TUESDAY MORNING IN KATHMANDU

There were many small aftershocks overnight and water is gone again. John poured our precious bucket of water in the tank so we can flush one more time before leaving the hotel for the day. 

John can get email, but I can't. I'm blaming Verizon for that, but am not sure. I can get texts from iPhones only when I'm connected to Wifi so it's very sporadic. We've were able to FaceTime all the kids yesterday. 

It's 5 am and 6:15pm back home. Yes, do the math we are 10:45 minutes ahead. Apparently Neoal wanted it's time zone distinctly different form India for some reason back in the day. The monkeys start calling, birds singing about 4am and so far there haven't been so many dogs barking like they have other days. We've packed our duffle bags to leave. These are provided by the trekking company Alps in Nepal. Go to www.alpsinnepal.com to check it out. One of them did graduate work in Nebraska. Who'd have thought! We get to keep the bags at the end. 

They can only weigh about 12 kg. the folks who tried to leave yesterday are not out yet. At least one came back to he hotel. I think one slept at the airport. Two others I'm not sure about. I haven't spoken to any of them since they left. 

Another small aftershock right now the bed wobbles a very little bit. John didn't feel it. Perhaps I'm paranoid. I'm the one who always figures the tornado could never hit exactly where I am, but with 3000 dead all bets are off. Where the Avalanche was is where we were planning to go. Now our plan has completely changed. We will drive to Pokhara 7 hours today. They say there are 100 buses heading to India on the Same road so this could be interesting. I'll have my camera ready and lots of water and snacks with me so I can survive. I gues the $100 worth of snack I bought at Hy Vee and made into many small trail mix bags will pay off after all. We've eaten that along with snacks form others when we get tired of fried rice. Mostly rice, by the way, not much fried other stuff. I'm also mostly vegetarian now. 

This is Lisa and Patricia, both of whom are making efforts to leave Nepal now that the plans have fallen apart. So far no luck getting out. We will visit a health center in Pokhara today. We expect to do minor medical things along the way wherever we can, but don't really have the usual lines of people and clinic or surgery set up like past missions. This is a reconnaissance trip to see if a new mission can be organized for the future.