Thanks!

I will be giving out thanks as the support is coming in! So,


Thank you momma :) For our first donation!!! That was such a sweet thing of you to do!


Thank you Mark Stephan, for the donation of a mobile phone that Chanel and I can have AT&T unlock so we may keep in touch with our family while abroad! Keep momma sleeping well while we're gone, knowing we're safe and sound. Thanks so much Mark!

Means

Here is a detailed list:

Plane tickets--$6,698

Visas/Passport Renewal

• Nepal--$80
• Cambodia--$50
• Passport Renewal--$151

Vaccinations

• Hepatitis A and B--$240
• Typhoid--$140
• Japanese Encephalitis--$1,000
• Malaria--$700
• Polio --$150

Program Fee--$1,886.14

Cambodia lodging

• Phnom Penh--$315
• Sihanoukville--$140
• Siem Reap--$150

Food

• Nepal--$460
• Cambodia--$760

 Travel

• Buses--$300
• TukTuk (Cambodian daily travel)--$60
• Nepal daily travel--$100 

 These numbers were calculated on advice from Global Crossroads and Chanel's experience in Cambodia. We have planned where we are resting our heads on each night of our travels and made (as of right now) most of the necessary reservations.

I will update this as the information makes itself aware to me..

 * Underlined denotes paid

Meaning, Means, Method--Part 2

It's an odd thing. I've never met anything like Nepal or Cambodia. And because of that, my mind has a way of denying it. As much waking time as I spend writing, thinking, and speaking of this trip, I had yet to dream about it. Until a few hours ago. And still, the dream was filled with things I know aren't possible and aren't probable. Perhaps, my own mind is poking fun at how I can't create a realistic environment of Southeast Asia. I don't have anything to go off of. I know none of the elements and therefore struggle in the unity of them.

Though I know it's coming, it's a inevitable part of reality now...that feeling of anticipation can be missing. The pleasant sinking in your chest that makes you squeal like a little girl. Two weeks ago, the feeling found me.

It found me sitting at an Asian restaurant with my mother and company. The placement email from Global Crossroads had been sent to her email by some mistake. Chanel and I were unaware that it had been sent. I opened the email on her phone and...I was a big mess of tears.

In the placement email, we found that we were placed at the Ashna Orphanage in Lamatar, Nepal. The orphanage currently has 18 children, aged 6 to 13, from different parts of the country. The orphanage is located in Lamatar, Lalitpur (the district/zone), which is about a 45 minute drive outside of the capital, Kathmandu. It's a rural setting, in which, we're told one can see Mount Everest in the distance. Our stay is a "residential project", meaning, we live in the orphanage--not at a home-base or with a host family, like we previously thought.

As a volunteer, we will spend the morning and evening with the orphans, generally 7-9 AM, 3-6 PM, and all day on Saturdays. Waking them, feeding them, making sure they brush their teeth, helping them complete homework, help them make their beds, sing songs, play games, and do yoga in the morning with them. For the afternoons, we will organize creative activities with the children. The children have off of school on Saturdays, so Chanel and I will be with them all day. On those days, we can plan to take them into the city or take them to the zoo or take them for picnics!!


The details caught me off-guard. It is more than I hoped for. I was expecting it to be some large facility with more children than I could come to know the names of. But that's not it. It's two managers of the orphanage, 18 children, and Chanel and I. It's so much more intimacy than I was expecting, not to mention we're waking them up, sewing their clothes if they need, putting them to bed, singing the entire "Sleep tight. Don't let the bed-bugs bite." routine that I can remember my father saying to us in childhood. Those children will be everything for four weeks. And I'd be fooling myself if I thought it would end there. Those children will linger in my mind and life for years.

Meaning, Means, Method--Part 1

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."

Dawning

I find myself, in a small way, hesitant in starting this. That, I'm sure, is for the fact that I've never found myself quite in this place. I have never started, written, nor been a follower of any fellow's blog. I'm not one to arrest my breaths in anticipation of an impending chance event or a notion of motion not promised by contract. I have never felt swayed to prepare for life with this much of a head-start. I, by no means, have ever been handed an opportunity for expansion like this one. Particularly, not one that was handed to me in red and green wrapping paper.

But, I suppose, a head-start is what this journey is for. Perhaps maybe more of a kick-start. A way for Chanel and I to recognize that, though we have been living (quite happily and most gracefully), it's really starting for us.

"Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." (Dune, Frank Herbert) That is a favorite quote of my eldest sister and family alike.

I fully expect this two month trip to forever change the eyes with which I perceive the world. And with those expectations, I am ready for it to surprise me with how little I know. I am ready for the world to belittle and overwhelm me.

Here, I hope to (with some constancy) document the planning, the ideas, the revelations and the happenings of Chanel and I's trip through Nepal and Cambodia.


Here's to an awakening of Chanel and I. Here's to the dawning of our lives. (Clink!)

And while I'm at it...here's to the family that bred us to question, the experiences that justified our wonder, the exquisite people we've met along the way, and the people we've become. (Woo!)