It’s been a busy few days, and I actually feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. Here’s a brief list of what I’ve done:
1) found a choir to sing with. It’s called, “Kathmandu choir,” and it meets Monday evenings for 2 hours. They will be putting on a concert at the beginning of December. I’m going to check them out on Monday and see if I like it.
2) I’m playing on a basketball team. I know, it’s random, cuz I’ve never played basketball with a team. But a few of my friends were playing and asked me to join. They have a tournament on Monday so right now we’re practicing every day. I went to practice yesterday, and though I was a little intimidated at first (they threw me into a 5 on 5 game where everyone knew what they were doing, and I was just trying to remember the rules!!!) by the end of practice I was getting the hang of it. It’s a great workout and it’s fun, so I’m in!! After the tournament, they’ll keep playing once or twice a week, so I finally have an active, team oriented sport to play, something I have badly wanted for a while now!
3) I have found some work to do, at least for now. It’s with an organization called, “INFO Nepal” (check them out at http://www.infonepal.org/) that sets up volunteer experiences for foreigners in the fields of education, child care, environment, health and development. I will be the “volunteer coordinator,” in charge of promoting the organization abroad, responding to emails and questions, and helping orient volunteers when they arrive (airport pickup, dinner, sightseeing…). I kind of fell into this because the two people who were doing this job are leaving this weekend. I’m excited to do it because it seems like there is a fair amount of responsibility (Which will hopefully give me some experience as well as the understanding of how an NGO works), the tasks are varied so I shouldn’t get bored, and it’s only a 15-minute walk from my apartment (most NGOs are on the other side of the city). The only things I’m hesitant about are that it’s unpaid (almost inevitable, though, it would seem), and that the NGO isn’t a traditional one per se, so the experience may not be as valuable as it could be. But, since the opportunity came my way, I had to jump on it. I’ll try it out, see how I feel about it, but in the meantime keep my options open. I’m just happy something came about so quickly so that I wasn’t wasting any more time!
Other than that, my time has been filled with laundry (and more laundry), cooking (hummus, rice and beans, pasta sauce),
