First day

Yesterday I left for the airport at 7 am, together with my parents and my sister. I got to the airport a bit early, so I drank some tea and had some extra time to say goodbye to my family. My luggage couldn't be checked in by the special machine, there were troubles with this for my flight. This meant my luggage had to be checked in manually by a flight attendant in training. After this I spent some time walking around Schiphol (I didn't want to sit because I would be sitting for the next 19 hours). The long part of the trip, from Amsterdam to Muscat with a short stop in Dammam (10 hours), wasn't too long. At Dammam most people left the airplane and no people came in return. I could sit in a row all by myself! On the plane I met a woman who was also going to Kathmandu and we spent the time during the stop in Oman together. The airport in Oman looked amazing. The food on the flight from Muscat to Kathmandu was disgusting, luckily there was only one meal. My biggest fear of this trip was that my luggage would get lost. Fortunately this didn't happen.

Bini, the woman from the children's home, was supposed to pick me up. After looking everywhere for her and not finding her I panicked a bit, I didn't know what to do. She arrived 15 minutes later because traffic was real bad. A bumpy taxi ride trough the city got us to the children's home. During this ride I saw a bit of the city, which shows a lot of contrast: beautiful temples covered in gold stand between dusty, deteriorated buildings. By the time we got to the house it was 9:30 am and I hadn't slept in the airplane, so I was very tired. Luckily Bini had predicted this already and told me to spent the whole day sleeping. Bini, her husband and the children seem really nice so far.

After I spent the whole morning in bed I spent the evening playing with a few of the kids, mainly with Kristina (8) and Abhi. The eldest girl is called Sylvia and I have talked to her the most. The children don't speak English perfectly, but enough for me to understand them most of the time.