Day 2 in Kathmandu

So i was right about waking up to my lights turning back on in the early morning hours! Must remember to turn off light switches before bed.  Also, note to self: turn off lights at home when not in room (or home). 
My second day started pretty early.  My sleep schedule is still kinda off so I woke up throughout the night a bunch. There's a definite contrast in street noise from when I went to bed to waking up in the middle of the night. Night and day.  Almost eerily quiet.  I had breakfast at the guest house thinking I'd see other travelers but there was no one else there. Marsala omelet and black coffee.  After breakfast I sat in the lounge to wait for Keshab (program director) to pick me up. This is when I learned about Nepali time.  He was almost an hour late, but I was informed by others that that is not unusual in Nepal.  At least my standard of arriving to things in the knick of time is considered early somewhere in the world!  In the meantime I met a local named Dip who worked at the guesthouse and was a tour guide.  He helped me to find a sim card.  Which sounds easy enough but took forever as I had to also find a shop that would photo copy my visa for me. (phone network places require visa, passport and passport picture to turn into government
for security reasons-legitimately) At that time there was no electricity so we were wandering looking for somewhere that had generator backup.  Eventually I got it all figured out and had a working cell phone, weeeee.
     Keshab picked me up and we took his motor bike out of the tourist part of town in to Kalanki where the office is.  The bike ride was a ton of fun and frightening all at the same time.  Thank god for sunglasses and scarves otherwise I'd be blind and asphyxiated from the pollution.  The novelty of the diesel smell wore off quickly for me this trip.  (I don't know why I like it in the first place?)The office is small with just a few rooms, very modest furniture and plywood separation walls.  They had a welcoming ceremony for me in which I received a marigold wreath necklace (mala) and tika. They all gave speeches and I then had to give one also.  It was kind of an awkward little get together with language barriers and silent smiling faces just looking at each other.  There are no other volunteers the weeks I am here.  I was really hoping there would be. 
     After some time we left the office and had momo's for lunch and visited 2 temple sites.  Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple to tourists, monkeys everywhere) and Bodhnath.  Both were Buddhist.
I made the mistake of starting to walk counter-clockwise around the temple but was quickly turned around by a monk.  Opps, but will always remember to walk clockwise when walking around a temple. 
     It took a while to get back home on motorbike and there was no electricity by that time.  All the stores close pretty early in Thamel because of that so I just had dinner (chicken Briyani sp?) at the guesthouse.