Pharphing and Kathmandu!

I've been in Nepal for two and a half weeks now, and this country is incredible. I couldn't do justice to it in words or photos, but I will try to give a short update. The other nine girls are great, and we have been having a lot of fun together - we all had the same initial reaction when we saw the group list. We arrived on the thirtieth, I think, and immediately drove out of Kathmandu to the small town of Pharphing, home of several important temples and monasteries. We had orientation there and started our Nepali and Culture and Development classes, and also began to learn about the country. After four days of relative peace and isolation, we headed into Kathmandu to meet our host families. I was a little overwhelmed for about five minutes, but since then things have been fantastic. I live with a couple, whom I call "older brother" (daai) and "older sister" (didi), who are 35 and 26, and their four-year-old daughter Kriti, whom I call "little sister" (bahini). They are incredibly sweet and we tease each other a lot, which I love. They also love to feed me (everyone here loves to feed everyone - I can't go over to my friend Amber's house for a minute without her mom offering me something), and my daai said "I like your eating style," the other night and looks on approvingly as I struggle to finish my plate of daal bhat - rice with lentils. I am learning Nepali for two and a half hours a day, and also learning the Devengari script. So I wander around trying to sound out words on signs, feeling like a child learning how to read for the first time. It's amazing and challenging to be aware of the process of learning how to read this time around. Our lectures are incredibly interesting and challenge a lot of the ideas I've grown up believing in, which is hard but good.
We have taken a lot of excursions around Kathmandu, to various awesome stupas and temples, and Amber, who lives next door, and I wander around our neighborhood and find new and creative routes to and from school, which is usually a twenty minute walk. We often manage to make it longer and more interesting. For example, on Friday, which was Shivaratri, or the celebration of Shiva, we took a bunch of back streets and ended up being stopped three or four times by children with ropes who blockaded the street and asked for money. We smiled and laughed and said we didn't have any, and the tradition is a little like Halloween, except you stop people in the street. Friday we also went to see Lama Dancing (Ritual Dances) for the Tibetan New Year, and tomorrow we're going to see the actual celebration of Losar, the New Year.
The political situation here in Nepal is also, to put it mildly, interesting. The country just recovered from protests in the Terai - the lowland South - by the Madhesis, the lowland people, who rightly feel excluded from the Nepali mentality (how often do you think of malarial swampland when you think of Nepal?). The blockades of Indian imports stopped gas fom reaching Kathmandu and this caused 20 hour lines to get gas. And about 30 people died in the Terai during the protests. So now the Janajati, the ethnic minorities, have realized that now (before the constitution is written) is a great time to get those in power to listen, so the country is experiencing a nationwide, rolling bandh (strike) so they can gain representation, or so they hope, in the parliament that will eventually write the constitution. This week-long bandh, with each district striking for one day, culminates next Wednesday, the day we are supposed to fly to Darjeeling, with a nationwide bandh. And the people in the Terai have given the government several more days to respond to their demands or they may strike again. This makes for an interesting situation, with the American embassy personnel calling Nepal "The Wild West" (we tried not to laugh when they listed the number one threat in Nepal as al Qaeda). And there hasn't been much rain, so there are rolling power outages every day, for either 3 or 6 hours - it rained recently so I'm not sure which it is now. The last current excitement is that the neighborhood that hosts the landfill is rejecting trash drop-offs because they want more benefits, so some areas have large amounts of trash in the streets.
In spite of and because of this, life here in Nepal is exciting and fun and new every day. And I'll soon find out what India is like!

Before the beginning

Utah. I'm here skiing with my parents and some friends for a week before leaving on Sunday for New York and then Monday for Nepal via Thailand. Alta, where we're skiing, is gorgeous and surrounded by mountains, and we have had bluebird skies and forty degree temperatures since Wednesday. I love tele skiing, and my legs are burning from all the turns (and all the getting up after the inevitable and enjoyable face plants). Sandy, however, where our hotel is, is the largest strip mall I have ever seen. Quite a contrast. And it's disorienting and uncomfortable to be getting ready to leave from a generic hotel when what I really want is to be home in Vermont with my whole family - being here is making me even more nervous than I would already be, even though skiing is a great distraction during the day. I'm finishing up last minute to-do lists and calling people to say goodbye for six months, which is another odd feeling. Saying goodbye to my grandfather Roger, who isn't doing well, was difficult, because it felt as if it might be final. But even saying goodbye to school friends is hard, and I just plain didn't want to say goodbye to Kate and Josie - I miss them already. The pre-departure nerves are getting to me, and receiving the list of other students on the trip today didn't help much. There are ten of us, and we're all girls. I bet the other students will be great, because I think Nepal will attract interesting people, but I wish there was some sort of balanced gender ratio. I'll meet everyone on Monday morning in New York, after a red-eye from Salt Lake via Phoenix, and then we fly to Thailand. There's a debate right now about whether I will fly east, west, or up and over the North Pole - I'm hoping for the pole route. After a night in Bangkok, we'll arrive in Kathmandu on January 31. As Matthiah said, by that point I will be so exhausted and have done so much traveling that I won't be able to tell up from down. And then I'll be in Nepal! Four days from now - I can hardly believe it.