Love, Actually

"Timi lai maya gadsum, timi lai maya gadsum!"
I'm standing on the ground yelling up to the boys on the balcony in between sobs. It means I love you in Nepali, and it's my favorite phrase in the whole language because maya means love. It was my last day in Nepal and I had postponed the goodbyes until the very last moment I could. The night before, the senior class boys had given me a book and their favorite DVD and I had managed to keep myself together despite the fact I was terribly upset about leaving, but I was not so collected the next day. We sat together at lunch as usual, but at the end the younger boys brought me one of the Buddhist scarves from the temple and Toby gave me a bracelet he bought at the market. As soon as I had to hug Tsepel, Rabgye, and Toby (3 of my favorites from the senior class), I burst into tears. I actually cried all the way to the taxi and then all the way to the hotel and I even shed some tears on the flight to Delhi.
I remember thinking how strange it was that I was crying so much, especially since I had hated Nepal so much when I first got there. I didn't even cry when I left home, I just felt excited to start my trip, to see the world for 10 months. But leaving Nepal was heartbreaking, it felt like how I should've felt when I left home, and that feeling is the most important thing I learned in Nepal. Without me even noticing, those 54 boys taught me what love actually is. They love every person they encounter the way they love their families. No one is an outsider, no one deserves to be treated less than anyone else, they would give everything they have to anyone who needed it. It didn't take me but a week to love them, but not how we love our families, our friends, our boyfriends or girlfriends, this was totally new. They're like my best friends and my family all wrapped into one, and I've never felt more at home than I did at that monastery. It's no wonder I spent hours crying about leaving, it felt like I was leaving the home I grew up in for my entire life.
But now I'm in Thailand, and though I'm still sad about leaving Nepal, I'm having a really great time here. We spent 2 nights in Bangkok, which is by far the craziest place I've ever seen. I'd say at least 50% of the women are actually men. There's also no shortage of alcohol there, most of the bars have a 2 for 1 deal on buckets (yes, buckets) of drinks. I avoided the bucket of alcohol route, though. On Sunday, we got on the minibuses to Singburi, which is where the eco-house we're staying in is. Besides the hoardes of mosquitoes and poisonous ants and the unbelievably high temperatures and humidity, it's actually quite nice. We're just across the street from the river, which is unimaginably dirty, but nice to look at at night. During the day we've done a lot of sightseeing at all the important temples and monuments nearby, and we visited the city center which has a department store and a very nice pool. We eat dinner at 5, so we have a lot of free time at night, which we spend sitting at the bar across the street because there really is nothing else to do here. It's actually pretty nice to sit around and talk to everyone. There's people from Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, and I even met 2 American guys! They're from Ohio, and it was so amazing to talk to someone who has the same accent and understands me even when I talk as fast as I normally do. Sadly, they left today, so I will have to go back to talking impossibly slow again.
This week we'll be visiting more temples, and on Tuesday night we'll be sleeping in one! I'm pretty excited about that, even though I know all about temples and monks since I spent so much time in the monastery in Nepal. Next week I start volunteering in an orphanage, and the week after that we're going to Koh Samet island for beach week! My 19th birthday is the day after we arrive in Koh Samet, and I'm really looking forward to a beach birthday party!

Oh, and I promise not to be so sketch about updating my blog, I've just been really lazy lately.