safe and sound in Kathmandu!

We've arrived! It took a full 2 days to get here but we finally made it. Our group left our hotel in DC at 4:30am and flew out of Dulles to Chicago, where we then took a lovely 15 hour flight to Tokyo, followed by another 6 hour flight to Bangkok. not entirely sure what i did on that 15 hour flight because i was so out of it, but i tried to sleep a lot. Thankfully we overnighted at a hotel in bangkok, because I think i had slept approximately 6 hours over the past 2 days. A group of us went out near our hotel to get some thai food and then headed back to the posh Best Western that Peace Corps put us up in. They take quite good care of us while we are en route to our country.This morning we woke up bright and early and flew to Kathmandu!! Nepal is beautiful....flying in over the mountains was awesome. We were met at the airport by Peace Corps staff and quickly led into a VIP lounge where we met the US Ambassador to Nepal as well as all the Peace Corps staff and took some pictures. We then cut through everyone else in line for customs and proceeded to get our bags. Thankfully all 40 of our bags made it!! We were then all loaded up into vans and drove to our training center, where I am writing from. Kathmandu is busy, to say the least. I thought traffic and driving in Tanzania was bad...this is about fifty times worse. Motorcycles and buses and cows filled the street with no apparent order whatsoever. Cows are sacred in Nepal though, so it was interesting to see an entire road stop to wait for a cow to cross. The air pollution here is terrible, so it wasnt uncommon to see people wearing face masks while walking around. Once we got to the training center we had a couple hour orientation where we met the rest of PC staff and did some brief orientation activities. We basically have the rest of the evening free except for some quick medical interviews. The 20 of us are here for another 3 days full of training and then head to Chautara to begin our 3 months of training!! Its quite hot and humid here, which I wasnt expecting. We aren't really allowed out of the area where our training center is, so i'm excited to head to Chautara in a couple days. Hope everyone is well back home...I miss all of you!!