Wow, what a few days can bring is amazing. It hasn't even been a week. Today is Monday, I think. We left on Thursday. It feels like such a long time, but it is only 5 days. We are worlds away from Scandinavia and we know it with every sense in us.
For those who don't know, we have been to Nepal many times before. However, this is the first time with our children. I thought I would be more stressed traveling with them, but it has been really good. Don't get me wrong, I still worry about things. For example, when I think they are getting out into the street too far and some vehicle is going to smoosh them, then I get worried. But most of the time I really enjoy seeing things through their eyes.
So here is what has happened so far. Andreas took a sabbatical for 6 months, we sold our home in Mysen, took the kids out of school and have been planning for this trip for about a year and a half. We left from Oslo on January 5, 2017. We were flying to London, when low and behold, I spotted a Norwegian celebrity on the plane. Of course I knew I had to get a pic. So at some point on the flight I made Sam come with me and we took a selfie with Skavlan (this maybe the 2nd selfie I have ever taken).
We landed in London and then on to Muscat in Oman. We landed late and of course left David's coat on the plane. However, by God's grace, we got the coat back and made our flight to Kathmandu. We landed in a warm Nepal, went through all we needed to obtain a visa and then met our friends. Bobby and Prakash took us to the hotel where I finally got some sleep after 24 hours of being awake. Sadly our hotel, which looked awesome on the internet, was not. We chose it because it had rooms with 4 beds. The beds were fine, however, not very clean and we shared a wall with a night club. Now it has been a long time since I have been in a night club, but I had a great dance party in my bed until 3 in the morning! Let's just say I was not a happy camper.
We spent one full day in Kathmandu. Bobby spent the day with us and we went to the normal sights to show the kids a few things. Boudanath stupa was the first stop. It is a Bhuddist worship place. There was a big festival going on. There had to of been hundreds of Bhuddist monks there. We went over to the Hotel Himalaya. This was the hotel that we stayed in when we adopted Samuel. It was so cool to show him this place and a little of the area 11 years later. We then went to Patan area, ate and saw some of the temples, or the destruction of the temples from the earthquakes.
On a side note, I am incredibly impressed at how much of the rubble is cleared from the earthquakes. You can still see some the destruction, but it has been blocked off for safety, or the rebuilding has already been taking place. To be honest, I expected to see a lot more destruction. There are areas where people have set up tent cities and they still live there. They lost everything in the earthquakes and they don't have the money to rebuild. Not an easy life at all. Over 8000 people died in those earthquakes. Bobby said that the aftershocks are still happening. It has been almost 2 years since they happened.
So after Patan we went to the monkey temple. This temple is both Hindu and Bhuddist. Some of it was destroyed, but they are rebuilding it. It has a proper name, but most people know it as the monkey temple because it has a ton of monkeys running around. Bobby was warning the boys about the monkeys and it scared them a little. I was okay with that because the last thing we needed was a round of rabies shots. By the end of all this we were ready to find our hotel and rest. For those who have not been here it is chaotic. Especially coming from Scandinavia. We are used to quiet people and quiet streets. Here there is sound everywhere, they honk like crazy (Sam was not thrilled with this), sounds and smells and color and chaos is everywhere. I love it! However, it does make one tired.
Because of the early mentioned dance party we decided to leave one day early and get to Pokhara, which is where "home" will be for the next 5 months. It was Sam's first flight in a propeller plane. I think it scared him a little, but these pilots have done this millions of times and we landed safely. The flight is a beautiful one. Although we did not have clear skies we still saw some mountains.
We made it to our apartment, which is great! This will be a good place to call home for a while. We are now in the process of getting the things we need and settling in. We have a friend here named Ajit who is helping us. Tomorrow we will officially start school with the boys. I think David is really missing routines.
All in all, life is good and this adventure is in full swing. We are extremely thankful for our family, safety, and the friends that we have here. I will have to apologize because this post will not include pictures. It is not easy to get pictures from a Microsoft phone to an Ipad and then use blogger which is google when you have to download everything from a Microsoft one drive. I know, it is a first world problem, but we are having it. So I will repost this with pictures as soon as we can get it to work.
Now it is time for bed. So goodnight, no dance party tonight and I am grateful.
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