A busy week...

Namaste! This week has been pretty full on. It began with the arrival of Stevie the Stomachbug. I was the lucky first stop on his village tour. It was not a pleasant stay, at least on my end. It seems like he was having a grand old time. Luckily, for me, he only stuck around for a couple days. But, unfortunately for the other volunteers, his friends quickly took up residence in them. It has now made a complete circulation of our house and, knock on wood, we think the party is now over, with five westerners now recovering strongly. This week at school has been pretty hectic with students preparing for final exams. You can feel the end-of-school excitement in the air and the kids are definitely getting a bit crazy (more so than usual). But, it seems that in class more and more students are beginning to buckle down and work hard. Wow, tests are coming up soon, maybe I should pay attention and learn something. Haha. And, apparently, my time at a Nepalese school would not be complete without some bloodshed. Earlier this week one of my favorite little 3rd graders, Assis, (it's always the cute ones!) was sitting quietly at his desk when one of the other boys in class decided to whack him across the face with his backpack. Luckily it wasn't anything to hard or heavy, but the zipper caught Assis on the forehead and, as foreheads do, began to bleed quite profusely. And, as I'm becoming quite the pro with this whole blood thing, my hand was quickly there applying pressure and helping him out to the teacher's lounge. Two male teachers who were on break at the time (wait! teachers sitting around doing nothing at a Nepalese school!?!? No! Say it ain't so! haha), they got out the first aid kit (which clearly hadn't been used or restocked since the 70s) and began fumbling through it trying to find something I could use. They were able to find little bits of cotton, which were completely soaked with poor Assis' blood by the time they could find the next one. But, as it was a pretty small cut, I got it under control soon enough and had him cleaned up with a band-aid slapped on and back in class before the other teachers could figure out what some of the things in the kit were (it was as if they had never seen one before and were quite fascinated by some of it's contents. Assis was quite the trooper. And I spent the rest of the period trying to wash the blood out of his tiny little school shirt and then drying it in the sun because the wet shirt was, as he quite firmly told me, "chiso cha!" (too cold!) So ya, it's been a full week, but definitely always bringing more excitement. Oh, and a quick plug before I rush off...If you read just one book this year, make it SOLD by Patricia McCormick. It is a quick read but such an amazingly beautiful story. She is dead on with her descriptions of people and places. It will give you an excellent idea of what the area of the world I'm living in is like and some of the sadness these people see in their lives. I could not recommend a book more.