We made it!!

We made it to Kathmandu!
It still hasn't hit that we're actually here...in Kathmandu...in Nepal.

Let me rewind just a little but and tell you about our adventure to get here. We left San Francisco at 12:45pm on Monday and flew 15 hours to Hong Kong. Fortunately we had movies, wine, and interesting characters on the plane to pass the time. One of whom was a woman sitting across the aisle from us who we named Wanda. She tried to share every food item she had with us and we even learned that she tried to sneak a family sized jar of mayonaise on board but unfortunately it was confiscated. So if anyone out there has an extra jar, there's a needy mayonnaise lover waiting in Hong Kong.

After a short layover we hopped on another plane for a relatively quick 3 hour flight to Bangkok. We were blown away by how huge and modern the airport is; literally every wall is made of glass. It's incredible! Spent the night at a hotel Ashley had booked online and headed straight to sleep. We were able to sleep in a bit which was so nice considering how off our body clocks are. This morning about 11am we headed to the airport. It was nice to see some of the city since we got in so late last night. However, the smog in Bangkok is unreal. It is so thick that you can barely make out the skyline at certain points. One we got to the airport, we looked up and down and still could not find the Nepal Airlines desk! We began to wonder if it really even existed. We asked a couple of people who told us a general area to look for them. Turns out, the airlines don't have any permanant desks so they just open up based on what times their flights depart. So, needless to say, we had to wait around for about 3.5 hours until the desk opened up. The upside of the fiasco, no baggage fees!

Long story short, we made it to Kathmandu! There were times on the flight in today I wasn't so sure if we would, but we did. Hallelujah. We got our visas approved and Ashley's friend Sam picked us up. Tonight they are putting us up at a hotel in the Thamel (tourist area) of Kathmandu. There's a large group of volunteers leaving in the next few days and then the 4 bed room will open for us and we'll move in. The hotel is quite cozy and ahem...vintage to say the least. But they've got showers for us to use and beds for us to sleep on so that's all that really matters. We all look forward to tomorrow morning because we'll be heading over to the orphanage. Until then, I'm off to get some much needed rest.

Many more adventures and pictures to come!