We set off for the Monastery and our new home for the next 2 weeks at a fairly respectable hour today. It takes about an hour in a taxi and things get alot more rural as we climb higher into the mountains.
Our first glimpse of the Monastery is amazing, it's brightly coloured and looks lovely.
We arrive and are met by a guy called Tempo, who is sort of the administrator of the Monastery (not a Monk) and who calls himself a 'jack of all trades'.
Beds are set up for us in a small stone room, there is no other furniture and for the first time we are introduced to really basic accommodation.
We will be sharing a room (Kris & I) with a Spanish girl called Cristina, who is here with the same volunteering organisation as us and arrived on the same day also.
The only other volunteer at the monastery at this time is an American called Travis. He comes down to meet us but seems a bit distracted and doesn't want to leave his class for long so we are left to settle in.
We are told not to walk around with little clothes on and to make sure we take our clothes and change in the bathroom, not walk back to our room in only a towel.
Tempo tells us that one of the bathrooms will be closed off from the Monks and will just be a girls bathroom as all showers etc. are communal.
The first look at the bathroom, which is down the hall from our bedroom, confirms our worst fears - it has a Nepali toilet.
The bathroom situation will be one of the hardest for me. A Nepalese toilet is basically a hole in the floor and as a rule they don't use toilet paper, they use their left hand! then manually 'flush' the toilet by throwing a bucket of water down the hold. AHHHHH!
