Namaste! I have no proper photos to stick up on this entry as I forgot my connection lead for my camera to pc. Well I have had time to chew things over and over my intial shock of GPPM house and decided I'd see how things went. I just have safety and size issues but I will assess them again when I move in. Last night all the volunteers for August arrived so we went out for dinner, I wasn't expecting to go all the way to Nepal to get the best pizza I've ever had, so I was excited to be going back to Roadhouse! However there was a guy there last night, turns out he was an old volunteer from August last year, it took a while for me to remember him so that was quite cool, Taylor and I were scaring the new guys with our stories of the trainig village haha! However I also remember what Taylor is like at eating, so there was a little race between us to finish our pizza and see who could finish off one of the other girl's who couldn't manage hers, sadly neither of us managed it, I ate to fast and had hiccups and Taylor backed out.... so technically I could have ate more , so that means I WON! :) This months group is quite small, there are about 12 of us but Taylor and I don't count as we're returning volunteers. Its a pretty even match between boys and girls, different to last year where there were about 6 boys to 20 something girls. So today was the first day of training and the new vollies tried dal bhat for the first time!! That always makes for great photos as the dal bhat at VSN is the poorest one. Again, Taylor and I wired in while the rest watched us, a few were apprehensive about using their hand to eat, especially the mess Taylor and I were creating but toook the plunge eventually. One girl piped up and said, I don't like spicy food, Taylor and I just looked at each and he went 'Yeh good luck then!' haha the more dal bhat you have the pickier you become and you have favourite places to eat. Like VSN isn't that good, neither is GPPM but bistachaap was great as is Amaa+Rupa's. So whilst the volunteers started their nepali labguage lessons I had a huge chat with karen she wanted to know what I thought of the house etc. It was really nice and I came away feeling better about going back. So... the placement. I will move in on friday, Kamaal was going to put me in a host family as they have not had volunteers live in since January I think, this is because the dal bhat is really poor , seemed ok yesterday so I will move in for a week's trial but if it isn't good enough then they want to place me with a family. Also the volunteers have to share a charpi with the kids, something I wasn't happy about as at the old house at least I had my own 'bathroom' and from the looks of it, hygiene has never graced the place with its presence. So it looks like I'll be buying a pair of charpi flip flops. Several other reasons I wanted to move in is because there are rumours that the guy who cooks dal bhat is sleeping there and taken one of the beds from the kids so they need someone who wont mince their words... enter Lauren. Also I want to check none of the kids are sleeping on the floor, any bed wetting issues and because some of the best times I've had with the boys has been when I put them down for the night or first thing in the morning, in a host family you miss these little bonding moments with them. So tomorrow I might sit in a nepali class just to brush up on it, although its been coming back to me better than I thought . As Taylor and I dont need to do any training we might go watch a movie or something whilst the others finish. On the third day the vollies move out to the training village and I'm heading to GPPM for the day to gut the volunteer room as it is filthy and disgusting, there's waste, flies and its just dirty!! (check me cleaning, here's a turn up for the books!) then I'll move on friday. I also said to Karen who is running VSN just now that I didn't need to spend all of my time at GPPM if she had other orphanages that were is bad need. GPPM has deteriorated recently, there were doing well but its slipped in the past few months and there are a few issues she wants me to sort out, not really fair to fling a new vollie in at the deep end, however Charity orphanage is nearing crisis (I'll say more about that later). Luckily it is 10minutes away form GPPM so once they're sorted I'll split my time between the two as they really need a gobby cow like me to deal with managers and the crap they give volunteers.... after Ram last year, what could possibly be worse?! So I'm off to kick some butt there. Kicking butts aside I've just been and bought 4 dvds and 3 cd albums for 7 quid.... back of the net! Also.... me and a few of the guys are going bunjy jumping! I just went to Last Resort to talk prices and dates etc and a bunch of us are going to hopefully go up. It'll cost $90 if we stay the night and $80 if we dont, so might as well stay! Well thats all from me for today, I write an awful lot so I apologise for the lengthy text, hopefully its not too boring, plus when I move out the emails might be less frequent, probably not everyday either due to access and the amount of work I have to do. So as none of you are online off I trot to see if my t-shirt is dry yet... I dropped it in the toilet this morning.... it hadn't been flushed from the night before, and just to clear up, that wasn't my fault!! :( Much love Lauren xxxxxxxxxxxx