Homestay + Pashupati

I can't remember too much of what I've done this week. Everyday I had language class for 3 hours, a lecture on something, a delicious lunch (the school makes dal bhaat and other food for us), another lecture, homework, dinner, bed. I'll just try to remember things via photos.

 This is Phuchhu and Rangy. They can both do tricks, but Phuchhu (the puppy) is still being housetrained.

The house is really nice. There is a garden and some plants that my hajur buwa (grandfather) likes to tend to. There is also hot water, internet and really good food every night. I usually come home and do homework at the dining room table and attempt to use a little Nepali. It is pretty hard to speak. When I try to use it at the store or on my aamaa, my pronunciation is so bad that I might as well be speaking Greek.

Father's day was a couple days ago. I got my buwa some chocolate and my hajurbuwa some nuts and dried fruit. I think I was only supposed to get my buwa something. Hajurbuwa said "Ah! Now you are my youngest daughter!"

I found out my host sister sometimes writes op/ed pieces for the newspaper. She said I could share them on here: Chemical Imbalance article, Transportation article. I thought they were both interesting. They were published in the Republica newspaper, one of the big ones in Kathmandu. Currently, she is working on one about copyright laws. Pirated dvds are huge here, but no one cares.

Nepal will also be having its first elections in November since 2007. While wandering around Kathmandu with some friends, we stumbled on a maoist convention. We sat in for a little bit before we realized that one red flag had a hammer and sickle and another one had a fist with stars. People are excited to vote and ready to have a (permanent) constitution written.

 

My room is really great. I have a huge bed and my own space. It is also near the bathroom and the kitchen - my 2 favorite rooms in any house. I keep getting bitten at night. I currently have 10 bites just on my upper left arm. I keep forgetting to get a mosquito lure that plugs into the wall.

This is where I went to buy vegetables with my aamaa and buwa. There were lots of veggies I didn't recognize. I have eaten more veggies here than I ever have. They are masked by all the curry they're cooked in. Okra has been used a few times and it's actually tasty either fried up or hidden in the curry. Sometimes we have fish or mutton, both of which are really good and spicy. The bird flu has been a bit of a hazard here, so I haven't been eating chicken and eggs. The ban on chicken was lifted a few days ago, but I'm still avoiding it. I had some veg momos at the mall near school. They were delightful.

 

Soccer has been huge here this past week. Nepal tied Pakistan a few days ago, beat India 2-1 yesterday, and will play the Maldives on Sunday. I was walking home with a friend and we heard cheers from this cafe, so we went in, had a snack and watched the rest of the game.

As a sidenote, the exchange rate is around 1$ to 100 Rupees. Yesterday I got a Kurta (picture of a kurta) for 1000 Rs, so about $10. Some things here are the same as the US: like if shampoo is a few bucks back home, here it is also about 400-500 Rs. A bus ride from school to home is 15 Rs (~15 cents).

Pashupati

Today we went to Pashupati - a large temple on the east end of Kathmandu. It is a famous crematorium. It is on a river and really beautiful. We couldn't go into the big temple area because we were foreigners and there is a big festival, Teej, that begins tomorrow. We walked up a hill and could see the temple.

Teej is a women's festival in which married women pray for a long life for their husbands, and unmarried women pray for a good husband to come along. Day 1 involves lots of eating and socializing, then day 2 they fast. Thousands of women go to Pashupati to pray. There is supposed to be dancing and many red saris. Only women are allowed in the temple that day. At school, the professors gave the female students bracelets for Teej. 

There are fossils that are found in western Nepal. Usually there are the curlicued animals that are fossilized, but in this picture, there is a turtle egg that has been fossilized.

 These colors are used to make dye, which then make prints. The vendors were also selling different stamps, which are probably dipped in the dye from this powder to make art. All the colorful powder was really cool though.

On the other side of the river on the right, you can kind of see smoke. We saw a couple funerals where bodies wee being cremated and others being prepared for the ceremony. While these ceremonies were going on, some kids were bathing in the river and some people did their laundry.

 These holes in the wall are left over when this was a more popula place to bathe. Maybe they are still used. Women could store their clothes in the cubbies, then come back and meditate in them while facing the water.

 This is a sundial that was knocked over by an earthquake. Nobody wanted to fix it, so it's just been left to keep the wrong time. Our professor told us the cylindrical top part could represent either a phallus or the flames of fire reaching up. The bottom part could be either a womb or water. Either way, the sundial is made with the purpose of 2 parts balancing each other out.

 The left photo is of shrines, the one in the middle is looking through 11 of them. It looks like a mirror. The right picture is of the shrines from the side.

 All the firewood for the funeral pyres.

cow.

I have been drowning in Nepali. There is so much vocab. It's like they have a different word for everything...

Finally, the lecturer who talked about hydropower came back. This time he talked about sustainable electricity in a cool little device. I asked him if there was a paper I could read and he pointed me to this if you'd like to read it. My professor is Anil Chitrakar. This will open a new tab on your browser and it will download the paper for you: Nepal Tuki paper. If you'd rather not download it, you can search "Nepal tuki" or "Nepal tuki anil." Just googling Anil chitrakar is pretty interesting.

Good night! The dogs have temporarily stopped barking and I am exhausted.