Low-Altitude Sickness

Another shot of my view of the Himalayas from my house (click on it to make it larger).


I had to take one picture of myself that sums up my week's emotions.

The migrant childrens' school that I'm coordinating the School Health Program for in Chapagaun.


A little bit of a sweet escape after the past week's happenings: the five-star Hyatt-Regency

Ellie and I kicking back at the Hyatt after our miserable week.

Views of the Hyatt's sprawling grounds and pools.

Our simply amazing room.



A Nepali student teaching me a traditional Nepali dance.

Students who I will be teaching Health Education to.

Another shot of the migrant children's school.

Shot of the Himal from my bedroom window in Chapagaun.






Hindu Holy Man at Pashupatinath Temple.

One of my latest favorite reads written by Muhammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank.

Hanging out with Pramila.






Community Health visits to a very remote village in the hills surrounding Chapagaun.

It had been such a trying week for both Ellie and I that her incredible boyfriend (back in California) decided to book us two nights at Nepal’s only five-star hotel, the Hyatt-Regency in Bodhnath. When Ellie told me what he had done, I nearly broke down in tears. Ellie found out that she has Giardia, and I was relentlessly stalked by one of the PAs at the clinic where I work. It really came as such a sudden shock when I finally realized what was going on. I had been assisting this individual at the clinic for the past several weeks with a great deal of respect for his gift in medicine and was completely blown away when everything started to unravel. Before I knew it he was planning our future life together in Nepal and asked me if I would fulfill his one wish by giving him one child. All I could do was laugh thinking that he had to be completely joking, but then I stopped laughing when he launched into a five hour monologue about how his love for me would conquer all despite our backgrounds that are worlds apart. This occurred when I stupidly agreed to visit the Dutch NGO that he works for part-time with him one evening after work. This turned out to be part of an elaborate plan to whisk me off to Kathmandu in order to profess his undying love for me and to strand me at a shoddy hotel in one of Kathmandu's sketchiest neighborhoods in the middle of one of the country's 8-hour black outs during the night. Since Nepal is in the middle of a fuel shortage crisis, bus services have been severely cut. At the same time electricity is cut off for eight-hour blocks during the day and night. Therefore, I had no choice but to spend the night in the city since there were no more buses running that night and it was an unsafe neighborhood to catch a taxi alone back to Chapagaun. And Murphy's Law just continued to snowball: of course there was only one room left at the hotel with two twin beds. I felt like my worst nightmare would never end as I had to sit in a shoddy hotel room with no electricity and listen to him drawl on and on about how we were a match made in heaven and how he had already told my host family that we were already engaged. Basically, they were ready to roast the fatted calf, put the red tika on my forehead, and bless our new life together. It took five hours in a pitch dark filthy hotel room of me trying every excuse in the book about why we couldn't marry each other and why I didn't love him to finally convince him that we were only friends. Even after that he still had the nerve to ask if he could sleep in the same bed with me. I don't think I've ever been more enraged in my entire life. I felt that I had been tricked, lied to, and that he had tried to take advantage of the reputation that American girls are "easy".

After a night of living through a virtual nightmare, we finally caught the first bus back to Chapagaun the next morning in stony silence. During the bus ride, I kept running through all the reasons in my mind why I still loved Nepal and why I was glad to be in this country. I kept telling myself there are so many beautiful values in a country with such a strong Buddhist influence as we passed billboards flaunting messages such as "Peace and Tranquility". Just about the time that we passed the second Peace and Tranquility billboard, our bus came to an abrupt stop and before I knew it the kid who worked as the bus' money collector was on the receiving end of one face blow after another. Another bus' competing money collector had jumped on board and was beating the crap out of the bleeding kid, and no one even budged. No one even turned their heads or even flinched. Finally the bus started moving again and life went on as usual as if nothing had ever happened while the kid's blood continued to pool on the bus' floor and even he didn't seem to bothered by the fact that he just had the living daylights punched out of him. "Where the heck am I?" I thought, still sitting by the man who had tricked me into a night of living hell and relentless marriage proposals.