Day one, or four, or twenty four… we’re not really sure. We’re all rather beside ourselves with jetlag. Jonah writing – I left Connecticut 70 hours ago. I only know this because I started my stopwatch when I left home and that was, apparently, 70 hours ago.

Following a flight from Delhi, I arrived at the hotel yesterday afternoon, welcomed by a cheery Deneen, Jennifer, and Anju a few hours before dinner and, this morning, after an earthquake wake up call at about 6am, we headed out for a PLAYshop with Common Youth Stand Up and Act4Quake, a part of AYON, Association of Youth Organizations Nepal.

This horizontally organized group of young people started four years ago with the goal of holding their government accountable to the people and now has over 90,000 members. When we arrived at their current headquarters, a college, we found them loading a truck with rice, dal, and tarps to send to a village that suffered devastating losses in a landslide just a few days ago. It will take them two full days of driving to reach this village with much needed supplies.

At their invitation, we organized them into a circle in the shade and began to play some games and make some noise. This group engaged with ease and took to the games as if they’d played them before. Jennifer led a crowd favorite, “Sneaky Sneaky Space Stealer,” while Anju and Deneen supported and after a bit more low stakes circle gaming, I transitioned the group into a longer form game, the PLAYshop they’d asked for.

Nepal is beautiful and dusty. Everyone says Namaste like we say hi. We met Dr. Tshering Lama, an awesome guy with Childreach Nepal and will share more about our extensive plans tomorrow.

Namaste’