3, or is it 30, Cups of Tea

Sorry for the lull in my blog, but all of a sudden things are picking up speed here… I have recently discovered that my duhdchiiya (milk tea) intake increases proportionally with my stress level, and these days I’m drinking 10+ cups a day.

Today is Friday – and in a few hours we have a pretty substantial paper due on a development topic of our choice. Rather than work any more on mine I will have more fun, and write this. My paper focused on Nepal’s education system, which is perhaps the country’s most glaring developmental weakness and a very interesting topic to spend some time examining, especially after being educated in the states. I ended up conducting a few interviews – one with the director of Rata Bangala, one of Nepal’s most well respected boarding schools, and one with a Harvard educated Nepali man who is the director of the Open Learning Exchange NGO that is currently working in conjunction with the One Laptop Per Child initiative that I’m sure many of you are familiar with. Interesting paper, but I’m glad to be done.

SO, the reason my tea intake has been through the roof was partially this paper, partially our huge language exam on Monday, but also our trip to Jomsom! We were planning on leaving on Sunday for a two week trip to northern Nepal, (in the Annapurnas, not far from Tibet) but because of a huge bhand (strike) that is supposed to go into effect on Sunday, we are leaving a day earlier, which means we have to get a lot of stuff in order even sooner. The scary thing is, when we get back from our trip we just have one week in the city during which we have to do all our final exams and get everything together for our ISP projects – AND, it’s also our last week with our home stay families, so everything has gotten super hectic. AND, since I’m still a little unclear about what my ISP is going to look like, I’m a bit more frantic than most. But, as they say in Nepal, “ke garne?” (rough translation – What to do?) But anyway, I am so excited about the two week getaway. We will take a bus to Pokhara, which is almost directly west, and stay there for a couple days before flying to Jomsom – just a 15 plane ride through the pass, and then a five hour hike later we will arrive in a village where we will stay with one other SITer in village families for seven days. After the week long rural homestay we can trek out of the mountains and get back to Pokhara in four days, so we can do it however we like. I cannot wait. I think, as of now, I will be trekking out on part of the Jomsom Trek that you can read about in guide books, and will hopefully be able to go up Poon Hill in the morning (with about 800 other tourists). After seeing photos from when my Aunt Liz hiked it, it doesn’t seem like a place I should miss.

Ok, other fun things that have gone on: FIRST, Holi is finally over, which means that I no longer get pelted with water balloons every time I step outside, I no longer panic everytime a school bus passes, I no longer have to scan the rooftops before stepping beneath buildings and I no longer think that every shadow, whether it be from a bird or butterfly is a water balloon headed my way. Tuesday, which was the actual holiday of Holi was actually a really great day. We didn’t have school, and by 8:30 am, (after my amma came into my room and told me I was an alchii chora or “lazy child”) I was on the roof pelting people with water balloons and/or simply emptying buckets of water on people who passed below our house. At around 11:00 a bunch of my friends from SIT came to the house and we had a giant water balloon fight and covered each other in brightly colored powders – it has been four or five days now and my face is still slightly yellow from all the toxic dyes that have seeped into my skin. You can’t really understand how crazy the holiday is until you see pictures!

Aside from Holi I have been pretty consumed by work, we had another language exam on Monday, and I feel like I’m able to converse pretty well now. I have grown to love my family – we spend many electricity-less evenings sitting in bed under the giant Nepali blankets that I have become obsessed with (I’m plotting how I’m going to get one home – they are suuuper heavy and wonderful) and just chat. On the worst nights I am commanded to sing – last night I did solo performances of “My Heart Will Go On,” and, my brothers favorite, “Dangerous” by Akon. Even though I think I have, quite possibly, the worst voice in the history of the world, they eat it up. My sister has become very fond of Nacho (my stuffed elephant, for those of you that don’t know him) and I’m concerned that I may have to keep a close eye on him, as she has a knack for acquiring things of mine that she likes. I’m still in the process of getting my favorite t-shirt back. Normally I would let her have it, but that t-shirt accounts for roughly one-third of the shirts that I have. My Amma continues to awkwardly corner for me for one-on-one sessions that slowly turn into huge misunderstandings. I learned that she and my father had a love marriage, which is pretty rare, but she was 16 at the time! She then asked about my real family and I said that my parents had been married for 25 years and that they were 55, but it’s unclear to me whether she heard that, or that my parents were 25 and had been married for 55 years. As always, communication here is pretty questionable. OH! I had my first taste of chicken at home a few days ago – I made a point to re-emphasize how much I enjoyed it as I’m hoping maybe goat can be erased from the menu. However, at this point we have just one week left with the fam…. Also, I keep forgetting to mention, for my Mom’s sake, that badminton is a BIG deal here – everyone plays it and it’s super intense, I tend to see people playing a lot on my way to school in the morning and I keep thinking I need to tell you Mom that with your badminton background, you would be sooo cool in Nepal.

A few nights ago some friends and I ate dinner at Boudhina, the huge Buddhist stupa in the Boudha, the Buddhist area in the city. Kathmandu is such an early-to-bed city that I have rarely been out at night – so it was really fun. The Stupa is such an amazing place – the Buddhists who come walk around it, clockwise, spinning the prayer wheels and it’s impossible not to get pulled into the rhythm of it. Everywhere people are lighting butter candles, and it’s almost silent aside for the incessant people hawking Tiger Balm. It’s a very powerful place, and it was one of my favorite nights in the city.

Goodbye for now. My next post will likely be in a few weeks when we get back from Jomsom, as we definitely will not have Internet access while we are there. I hope you got to see the few photos I was able to upload, sadly that will probably be all I can put up as it takes a ridiculous amount of time for them to load.