everything from garbage, sleeping dogs and rusty nails (so far in the past 2 weeks, only one rusty nail has managed to get us, thank goodness for the tetanus vaccine!).

We had our second set of workshops this week on wellness and time management in medical school. We chose to do this workshop based on the feedback we got from the students regarding wanting to hear about time management in medical school. We decided to throw in a wellness and healthy lifestyle section into the workshop and handed out apples to the students for answering questions! In our workshop we also included an example of a healthy Nepalese diet, which entailed Kate having to pronounce a number of Nepalese dishes, which the students found to be hilarious!! Based on student feedback, our workshop was a big success. The major problem we encountered was that the attendance wasn't as high as we expected (about 15 students for each class). The students reported after that they knew that their friends would have come but they didn't know about it because it wasn't on the schedule, and emails aren't a great way of communicating. Despite trying our best to get the workshops on their schedule we were not given permission and had to rely on communication through class announcements and emails which proved not to be good enough. We are currently trying to remediate this problem before our third set of workshops this week. We also are planning on repeating the wellness and time management workshop again this week for the students who may have wanted to come but missed it. 

We can't get over how keen and hardworking the students are and how much of an interest they show in our lives. Despite the students being close to exams, and us being a bit weary of planning too many activities for them because of this, we've had an overwhelming enthusiasm for our two events this week: Bhangra dancing and soccer at the local park!

All in all, we have been settling into life in Nepal quite nicely. Daily routines have become quite a comfort. Highlights include daily shopping at the local veggie market for fresh produce, yoga at a nearby studio and group workouts in our lovely courtyard. On our days off we've bargained our butts off at the Thamel market, breathed in the fresh mountain air of Nagarkot and fell in love with our sweet tour guide "Gopal from Nepal" in Chitwan. 

Namaste.