Dheri upanyaas

Yesterday was extremely ridiculous, the streets for absolutely packed for Shivarhatri and it took us like 40 minutes to go a few kilometers on the bus. On my way to and from school we were consistently stopped by groups of small kids who were holding a string/twine across the street and demanding that we pay them to pass by. It doesn't help that they assume all Americans and super rich -- and thus they would surround us and pull at our clothes and our bag etc. I pulled the "ma biddhyarthi chhu, rupees chhaina." (i'm a student, i have no money) card, and could often get away, but many of our classmates ended up being forced to pay.

In other news I came back from school yesterday to find that my dad has left for Japan and will "return after one year." Apparently everyone neglected to tell me that he was just home on holiday for the last month and then was going to leave again. Unfortunately I didn't get to say goodbye, and I had really enjoyed talking to him, so that was sort of sad and unexpected. However, as many of us have learned in the past month, communication rarely happens between us and our families. Often there will be some random person in our house for a few days and I will have no idea who it is, experiences that many of my classmates have had as well. When we ask who it is, my family will respond with some answer that is so clearly wrong, like "he is my brother, or he is my father" both of which I know to be incorrect. Or, sometimes we will eat on the floor for no particular reason.

I'm slowing being able to communicate much more easily in Nepali, though. I had a nice long conversation with my amma last night in Nepali, which was a big slow and very general, but still it's nice to feel like I'm making some progress. My brothers are so adorable, my younger one saw that I had all these books on yetis and got so excited and got into bed with my headlamp and read for like half an hour. This was the first time I have seen any of my family members read for "fun." My other brother, the 17 year old is currently taking these huge exams that he must pass in order to "graduate from HS" and be able to go to college. He has big exams in science, math, and social studies, but once he completes them has three months off. He goes to bed at like 9 and then gets up at like 2:00am and studies by the light of my headlamp until he leaves for school around 7:00. Crazy crazy schedule.

I saw that Slumdog Millionaire did really well at the Oscars!! I bought it here for 150 rupees the other day, that's like $1.50 and we are going to have a screening at the program house on Thursday before we go off to a pizza party that the ambassador is holding for all american students studying in Nepal.