Saija

Today was my last day at work, and it was harder than I thought to say goodbye to everyone. I know I haven't told you much about my everyday life at the children's hospital, so here it is:
It's been an incredible opportunity to work alongside a great pediatrician and surgeon, and I've seen so many cases you'd never have a chance of seeing back home! This is because people can't afford to go to a doctor, or worse: don't believe in them. So instead they go to a temple and pray, sacrifice a goat, and come to the hospital when their kid had septic arthiritis for 5 months that now turned in to osteomalitis, and the kid can't walk anymore.

I've seen many kids die, familys (more or less everyone in the neighbourhood the family lives in) stand outside the hospital crying and screaming. And the funny custom of bringing your own food, or better, light a fire on the ground outside the hospital and prepare it there.
It's been an adventure, like my whole stay in Nepal. And this is not a conclusion, since it's not over yet. I still got a great new years to come, and I'm really looking forward to it!

Still Alive! And still around for a new years celebration in Pokhara (yes, I did change my flight!).

Chitwan was surely a nice experience, if we look away from the beginning of the junglewalk when we had to run for our lives from a family of aggressive rhinos! I spent the rest of the walk trying to spot good threes that weren't to hard to climb, knowing I'm might not be the bendiest person alive (need to start doing that yoga again when I get back).

All that's left now before the departure to India is 3 days of work and a great new years with all my friends!

Tomorrow I'm off to celebrate the most unusual christmas at Chitwan nationalpark! I'm guessing it's gonna be an adventure, prepared with a couple of bottles of wine and our animalhats.

Don't know if the animalhats are the best idea we had so far, since there might be encounters with wild animals (and frankly I don't even want to know how they would react on a finnish girl dressed as a cow!).

 

I've got some great tips on what to do if I would encounter one of theese interesting (I say dangerous) animals:

Apparently the best way to deal with a sloth bear, is to climb a tree. Cause the male bears will go for your face, and the females will attack you down under... When encountering a rhino, one must climb a big tree! If that fails, it's good to run in a ziczac pattern whilst dropping an item of clothing! If you come upon a tiger, one must back up very slowly, and then turn and run.

And best of all; You cannot run from an elephant and climbing a tree will not help. If an elephant charges, you die.

 

 

So merry Christmas folks! Hope to be around for new years!

I still don't know what to do over new years eve! I registered on lonely planet and travbuddy, to see if I could find some nice people to travel with for my 2 weeks in India, but to be honest the whole thing just seems like an incredibly bad datingsite!

One guy wanted to take me on a 2 week tour on his scooter, quoting: "I think the tourists visiting my country are like God, so we should help them as much as we can without any personal benifit.", and "I can be with you during your trip.." ???

Another guy with the lovely name "yummyman" said that he and his mate will be in Delhi for NYE, if I wanted to join. And a guy with the name "handsomeflirty" wanted to invite me to a private new years party in delhi, and, quoting "if we would like each others company then I can go along with you to jaipur."

I don't know about you but I'm getting a bit scared.

Back in Kathmandu after an extended stay in Pokhara. Well, you all know me so you probably can guess that we had a great party sunday night and never made it to the bus 7am monday morning! So we decided to stay one more day!
I love Pokhara though, so much that I'm thinking about changing my flight to India and celebrate new years there with all my friends (cause that's what they planned to do).

Oh well, have to think about it. Now it's off to Zumba! Can't belive it took me a trip to Nepal and a nepali salsaclub to start doing zumba...

After a nice (less saunalike,still very bumpy) bussride to Pokhara, I've spent a well needed, relaxing weekend in the sun!
We rented a boat yesterday for a short trip on the lake, and now it's time to do a longer boatride. I simply hope we don't  fall in or that the boat sinks for that matter,since it's a very unstable leaking construction. Yesterday we got standing ovations from the shore after our performance of christmascarols whilst roaing the boat! I might have to think about a new career as a carolsinger or a cartoon-artist... so much to do,so little time!

It's been a pretty ordinary week (in nepali standard), painting a seaworld on the wall at the hospital. It's even better than the djungle!!!

On my way over here, to the internetplace, I thought about getting some moore money from the atm... I quickly changed my mind though when I saw that a big fat cow had parked in front of the door to the atm. What to do?

Well, our trip to the Monastery Namobuddha didn't really go according to plan last weekend... We took a bus to Dhulikel and from there it's supposed to be a 3 hour walk to Namobuddha. After nearly 4 hours though, walking over one hour in the dark in the mountains, we didn't see anything that looked like a monastery!
We asked an old nice man how much further it was, but after some struggeling with a phrasebook and a headtorch we were sitting in a teahut in this old mans village - apparently totally lost and still 4 hours away from Namobuddha!!!
The whole village gathered to watch us and hear the latest gossip (people even peaked through the windows cause there was no more room in the little hut), and we spent the night in a nepalifamilys home, in one small and very hard bed. With a big rat in the room (I'm convinced it was the size of a cat!), maybe the familypet?

Anyways, after breakfast we headed home without visiting Namobuddha, riding on the top of the bus cause there was no more room inside! I can tell you that the steep sides of the mountainroads seemed a lot more scary when sitting on top of a bus!

Must be nice to be a doctor in Nepal when you can blame on 'evil spirits' when a patient dies.... not even considering that it might be due to wrong treatment or late treatment.

In the emergency you can also read some "very important health advice!!!" as:
- always answer your phone with left ear
- never take medicine with cool water
- best sleeping time is between 10pm and 6am
- stay away from hand phone chargers
and more....


So, stay away from those hand phone chargers now, will you!

So it's already 1st of December, and the christmas spirit is rising.... no, not really. This will become the most unusual christmas for me I'm sure. Just hoping that my family back home will survive a christmas without me!
Talking about survival - I will spend my christmas canoeing on a lake filled with hungry crocodiles, and walking in the jungle trying not to be trampled to death by rhinos. It might have slipped my mind to inform my parents about that (sorry).