Re-Settled

5/10/14

Not that it’s saying much, but things here have improved, since the last time that I wrote.

Quite soon after those two horrible weeks, I was off to KTM to apply for my Indian visa and participate in a Rural Library Development training.  KTM is always a nice break from village life.  In fact, sometimes it feels like I’m on a completely different planet.  Of course, it’s never a trip to KTM without stress, dust, respiratory distress and spending way past my budget (what budget? HA!). 

Applying for my Indian visa was a nightmare, as I had expected.  It took a week and a half, a third of my monthly pay and four people to pull it off-Goa had better be worth it! 

The Rural Library Development training was amazing, mainly because PC Nepal staff didn’t put it on.  But seriously, these women were knowledgeable, competent, fun; engaging and great at time management-it was the best PC training I have ever had.  I’m very excited to start the hard journey to try and set up a library in my community.

Of course, the real memories made during trips to KTM occur after hours.  Here’s the rundown:

-Stoop drinking (buy cheap booze and drink it in the street, instead of paying out the butt in the bars) and dancing with the girls. 

-Discovering how to have food delivered, in KTM, and becoming incredibly lazy in our pursuit of dinner.

-Great Vietnamese dinner.

-Pizza with olives and baby corn (GOD DAMN BABY CORN!), instead of tomatoes.

- Many, many hot showers.

-Shopping for art in Thamel.

-Seeing an American movie in a crazy, nice, modern theatre-I almost forgot that I was in Nepal.

-Dessert.

-Making fun of ridiculous hippy tourists. 

-Brunch.

-Amazing live music at H20.

-Whisky sours and popcorn.

-Braving the maddening crowd at Bhatt Bhatenini (the Nepali answer to Target).

-Visiting my PST host family in Sindupalchowk.  It was great to see them, but I’m relieved that I ended up with the permanent site family that I did. 

-Hot dogs.

-Meeting two new friends on my last night in town-quite a feat for someone who doesn’t make friends easily-look at me, I’m growing! 

Of course, I had to crash back to the reality of living in Nepal on my 20-hour return trip from KTM (it’s only supposed to take 14 hours).  You wanna know the worst part?  The worst part was the two German tourists sitting in front of me-every hour or so, they would pull delicious bread, cheese and linzer cookies out of their bags and snack.  Did they bring them, from Germany, on the plane? Were they sent just to torture me with all that delicious dairy, sugar and carbs? Evil. 

As soon as I returned, the largest Nepali festival-Dashain-began.  What this basically means is that we have meat for several days (in the case of chicken-yay, in the case of goat-Ughhhh *gag*), I have to let my family dress me up like a doll, in traditional Tharu clothing and dance for hours, for the village’s enjoyment.  Dashain manages to be both boring and stressful, which I didn’t really know was possible.  Honestly, the worst part is that a lot of people come into the village, from out of town, which means many new people to stare at me.  Let me share a little anecdote about how crazy intense the starting is:

 I am standing in the road, all dressed up, waiting for the dancing to commence.  As soon as I walked out onto the road, to talk on the phone, all the local children ran out to stare at the white freak. There is a little 8-year-old girl next to me.  She finds me so fascinating, can’t take her eyes off of me, that, instead of returning to her house to use the toilet, she just pulls down her pants and, while still making intense eye contact with me, takes a shit in the road.  It happened. This is my life. 

Well, now Dashain is over.  In another week or so another holiday starts.  We should be out of the holiday season by November, when I can start getting some work done. 

At the moment, I’m just enjoying the unusual amount of power that we’re having.  Next week we’re taking a trip to the district capital to meet with an NGO about the girl’s empowerment camp that we’re planning and also, for Elizabeth and I to buy our plane tickets for Indian! Yay!