my arms are tired from flying so far!

dear you,
i made it!
right now i'm sitting in my new room posting this at 5:41 am because of this thing called jet lag.
but i'm getting ahead of myself.
the trip getting to this spot was pretty uneventful.
which might sound bad, but with traveling is a very good thing.
saying goodbye to my parents was horrible.
i had to make it look like i was ok for the security people, but i definitely wasn't.

i slept for 10 of the 12 hours it took to fly from vancouver to hong kong.
i watched a movie for the other 2.
the only unfortunate part of that was that i was in the middle of three seats and the whole time i was sleeping, i was consciously trying not to touch the asian man on my left and the asian woman on my right.
it's amazing that i slept at all.
especially with the kid 2 rows away that kept screaming every hour or so.
it wasn't the 'i'm sad' or 'i'm hurt' cry.
it was that willful cry of 'i'm angry with you so i'm going to punish you by screaming as loud as i possibly can'
it was great.
we got to hong kong at 7 am their time and that's where the monotony began.
a 12 hour layover is crazy long.
i got to text my family and friends tho, which was very nice.
it kinda felt like i hadn't gone anywhere at all.
technology is amazing.
but it has it's drawbacks, needing to be charged, for instance.
in my quest to find an outlet that would work with my converter, i went to a nearby cafe where i saw an outlet and asked if i could use it.
they said yea.
if i bought something.
so i bought a glass of mango juice.
only to find out that the outlet in that particular spot didn't work.
great.
i just spent HK$48, or $7 on a small glass of mango juice.

and i only got change back in HK dollars.
anyways, the rest of the time i found random benches to sleep on, walked aimlessly around the shops selling all the expensive brand like louis vuitton and jimmy choo and swarovski, and played games on my iPod touch.
i'm super good at the plants vs. zombies game now.
those zombies don't stand a chance against my sunflowers and frozen pea shooters!
sounds dumb, i agree, but what else did i have to do?
i did have a moment of victory tho, because i found an outlet that worked!
so to the rest of the trip.
finally, the time came to get on my next plane, on which i promptly slept for the whole ride.
it was only 5 hours so no big :)
we touched down at tribhuvan int'l airport, and i went through the whole customs, stamp the passport thing, of course.
and then i made my way to the outside world, where lila and ramchandra were waiting with a big sign that said MICHAELA DAYE STEVENSON on it.
i've never been so happy to see my own name!
they both gave me scarves and hugs when i got to them.
i'll have to ask the significance of the scarves when i see them today.
we drove through a very dark kathmandu, because power is only on for 14 of the 24 hours in a day, if you're lucky.
off of the main road, the roads are only barely big enough for a car.
the houses are really tall, so it feels really weird to literally be squished between the houses like a little ant among blades of grass.
hey mommy, look at that simile! or is that a metaphor... :P
anyways, lila's house is great!
it's really nice for nepali standards, and (thank you Lord) it has a normal toilet instead of a squat pot.
not that i have anything against squat pots, but you know what i mean.
btw, lila and ramchandra own a trekking business together and lila is the president of the organization that runs i think 3 orphanages and a street child project.
since it was almost midnight, we had some tea, which in nepali is called chia (spelling?)
it was basically indian chai tea, they just call it chia.
and then we went to bed!
it took me awhile to get warm, even with 4 thick blankets and long fleece pants and jacket on, but it worked.
and now i'm telling you all about it.
i realize this is really long, and if you made it all the way to here without skipping, BRAVO!
i'll try to make my next posts more picture based, cuz that's way more interesting.
anyways, i'm cold from being not under my 4 blankets so i'm going to go remedy that.
love,
me