Last week, the March 2009 cycle of new volunteers arrived in Nepal. This time were no Canadians unfortunately but a record of 4 volunteers from Africa (2 from Uganda and 2 from Kenya) and then 1 from the Philippines, 1 from Ireland, and the rest from the U.K.

The 12 fresh, eager, and ready-to-go volunteers have already started their 6 week in-country-training (ICT) sessions and will then will be deployed through out Nepal once completed, most of them joining existing volunteers in the field.

I had the pleasure of meeting them all on a number of occasions (at the welcome party, @ PGH) and surprisingly I found myself as a grand fountain of unlimited resources and information. I still feel like I am the “newbie” volunteer in town (it’s only been 4 months and a bit now) but when I compare myself to where the new volunteers are now, I guess I can’t really carry that title anymore (134 days of breathing, eating, and sleeping in Nepali……argghhh, there were even a couple of times where my dreams were in Nepali).

I’ve been doing the best I can to try to transfer all of my experiences to them, but in the end I know they will experience all that is Nepali themselves and will have their own learning pains, views, and perspectives. Nonetheless, they appreciate any tid-bits of information that they can get.

Fred from Uganda has actually been an avid follower of my blog – cool. He even recalled various scenes from our ICT video and particular stories from our village stay during dinner one night. Kind of freaky at first but it makes me glad that people are finding my posts useful.

Next week, the new volunteers will be heading to good ‘ol Chetana Kendra to resume their training without the distractions of KTM. Before they leave, all of them requested to watch our ICT video, most of them for the very time first time. It will definitely be a quick glimpse of what is yet to come.