Holy Cow!

Something that I find really funny about Nepal is that becuase of the strong hindu influence, Cows are revered so much to the point that they can stop traffic. We'll be speeding along in one of these insane taxi's, and then have to slow down all of a sudden to take a wide turn around a Cow that decides to take a nap in the middle of the road. (I also like seeing monkeys just walking around down sidewalks, doing all sorts of buisness.. ha)

A story:

So, two days ago we met up with this friend of ours who took us out of the Kathmandu city into the hills to a small village out there. In this landcruiser of his we took a very very bumpy ride up into the hills on these small one car roads that due to the heavy rain that had started were muddy and awesome. The rain took a well timed break just as we reached the bottom of this hill that we then walked up, on the way we saw this church that he was building and heard some awesome stories about the changes happening in the village. On our way down, it started to rain again, and some of the members in our fellowship had a revelation... rain brings out leeches.
There was quite a few funny moments as the girls in our group panicked becuase of leeches crawling up their shoes, and one incident on the leg, eventually (most of us) were calm with the belief that there was no longer a leech threat.
myself included,
Now, I'm going to give a short history for anybody reading this who has not seen me really since I came back to Canada. I came back with some amazing shoes. At one point they were all brown Converse Allstars. They are the same shoes that I left to ywam with... except they no longer look like the same shoes, they are so ripped up and in pieces that some could technically refer to them as being "sandals". (Now for those of you who may know me even better than that... i don't frequently buy new clothes... so my socks? didn't look much better... they hardly have bottoms anymore the holes are so big. (Also... in Kathmandu there are many people on the streets who "fix and shine" shoes....you should see their faces when I walk by, my sister has seen some actually turn around and drop their jaws... I refer to my shoes as "dead" when i talk to them"

Back to the story
So, 30 min after the leech fiasco, we are just arriving on the outer rim road of Kathmandu, when all of a sudden.... I can feel something. In my shoes. No... In my socks. Crawling? no Slithering in between my toes.
"I think there's something in my shoe"
"WHAT? Jon thats not funny"
"hahah no seriously"
I then proceed to take off my shoe... to see that the tip of my sock is darkened with blood, I then start to take off my sock, but it is unecessary to completly remove the sock becuase what should drop out of the gaping hole? But this leech, already fat on my blood. It had crawled through the gateways that were my socks and shoes.
I'm loving it, laughing away becuase I thought it made a good story, however it started an entirely new panic between the girls about leeches, and it turns out there was actually another one on one of our members backs that had stuck on. fun fun.

We then drove to the "transition home" and hung out with the people there, which was awesome. Last night was actually our goodbye with all the kids from the homes, as today we start our journey home (there are overnight layoversk, and we are going through Cambodia on our way back, so we're staying there a day etc.) But it was really sad to say goodbye. Even though it was such a short time, we really got connected with these guys, there was Lots of guitar on my part on the roof of the home with the boys, haha I taught them Saosin and how "metal music" in North america is played (drop D heh). They loved it, and especially liked "Out of the mud" by Stutterfly hahah. There was also sing alongs for well known songs like "American Pie" and old faithful, "knocking on heavens door". To be honest, I think it was one of the (if not THE) first times I've ever sung and played Guitar (together) in front of people, (usually I'm too self concious) which was cool becuase they were all into it. One of them then showed me a song that he and his friends wrote, which was awesome, All in Nepali, really cool.

There was another funny story... when it happened I thought to myself "write this in the blog", but now I can't remember it.

But thats life. Quite a few days back we went to the zoo with the youngest kids, which was really cool, They all refer to me as "Jon Uncle", which is really cute. The zoo was small, but still was really cool, the first zoo I'd ever been to. The kids love monkeys, but arn't so fascinated by the tiger they had. Suprising.

BUT! I have to run now, catch a flight. Thank you for reading! It really does make my day when I hear that someone has been.