On to the next...

I'm not quite sure it's set in yet that I've left Thailand, my job and all the wonderful friends I have made over the past year. This blog post is going to be hastily written, as I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in Pokhara, Nepal, listening to the obnoxious buzz of a power generator. But at least I have Internet!

It's been a little over one week since I left Chiang Mai. And what a week it's been.

My last day of work was truly memorable. We went to the lake, stuffed ourselves with fried chicken, pork (a good representative of AJWS I am!) and papaya salad, and laughed as we took a million pictures in a last minute effort to preserve the memories.

The weekend was a blur of packing, eating, drinking and trying to soak up my last few days with friends. On Sunday evening, we (Tom and I, he came and surprised me in Chiang Mai!) set off to Koh Chang. We spent three days down there eating seafood, laying in hammocks and riding motorcycles (him driving, me screaming). From there we set off for Kathmandu, Nepal.

Nepal, after only four days, has been both exhausting and amazing. We planned to do a 15 day trek through the Annapurna region (west of Everest region), so we spent two days in Kathmandu getting outfitted. It's insane. It's like REI times a million, except everything is cheap and fake. We were fortunate enough to stumble into a shop run by "our guy", as we now call him. When we asked him, "is this real Gor-tex?" he scrunched up his face, said "Probably not", explained what we could expect about the region, the gear, the weather, etc. For me to hear someone answer that question honestly, after everything I've seen and heard this year, was truly refreshing. We hung out there each afternoon, met his sister, had tea and asked him a million questions (and purchased half the store).

From Kathmandu, we made our way to the starting point of the trek, Besi Sahar, but after a particularly unfortunate bus ride, we ended up spending an extra two days there. A camera, sunglasses, glasses and a lot of rupees were stolen out of our backpacks. When I first realized this, I just wanted to cry, curl up in a ball and wake up in Thailand. But right away, a man standing near got wind of the situation, threw Tom on the back of his motorcycle and they chased down the bus. Long story short, everyone (police and locals who saw what happened) were very concerned that we get our stuff back and that we do not judge Nepal based on this incident. I don't mean to name drop, but I totally had tea this morning with the Police Superintendent and local politicians of Lamjung, Nepal. Yeah.

We've adjusted our trek and are setting off tomorrow morning. More to come later. But in summary, the people of Nepal are fantastic and I'm really excited to get out of the city and see the country!