Stupas and Neighborhoods

A few more short stories:

The other day after work, we ended up at a little neighborhood in the north called Bouddha. This community is known for their incredible Stupa. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A few of us headed over there to explore and grab some dinner at a famous tourist restaurant (we break down and treat ourselves to Western food about once every two weeks). The Stupa is lit up every night as the sun sets, so we got to see it both in the afternoon light and as the sun set behind it.

I’m in an intensive language class while my project is ramping up. I’m lucky my grant includes money for language tutoring. For homework, we were given a list of items in Nepali, instructed not to look them up, but to ask random street shops for the items. The idea being to communicate exclusively in Nepali to figure out what the items are. I partnered up with a friend to find the items. I’m pretty outspoken, so my technique was just to walk up to people and ask if they had whatever word I was looking for. Imagine a stranger walking up to you, holding some balloons, and asking if they were fragrance. That’s what I did in Nepali. Needless to say, I was laughed at quite a bit. But I did end up finding all seven things! That was one of the most fun homework assignments I’ve ever had- I really like scavenger hunts. Here are some pictures my teammate and I took as proof that we found the items.

A few weeks ago, in a post about Fulbright House surprises, I gleefully wrote about my incredible experiences with the occasional hot shower. These encounters have since ended, and my heart is breaking just thinking about that. I’m not sure that this is the wisest thing I’ve ever done because I know I’ll have to shower in the public tap pretty soon and I don’t want to make an utter fool of myself, but I just can’t subject myself to cold showers just yet. So, I’ve been boiling water on the stove and taking a bucket bath instead. The warm water is heavenly, although I end up getting a ton in my ears because I have really bad aim with the little cup. I did try to take a cold shower the other day and it ended up being a fun game of hokey-pokey. My current cold-shower strategy is as follows: I stick as little skin as possible at one time under the freezing cold tap and spent the whole time shivering, dreaming of inve with my teeth violently chattering. On the plus, I don’t think I’ve ever used less water than when I take a cold shower. I do hope to get a little bit more accustomed to it while I still have a tap in my house, because I make enough of a spectacle out of myself without doing the cold-wet person hokey-pokey dance at the public tap.

In case you are wondering, when showering in the public tap women use a floor-length casual dress called a lungi. It’s typically a burnt orange color, and mine has some abstract elephants on it as well. I actually plan on wearing it back in the States as well- it’s socially acceptable to fold it in half and wear it as a skirt when you’re relaxing. Men shower in their underwear.

Here are a few other pictures: