Global Exchange Street Clean Comes to Kopila Valley – Several weeks ago we made connections with a group of great young people from the UK group known as Global Exchange. They come to a foreign country (not just Nepal) and pair up with local counterparts, stay with host families for 3 months, and they go home, taking their Nepali counterparts with them for an additional 3 months work in a UK city that needs assistance. Here they are focusing on sanitation and health and they asked if we could help them with a Street Clean project last Saturday. They showed up at 0900, with a pig (more later), linked up with a bunch of our eager Children from the Home and others from the School and took to the streets around the school filling pink bags with rubbish, garbage, refuse, trash…you get the idea. They segregated things between clean and dirty rubbish and when they came back to the school they created a piece of art for our November Art Month Celebration from the clean stuff. You can see the pig, which they had made before arrival from material found lying about. Well here at the school, they stuffed it with rubbish and put it out to pasture in our garden. The Aunties and Uncles are still wondering about that part of the project. Please note from the pictures in the slide show at the bottom of the blog, everyone still found time for a hard played game of “football” before the day was done.
Blue Room Boys FINALLY Come Clean – I got tired of the Girls’ Rooms always winning the Daily Cleanest Room Competition – ALWAYS! So last week I announced at Satsung the first Boy’s Room that could win the award twice would be taken out for a special treat, by me. Low and behold the Blue Room Boys, Sagar, Padam and Madan came through twice in one week to win the prize. Late this afternoon we four walked into town and after 3 failed attempts to find an open bank or a cash machine that worked, went to everyone’s favorite bakery and had sodas and Mo Mo’s (a.k.a. Chicken Pot Stickers for those of you back home). In an entire bakery full of treats, they insisted on Mo Mo’s, which came with a little bowl of vegetable soup and a glass of water. The Pictures below got taken on our way out of town (partly because we couldn’t get three biker babes who came into the bakery to take a picture of us, despite a blatant hint!). These are three fine lads who work really hard at home and school, so I deliberately posed them on the bridge in town that spans the riverbed of rock breakers. You can see one woman still working down and to the right. This is where Maggie saw the first child that started her on the path to found Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School. I couldn’t help thinking what these three boys lives would be like without that first inspiration.
Lexi’s First Apple Pies
For those who haven’t been introduced to Lexi, our youngest volunteer, but mature way beyond her years, Lexi is a veteran of over 1 years service in Nepal, the first part of it in a remote district where no one spoke English. She hails from Maryland, speaks and understands Nepali very well and now WE know, bakes great apple pies. She hopes to be going to college from here and has had to travel to both India and Kathmandu to take SAT tests to keep her very, very high scores current for her applications. She plans to become a doctor, and based on her determination and depth of knowledge in so many things, Uncle Ed bets she makes it.
Lexi and several of her “family” spent this afternoon preparing and baking not one, but two apple pies. It was quite a feat when you see the size of our oven and realize she got the recipe off the web and they were the first two pies she has ever baked. The video attached shows her teaching the family just how the 2nd one is assembled and…what the unbaked apples taste like.
As you can see by the last bite in my bowl, it was an outstanding first and 2nd effort and as she said, “probably the best apple pie within 50 miles!”
Here is a slideshow from a very busy Saturday in which our Kopila Kids made a difference, learned some great lessons, and continued to inspire “the Old Guy to know more stuff!
Challenging you to Make a Difference in someone’s life today,
Uncle Ed
Being Big in Nepal 
Thank you for sharing! Love you!