Kathmandu

After a really long flight through Chicago, Tokyo, and Bangkok (where we actually got to spend the night in a  nice hotel), we finally arrived in Kathmandu.

First impressions: Kathmandu is a dirty, crowded city.  Once you look a little more closely, however, you see beauty everywhere.

We stayed in the city for 4 days for the first phase of training, which included a lot on safety, medical (including 6 rounds of vaccinations-- Typhoid hurts a lot by the way), Peace Corps policies, and language basics so we can at least great our host families appropriately when we meet them later today.

This is our training center, located right across the street from our hostel.

The main streets are super busy with cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians, but ours is quiet and extremely narrow.

I know many of you are wondering... Yes, we have electricity (which is obvious, considering the thousands of wires strung up along all road sides), I have a flushing, sit-down toilet and a shower (no hot water) right in my room.  Of course that will be different in rural areas, but squat toilets, despite occasional awkward moments, really aren't so bad and bucket baths can't be any worse than a  cold shower with minimal water pressure, right?