I’m doing just fine

Everything’s going really well here. It perhaps seems unbelievable, but the adjustment so far has been remarkably easy. It could be because I’m still in the honeymoon period, but I feel like I have a good sense of both the positives and negatives of my life.

Anyway, here’s some short tales of my time so far.

1. Sunglasses

I’m off to a bad start of 2017 when it comes to sunglasses. Since I’m wearing glasses now (I normally wear contacts, but since the water isn’t clean, it isn’t safe to use them here), my sunglasses are the kind that fit over glasses. They’re very hard to find. In Patagonia, I dropped them from the top bunk of a youth hostel bunk bed and shattered them. I had to use the shattered glasses for the rest of the trip, sticking them under my regular glasses and pushing them against my nose to keep them in place. Super comfortable and good looking. Now, a month later, I was walking down the street with my sunglasses in my hand when a wild dog ran up and snatched them. The dog started chewing on them, and we tried to distract it with sticks but it was having none of that. Whenever we tried to approach the dog would snap and growl at us then immediately return to chomping down on my sunglasses. Just adding to the pain, I went out the next morning and found my mangled sunglass remnants right outside my front gate. Thanks for returning them, dog.

My poor sunglasses

2. My clothes

Hopefully you remember the fiasco with my clothes I wrote about a few weeks ago. Basically, due to cultural misunderstandings and the seamstress’s love of ironing, I had to wait a few weeks  to pick up my clothes. Happy update: I finally received my freshly-ironed clothes and have been able to wear them out and about.

The clothes set is called a “kurta suruwal” and includes a tunic shirt, super comfy pants (with only one pocket, to my utmost disappointment) and a scarf. Here are some pictures of me with my culturally-appropriate clothing.

3. Visiting family

During a trek (more on that coming soon), we were around an hour’s walk away from a friend’s Nepali family, so we walked to their village. We were greeted by the family calling my friend, “son,” but to my surprise also calling me “daughter.” They treated us like royalty, even though we were incredibly worn out and smelly. Serving us some great food (a fried dough called “Sel Roti”) and tea, we sat around the floor of the main room. They pulled out a pictures books and shared a small part of their family history with us. It was a phenomenal break from the trek.

I don’t have any pictures of the family’s house, but here’s one of a village from the trek.

4. Tokens of Love

While meeting with diplomats at the embassy, I learned about this culture’s “Tokens of Love.” These items are given to people when they do great work in their job. The next day, I received such a token when visiting a local NGO. The entire board of directors was there. They gave an overview of their work and how I’m going to be helping (they do really cool camps to empower the most at-risk youth, so I’ll be working at one in April), and then they very formally voted to give out a gift. I received a very formal scarf and a flower bouquet! It was lovely.

Gifts!