Today we started our day at the Kathmandu Center for Contemporary Art where Jason and I got our museum ID pass to get us into the Patan Dunbar Square daily for no charge. We also tried to figure out the complexities of getting SIMM cards for our phones to arrange our upcoming interviews with the press. After a long complicated process, mine never worked and Jason’s was functional only after several hours.
Before we went to our 2:30pm meeting at Kwalakhel Chowk to meet with Dr. Shah, Jeff Davis and Shristi Vaidya (water quality and groundwater specialists). I tried to do a marker rending of the square. Not sure if my experiment worked, but I plan to return to do more drawings this week.
A funny thing happened at our 2:30 meeting, Dr. Shah decided that we should go to a quieter location and asked Jeff if he could drive us to the next meeting place. He seemed to have a strange look on his face. I figured that he must have a small car, or it was full of stuff, but that was not the reason. See the video below .
The meeting was very educational and we spent three hours discussing the complexities of pollution in the city and the Kathmandu Valley. The more we talk to professionals about the project, the more we value what we are doing while also realizing the severity of the situation.
After the meeting, we walked back across town to the Patan Museum to meet Dr. Gillette and his father-in-law and brother-in-law who had taken a 26-hour bus ride to apply for VISAs to visit the States. We ended up walking back to where we had just come from to have a wonderful meal at the Roadhouse Cafe where I had a spicy Tandori pizza. Overall, the food has been great! We have been walking quite a bit since we arrived. We are averaging 10 miles everyday.
The main issues for us are the regular power outages (today: 8am-4pm and 7-12pm) and poor internet service, which has been a significant obstacle to overcome when creating the videos and blogs.