New Years Resolutions

Well what a year it’s been, it probably couldn’t have been more different than any years that have passed before. This year, I think will be even more different to the last as I hurtle towards the end of my placement and chose what direction I want to got to next.

So here is what I want to do in 2012:

Find my true love
No one will be more surprised than I am to find out that I am ready to settle down and meet the man of my dreams. I have already lived a thousand lives and had more than my fair share of adventures, but now I feel like I am ready in my heart to share these adventures with someone. So this year I will have a look and see who I can find, there must be some out there who will make the perfect partner in crime and I am sure I will find him.

Switch to Nepali
One year in, it is time for me to switch from English to Nepali language and really push myself to feel comfortable with the lingo.

Start a new radio show
One thing I have really enjoyed over the last year is having my own radio show, it’s finished now but in the new year I will start something new!

Write short stories in devanagari माँ देवनागरी लेखन सिक्नुपर्छा
Devanagari is the funny looking shapes that people write in, in Nepal and India. I have learnt the very basics but now I want to step it up start using is regularly and what better way than writing short stories.

Ride by motorbike to another district
There really is only one way to travel around Nepal and that is by motorbike, so this year I want to learn how to ride a motorbike and then I will go on a road trip!


And that’s it really.

Happy New Year to everyone and don’t forget to set yourself some interesting resolutions for the new year, life is short and there are many adventures to be had, don’t sit too comfortably and watch it pass by.

Big love and peace
XXXX

Manners over board

Over the last two months, ever since my holiday I have not been feeling very well. I had a cold which turned into one of those coughs it’s really hard to get rid of and two months later it was joined with a terrible bout of tonsillitis.

In between illnesses I had a trip to Dailekh for my host organisations board meeting. Now I always have a love/hate relationship with field trips, because they are really uncomfortable and full on but at the same time I always learn a lot and get to see a new place. So I wasn’t exactly full of beans to start with and being crammed in jeep with over excited young people shouting didn’t really fit my mood, luckily I was able turn to Enya on my MP3 player for some respite, but it wasn’t really off to a good start. When we arrived we were paraded through the streets wearing flower garlands and we joked that this dilapidate looking building would be our hotel. As it turned out, it was our hotel.

The meeting went well and I was able to contribute to the meeting and learn about what some of the important issues are that the organisation are facing, though I did spend some of my time sitting under a blanket thinking about the next tea break. Still on the bright side one of my friends had moved from Nepalgunj to Dailekh for work and he invited me out for dinner with him and his boss one night. I was given a curfew of 8:30 pm for my night out from a very stern young board member, he had also asked me (and five other people) not to sit under the blanket during the meeting, but I refused to and after five minutes the other five people returned to the blanket, much to my delight. I never like to be told what to do and these days my polite English nature has been modified into a more direct approach, really you can’t afford to blunder around here doing things you don’t want to do just because your too polite to say no.

Following my delightful evening out I was cursed with post lunch diarrhoea the following day and missed out on a bit of sight seeing to one of the local wonders, fire coming out of the rocks! Luckily I had already seen this wonder in turkey, and once you have seen fire coming out of one rock you have seen them all, right??

Luckily every thing dried up in time for the journey home and I couldn’t wait to get home and have a hot shower and not talk Nepali for a few days.

Following a one hour facial some days later, which cost £3.50 I developed very swollen glands and a very sore throat, the dreaded curse of tonsillitis had arrived, complimenting my 6 week old chesty cough, after a few days of near death experience (massively exaggerated) I went to the local ENT doctor who gave me a shed load of pills and sent me home to rest for five days. Five days passed and back to doctors for check up and another batch of pills adding to a total of 12 days antibiotics.

Good news is that now I feel amazing in my post illness energy surge and even my chesty cough has nearly gone after I discovered the miracle of inhaling steam over a saucepan with a towel over my head.

During my time of illness I had time to revaluate every part of life from top to bottom and had no major epiphanies.