The rest of the week

So, our plane leaves in just a matter of hours and I'm pretty bummed. I haven't updated this in the past few days because we've been incredibly busy visiting sites in Kathmandu, playing with kids, and, well, sleeping - haha.

Two days ago we woke up and went to Badhnath Stupa, the Buddhist hangout in Kathmandu that holds Nepal's largest Buddhist stupa. The area containing the stupa is closed in with buildings, but once you leave, you can still see the Buddhist eyes staring at you from over the shops and restaurants. Being around the Buddhist people was interesting because their attitudes and appearances are very different. Where the Hindu people at Durbar Square were much more aggressive and loud with their worship, the Buddhist monks and followers had a more subdued, peaceful way about them. Many people in Nepal claim to be both Hindu and Buddhist, which is technically impossible, seeing that the two religions completely contradict each other...some even add Christianity into the mix. Religion seemed to be pretty eclectic in Kathmandu. During our time at the stupa, locals would try to snag foreigners and take them on tours. Unfortunately, it was more like a "rent-a-friend" than a tour guide - they'd share information about the stupa every ten minutes or so, in between their questions about life in America. I asked a man to take my picture in front of the stupa, but when I gave him the camera, he looked a little scared while bobbling the device and moving it all over the place before sporadically taking a shot of me. He gave me the picture and said, "Good?' The picture was half of my body and the ground. I said, "Yeah, great" and smiled.

We've also spent a lot of time with children in the past days. We visited a children's home that housed twenty-some orphans (a few of the children were actually birth children). They all introduced themselves and said what year they were in school. After that, there was singing and dancing just as there was in the other home we visited earlier in the week. I have a lot of the performances on tape - you really have to see them, they're pretty adorable. The newest addition to the home was a boy named Rockus (this is definitely not spelled right). He's from a village outside of Kathmandu. His parents were both killed by a cobra in their village one night. Rokus doesn't speak English or Nepali, so it's been difficult for his family to communicate with him. He was very, very shy and scared when he first came in the room, but when I got my camera out to take pictures and video, he turned into a different child. He was grabbing and smiling and laughing and pointing - it was very neat to see him come out of his shell. Like most Nepali children, he loved the camera. His father said he had never seen one in his entire life. He's about four, I think. I would take his picture and show him and he'd giggle and then murmur something to himself in his tribal language. The other children were just as wonderful. They all loved their beanie babies and had us all read their toy's name, which they would then recite for the rest of the evening. One girl, Raquel, wants to be Miss Universe. She's strikingly beautiful and bright. Another boy wants to be a doctor. Two want to be astronauts. And they might actually get the chance to follow their dreams, unlike most children in Nepal, because they're able to attend school and become educated. Their father explained most of their stores to us and it they were heartbreaking. Parents abandoned their children when they remarry because the new husband has no desire to care for a child that's not theirs. A handful of the parents were killed or died from AIDS or some disease. There was one boy's parents who went crazy after a traumatic experience. Knowing all we did about their past, it was astonishing to see them as happy as they were. Yesterday we installed a basketball hoop for them and played a handful of yard games with them as well. They were full of energy. Jason, one of our team members, had experience with balloon animals, so he made all of the kids one...they loved it. Soon the time came to pack everything up and head back to our neck of the woods for dinner. It was definitely hard to leave all the kids behind, not knowing if we'd ever cross paths again. The children taught me about the hope and joy God brings. Regardless of the how their circumstances ranked in the world, the ones with abusive and negligent knew they were in a much better place than they once were.