The next stage

It's only been two weeks since I left Ukraine, but it already seems like a distant memory. I think that's because so much has happened between now and then. I spent a wonderful week in Italy with my family. It had been a year since I'd seen any of them and I appreciate time spent with them now more than ever. During our time there we traveled through southern Italy, learned more about my roots (before my family's name was Ceo it was Cea), ate the most delicious food of our lives, and indulged in a non Peace Corps lifestyle for a short time.

We're in Nepal now and are back to being quite frugal. So far we've managed to keep our daily expenses to under $10 a day (this includes hotel, food, travel, sightseeing, etc.) Things are very inexpensive here, but a budget this strict is a constant challenge. Here's an example of our daily expenses:

hotel -$3
food - $4
entrance fee to a temple, monastery, or other attraction $2
misc - transportation, internet, postcards, or other misc. $1

It was a little hard to adjust back to watching our pennies so closely, but after a day we were right back in the swing of things. Often I don't even realize just how frugal we're being and when I do I just go ahead and laugh at myself. As an example, we waited around in front of the bread store for a half an hour until 8 PM so we could get a 50% discount on bread. Amount saved: 25 cents. But our reward is well worth it - six months traveling all over!

We've seen some pretty amazing things already. Lots of monasteries and temples, complete with monks, prayer flags, and Buddhas. They are absolutely beautiful! One of the temples we went to had monkeys living all around. They were lots of fun to look at, they're so playful. After walking up hundreds of steps to see the temple I sat down to take a break and have a sandwich. One of the monkeys saw me and called his friends over. They ran straight for me and one of them jumped and rebounded off my thigh in an attempt to grab my sandwich! He didn't get it though, no beast in the world is going to come between me and my sandwich. I've got so much more to write, but I'm running out of internet time. More later!