While I have the moments, I thought I'd update this fella.
So, here's the plan as we know it. Chanel and I will be leaving at the end of September (probably the twenty-eighth) and will arrive in Nepal before October first. Monday, October first will be our first day volunteering at the Nepalese orphanage. For the four following weeks, the two of us will be spending every weekday (approx. 35-40 hours a week) entertaining, laughing with, and teaching English to a set of orphans. We have not been notified yet on any specific characteristics of the orphans, such as age. But however we find them, they'll be on the receiving end of a lot of Gaudé love.
While in Nepal, Chanel and I will most likely be staying in a volunteering base camp ("Homebase"), sharing a room with either just ourselves or one/two more volunteers. Three meals a day will be provided at the base camp. However, any meals consumed outside of the camp and bottled water are our responsibility, as well is daily traveling expenses to and from the orphanage.
Chanel and I will have nights and weekends to explore the local life, the vibrancy, the food, the markets, the music ending foreign in our ears, the unfamiliar faces, the mountains...Mount Everest, in our playground. Perhaps we'll climb it and perhaps not. But we'll spend much, much time laying our eyes upon it, I can tell you that much. And there's also elephant tours, bungee jumping, para-sailing, white-water rafting, and simply getting lost in a new place--lost in all of my senses being caressed and seduced by that novelty.
I'm electrified to bring things like bubbles and face-paint for the children. I hope to show them a side of life they've certainly not seen before the sights of the two of us. What fun!
Then, excitingly, after our time has been spent and is over in Nepal, we will depart for Cambodia. In Cambodia, we will spend the next 3 weeks exploring the previous findings of Chanel, and hopefully, some new findings for the both of us. We will spend time in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville (busing in between the cities).
Chanel spent a month in Cambodia, traveling through each of these three cities, two years ago. It was an experience that changed her in inexplicable ways. If you've spent time traveling, I'm sure you know the feeling I am speaking of. My parents have expressed it to me. This opening and expanding awareness of the world you've been living in for all of your life but have learned, amazingly, so little about.
I am awaiting meeting all of the facets of Cambodia that made my sister fall in love.
And soon, I will :) Chanel is planning to pay for the flight tickets and the volunteering program within the next few weeks. There's no going back after that, little lady. This is real. Really real. You're going to Nepal and Cambodia with your most beloved.
"Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy. 'Cause Kansas is going bye-bye."
