Nepal Blog 3

Time flies when you're having fun… The days here are quite predictable: 8-9.30am yoga practice, breakfast, 10.30am-1.30pm lecture: pretty intense to be focused for 3 hours in a row, lunch, couple of hours free :), meditation 6-7pm and dinner afterwards. We go to bed around 9.30-10pm.

The couple of hours of spare time we have, we use for getting massages (I had one Saturday, a Thai one :) and my mum had one last week on Wednesday), doing a bit of hiking: went to a monastery guided by Arun, the cook, on Thursday:45 minutes walk uphill ;), studying, etc.

Last Friday we went to check out this bookstore (together with dr. Subodh) in Kathmanduand that was quite exciting! I mean… the way to get there and back.. I thought the traffic in Bali was crazy, but the traffic here is ten times worse! (Sabine, you would have gone crazy sitting in the passengers seat). The bookshop was great: it's got lots of books about yoga and we did buy 6 or 7 I think.. The books here are really cheap compared to the Netherlands, so we couldn't resist.. When we got back home (after one hell of a ride), another guest, Maria, just arrived. Maria is from Sweden and spend some weeks in Nepal for work. She joined us doing yoga and meditation and she played cards with us after dinner. (we're playing cards all the time: s*** head is very addictive…). That night, dr Subodh's daughters sang and danced for us again. Afterwards, my mum read them a story (she bought a book for them at the bookstore) and we were surprised that they could read English that well! Until we found out that over here they start learning how to read at the age of three…

Another week has passed. I got sick Monday night and my belly didn't really want to have real food afterwards, so the last couple of days I survived on toast and some soup. Doing better now luckily. Maria left us Sunday afternoon, but Ian replaced her and he's really nice as well: a doctor in Law, all the way from Australia and in Nepal to go and see his daughter, who is doing voluntary work in an aids clinic nearby. On Tuesday, we went to the monkey temple again together with Ian and we had lots of fun. My mum bought an amazing singing bowl, Ian got a bit cheaper one and I bought a real cheap as one, but I like it ;). My mum went crazy on souvenirs and we did have a good time.

At night, we let our singing bowls sing and we played cards (obviously). Even dr. Subodh gave it a try! Yesterday we finished the lectures about the human body, which is nice (been there, done that now). The next couple of weeks it will all be about yoga and that's what I'm here for :) Today we had our first lecture about yoga and that was really interesting. He went on and on and 3,5 hours passed by nearly without even noticing.

After lunch we played some cards and chilled out for a bit. Meditation was nice and we had dinner together with Ian, who's leaving tomorrow. He had to give a lecture at the university today and the people there invited him to come and discuss the constitution tomorrow: he got a real invitation from the president!

I hope all's well in the Netherlands… still freezing over there I guess :p