Dulikhel

Tomorrow we are packing up and leaving our hotel in Kathmandu. We are stopping by the leper hospital here on our way out of town to visit, then will be going to Dulikhel where we will spend a week. We are going to spend some time in the hospital there and working with their medical students. On the following Monday we will return to Kathmandu for a day before departing again for our 6 day trek in the Helendu region, where we will stop by a couple of the remote health posts in the village. So fr the trip has been great, I'm getting a lot of pictures I like working on putting them together to upload, though the internet makes that a bit tough to do!

Kathmandu

Hello everyone, yesterday was my first day here in Kathmandu in Nepal. I'm staying at Hotel Vajra with the group. It is a fairly nice hotel with a good breakfast. The power is not on during the day however, which means no charging or WIFI. The group seems pretty good, there are the two physicians leading the trip, an OBGYN and EM physician from UNM, 2 residents from UNM in EM and IM, 2 med students from UNM, me, and  4th year from Georgetown. Yesterday we met with the Ministry of Health here which was interesting, and then went to the US embassy to meat with the USAID. In the evening we had a touristy traditional Nepali dinner with dancers etc. I slept like a rock, still trying to get caught up on sleep. Though I was pretty fortunate on the way over, I had a whole to myself to stretch out and sleep on during the flight from Vancouver to Guangzhou. In Guangzhou I did not have to clear customs or anything, just was bused around on a convoluted international transfer. Basically just walked off the plane, onto a bus, up some stairs and onto the next plane, since my flight had been over 2 hours late leaving. Today we are going to meet with some NGOs, which should be interesting.

Nepal

I'm on my way to Nepal today, just got through security at the Seattle airport and will be flying to Vancouver soon, then on to Guangzhou (China) and finally to Kathmandu, arriving tomorrow at 10:10 PM local time for a total of 26 hours. It appears Nepal is 12 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Seattle. I will be meeting with my group the following morning and will find out more about what the trip entails then. I'm looking forward to it.