Making Bungee

We'll get to bungee and swing later, first thing's first

I got over the whole gross out factor of goat skin and just ate it. The night before i went for my bungee jump we had goat meat for dinner at the orphanage. Rather than being the wuss I had been and playing with every piece of meat to separate fat from meat from skin, i just ate it. Meh, goat skin is NOT like chicken skin, it's tough, a little rubbery, doesn't have too much taste, and isn't so incredibly awful.

alright i know i had other things to say but hopefully i will remember them after i talk about bungee!

thats right, i lept off the third highest commercial bungee jump IN THE WORLD, and the HIGHEST canyon swing in the world. Pictures are up on Facebook but i dont have the pics of me yet, those are promised from some nice tourists i met. The bridge for the bungee is over a gigantic canyon with a wild river rushing down below, not exactly a great way to land if things go wrong. Thankfully they didn't, and I flew 160 meters (thats around 480 feet!) into the canyon. The most free-fall anyone who hasn't bungeed or sky-dove has experienced is probably on a roller coaster, lasting about a second or two, so for the first second its exhilarating but semi predictable. The good part starts when your body says okay thats enough but you KEEP falling face to the ground and eventually slow down to bob back up three or four more times. All the blood pools in your head giving you a slight headache while the world spins around and you fill with a sense of euphoria you have never experienced before. That's the bungee. The swing is quite different, you are attached to a rope that is attached hundreds of feet AWAY from you to a wire spanning the canyon, so when you leap, you do a giant pendulum swing from the bridge across the canyon. The free-fall from the swing is about 5 seconds, way more than with the bungee, and it was absolutely incredible.

this was the most touristy thing i have done so far, and it was really nice to meet people and get to hear some travel stories. One Israeli tourist was a single deaf traveler traveling with lipreading in English and Hebrew as the only form of communication. . . incredible.

Went out that night for what was promised by Rajendra a "Nepali dance bar" which ended up being three Nepali men dancing by themselves watching girls up on stage dancing and taking pictures of them with their camera phones, pretty pathetic.

Tomorrow i am off to the jungle for my safari! will be back on Friday and give the update, but hopefully there are rhinos and tigers and elephant baths in my near future!

Subash has kind of stopped peeing in the bed! Thank god, although i will not hold my breath just yet.

Getting really sad that i only have another few weeks here before it's off to India.

After much pestering of my neighbor to cook me dinner i have been told by Rajendra that i need to give up the light harassment, because although the neighbor thinks its funny, I'm decently loud and it wouldn't be good for other people to hear me shouting in Nepali

"YOU, ME, DAL BHAT, TONIGHT"
"PLEASE, DAL BHAT, TONIGHT, ME, YOU, YOUR FAMILY"

It's incredible how much learning someone's name can change their attitude towards you, because before i spoke to her i had solely known her as the "sad looking woman that is always doing laundry outside my door" and now she is always smiling and always calling my name as I walk by. Really really wish i knew Nepali, damn Rosetta stone only had Hindi which hopefully i still remember some of by the time i get to India.

Random dude named Preston wandered into the orphanage the other day (hes from Alabama) and i think is now staying as a new volunteer . . . oh Nepal.

Eefje's friend and her will be in Chitwan (the jungle) at the same time as Adam and i, so that should be nice.

and a POOR POOR new volunteer is coming for JUST ONE WEEK here . . . they are going to be so shell shocked and will not even be halfway in the swing of things before it is time to leave, i feel awful, but i also agree with all the other volunteers that the new volunteer should clean the toilet :)