Amazing! When I got to La Jabilla all the kids were waiting at the bus stop with ¨We love you¨ signs. I think I was invited into all 18 houses in the barrio in the 4 days I was in town and kissed the cheek of almost everyone I met last year. It`s cheesy, but I wonder: How the hell did I walk into town the only gringo, the only stranger, to leave with a community of friends and family I previously had nothing in common with?

I've got a backpack full of bathing suits, trash magazines and wheat thins and dark chocolate to deliver to the gringos... I'm going back to Costa Rica!

...for a week.

Thursday I saw the San Francisco Air Guitar Regional Championships. It "rocked". The winner tried to jump into the crowd but he was a big guy, and as he flew from the stage to the audience, the crowd below him parted like the Red Sea, and he hit the floor. He got up and triumphantly pumped his fists in the air, knowing the move would surely win him the title. I think I may have been the only sober person there.

And last night we went and watched Casablanca on a big outdoor screen in Union Square! It was magical.

I saw the parrots of Telegraph Hill on my walk to work this morning.

Going to get burritos at Taqueria Cancun after the Haight Street Fair yesterday, we were greeted onto the bus by a random sing-a-long. The lead signer was a girl from Ethiopia; 3 friends, a homeless man, a random guy wearing John Lennon glasses and a beret (and us, naturally) were her back-up singers/percussionists. "Lean on Me", "Killing me Softly" and "The Fresh Prince Theme Song" were all performed.

We do Bar Mitzvahs and Weddings...

Sometimes my favorite part of the painting is the artist's signature. It means it wasn't a dream.

Wednesday: Manu Chao.

Thursday: ...Marks my 24th year on this planet.

Friday: Arcade Fire.

But...

I. Hate. Jetlag.

The End.

I'm back home, though my body has no idea what time zone it's in. Thank god I have today and tomorrow off.

My last two days in Nepal were amazing, amazing, fucking amazing. We traveled through countryside that a few months ago was ravished by Maoist-Government conflict, to see our schools and libraries. We went to villages Americans just don't see... Tiny mud houses on the sides of cliffs; women in red saris harvesting corn and planting rice; people bathing at community wells; towns with no roads, only thin winding footpaths up tall hills; green and gold mountains that the clouds skimmed over. We drank tea in local shops while the school kids stared at me. No one had ever seen foreigners before.

We walked into the schools and all the kids ran out of their classrooms. They swarmed our jeep, staring, laughing, waiting for us to do something. Because after all, who knows what this weird, tall, lightly-colored woman does? Cute little kids in dirty blue uniforms with snot running down their pierced noses (there's no Kleenex in rural Nepal) and red ribbons in their hair. It's a bit weird having 200 pairs of little eyes staring at you, waiting for you to do something.

And then when we'd leave the schools, it was just like out of a movie. The kids would chase the Jeep down the road (sometimes they'd get in front of us because after all, these were not very good roads) until their little hearts couldn't beat any faster.

Amazing.

I saw Mount Everest from a plane. It's so tall you feel like you're in outer space when you look at it.

I was also almost eaten by a monkey at a Buddhist stupa. That would have been terrible karma for the monkey, right?

Today we are going to Bhaktapur and some rural schools. Most of our schools you have to walk 4 days to get to because there are no roads in Nepal. Luckily the few that are 20 miles outside of Kathmandu only take 2 hours to get to by motor bike Hehe.

My international colleagues amaze me. How they find the motivation to bring quality children's literature to countries without such literary traditions, I don't know... one grew up under apartheid, one was taken from his family at 13 by the Khmer Rouge to be a soldier, one was a monk for awhile.

And, I'm really going to miss the Momos and tea when I leave.