Since my last journal entry I have avoided a few near misses, the first came a few days ago when I was heading back out to the village and caught the bus. Now I've been on nepali buses before, hell, I've even been on a few that have crashed but this one tops the rest...... considering I was hanging backwards out of the side of the bus! As usual they were playing 'see how many people we can squeeze in' and Joe and I had the unfortunate pleasure of being the last on, which meant hanging backwards out of the side door, so everytime the bus rounded a corner or went down a hill (that one a Balaju bypass, a few of you know what I'm talking about!) I was hoping that the rip in the roof that I was holding onto wasn't going to give way like it was threatening to. That said we made it safe and sound and hey, I only paid 7Rs instead of 10! The next day however, I went to Charity to do some teaching, my first class was class three (in the photo) and as you can see the roof is nowhere near stable. Jason, another one of the teachers was teaching his nursery class and all that separates us is a blackboard at the back of my class, everything was fine, it was a baking hot day as usual then all of a sudden this gust of warm wind blew the tarp. off the roof causing the bricks that were weighing the tarp down so come off. It was like watching something on the news as I was facing his class when I was teaching and could see them falling, the bricks missed 2 of the little ones by centimetres, I'm not joking our hearts were in our mouths at that point, and that was with only a little gust of wind. Of course it happened again though, this time in my class when I was teaching class 5. I had sat the book on the desk and was leaning over it finding the pages for that day when Wye had shouted (causing me to turn stand up and turn round) she was going to find the rest of my class (another 1 girl to make up my 3 students) when the bloody bricks came off the tarp and fell right where I'd been! It missed my other students thankfully but I still didn't fancy a dented skull! In the end I told the orphanage owner/school principle not to bother putting the bricks back up that day which means the sun becomes unbearably warm. That school is going to become a death trap like their house is. Jason's already fell down the hill, I reckon Dan and I are due to soon as well, thats if the roof doesn't cave in on our heads completely by then at least. So thats been the past 2 days. Last night was a sort of farewell night for some of the volunteers, in particular Wye and Luke who are out in the same village as Jason, Dan, Joe and myself, so it'll be very strange not seeing them nearly everyday and swapping stories about treating lice, vitamen deficiencies and oh yeh, do any of your kids have this weird rash etc. There comes a point though where we all have to stop talking shop and talk about anything else. It's always nice to have a night off, especially when someone sets fire to the bar and another guy juggles beer bottles, the actual attraction is that he is so rubbish he smashes them and everyone has to dodge flying shards of broken glass and flaming napkins! At least I had plenty of practice in dodging things that day! So early start today, Jason is ill, instead of teaching health, I am taking over his English classes..... including the nursery which I am dreading, although Jason did give me some advice: 'They can smell your fear so watch out!'..... cheers mate. That said I must be off, thanks to everyone for the emails and supportive messages, you have no idea how much I need them at times! Take care and much love as always Lauren xxxxxx p.s. Helen, read your mail, are you alright girl?! That is SO wrong, try not to let it spoil the rest of your time there you're doing a great job, I'm v.proud of you and the boys send their love.... they would do it themselves but new policies etc. I'll explain at a later date. Hang in there xxx