Are you feeling difficult?...no!

The last month has been a bit of a whirl wind really.

Ke bhayo? (what happened)

Dave and I broke up. We journeyed a long way together and decided that it was time for us to take our own individual paths. Most important to me is that I am not losing a very good friend who means a lot to me and I hope that our friendship will last a life time.

I had my bike stolen. That’s not good, but not unexpected. I will buy a new one.

I went to Kathmandu and carried out our governance programme analysis. Which basically involved looking at the work that volunteers have carried out over the last four years and analysing the results. Then I helped plan a one day review for volunteers and partners (the organisations we work with). I really enjoyed this as it gave me the opportunity to realise what can be achieved during a placement and gave me some really good ideas and motivations. For the review we went to Chitwan National Park, I didn’t really get much chance to see the park, but I really enjoyed the evening when the event finished and we all had an impromptu dance to Nepali music and I brought my hula hoop out, which is always a big curiosity.

Now I am just preparing to go to Nargakot, which is about an hour out of Kathmandu to assist with the delivery of a four day leadership course. I am really looking forward to working with the team of volunteer and the partners, I will learn a lot and hopefully contribute my experience and knowledge to the course.
Also quite unexpectedly my article which was my last blog, got published in the Kathmandu Post, I am really very pleased about this.

I have also had my first experience of load shedding. Basically there is not enough electricity in Nepal to go round at this time of year, so there is a schedule when electricity is and isn’t available. In Kathmandu there is no electricity for 14 hours a day, interesting. But when it is the rainy season there will be more power generated by the hydro power plants. Luckily though in Nepalgunj we get our power from India, so we don’t have load shedding, ekdham raamro.
It has been really nice catching up with other volunteers in Kathmandu and in particular I have enjoyed the hash, which is the running round the countryside outside out Kathmandu for about 15 km. Its great!

The other thing I have been thinking about, is staying in Nepal after my placement finishes as there is so much I love about this country, its early days yet though so lets see how I feel in a years time.