The first night

Night time in the village is beautiful - dark so dark no lights at all, the sky soooo full of stars.

Some of us were lucky and even saw shooting stars :-)

We decided to light a lantern and send our wishes to the sky...

Dinner was fantastic - dal soup, rice, chapatti and cabbage never tasted better!!

Sleeping on the floor was fun with a cool breeze blowing through...though there were enough sounds to keep us awake for some time (neighbours snoring, insects buzzing and something scurrying around on the roof!!!)

Going to the toilet was a challenge - out the door, down the ladder, around the building and in the loo - all in pitch darkness with just a torch :-)  A bit spooky I tell you. So visits to the loo in the night were always in two's (atleast for me). During the day, things were much easier and one could enjoy the view of the valley whilst on the throne :-) 

We have arrived

We arrived in Future Village by late afternoon on the 9th of October

Future Village is a two storey structure - 2 classrooms on ground level and 1 kitchen. On level one there are 3 rooms.

The location of Future Village is perfect - right next to rice fields, overlooking open spaces and when the sky is clear we can see the Anapurna ranges and Ganesh Himal :-)

The first day was all about settling and sorting - we were 12 volunteers in total (our team of 7 + 4 girls from HK + 1 boy from Taiwan). The split for the rooms was 5 girls, 4 girls and 3 boys. Everyone in sleeping bags, some on the floor and some on beds. I opted for the floor and as Yue will tell you she was my floor mate :-)

We spent the afternoon sorting the books that we had brought over from Singapore - splitting them into categories maths, science, reading, activity etc. Half of the books will stay in Future Village and the other half in the village library.

The Journey - free roller coaster ride, mud bath & shower!!!

After introducing you to the team, lets take a step back.
How did we get to Future Village? In a truck!!
The total journey took us 5 hrs or so, the first two were relatively easy, nice comfortable seats in a van, from Kathmandu to Dhading village.
At Dhading we all jumped onto a truck with the lugguage sandwiched between us. The ride to the village was fantastic - views were great, we got a roller coaster ride cum mud bath for free. Half way there we even got a free rain shower :-) What more can one ask for..

PS. If you are wondering why we are sticking our toungues out..well we are just playing Kali!!

The TEAM - fantastic seven :-)

Time to introduce the Team - crazy, fun, cldnt have done it without them.

From the left:
(1) Vinayak Doraiswamy (striped) - The catfish
(2) Shruti Garg (black) - Secretive giggles
(3) Peter Hepenstall (grey) - If you are happy and you know it...
(4) Yue Wang (orange) - You yue!!
(5) Jessie Lai (pink) - The belly dancer
(6) Liling Toh (white) - Ling-a-bing
(7) Prakriti Sofat (green) - Squirty derivative

Wow we crossed 15k!!!

We are on a ROLL....

The money just kept flowing in.....I cant believe it we crossed SGD15k - 3 times my original target :-)

Absolutely fantastic result - I cant help not smiling

Thanks!!! Could not have done it without all of you

We crossed 10k!!

7th October - The day of my flight to Nepal I had SGD 8700 collected. Given that we were so close to 10k, I really wanted to cross the line :-)
I reached out to my colleagues and everyone chipped in with generous hearts to ensure that we not only crossed the SGD10k line but collected nearly SGD13k!!!

Special thanks to Amir Anwar who continued fund raising even after I had left for Nepal.

Thanks to each and every one of you for your contributions and support.

Kudos to all of you

The fund raising has been a super success :-)

My initial target was SGD 3000 but the generosity of family, friends and colleagues has seen me raise more than SGD8700

I could not have done it without all of your support, kudos to all of you