Mero naam Hattie ho. Mero ghar America ho. Mero amaa ra ba hununcha. Mero bhai cha. Ma dal bhat khanne.
I’m learning Nepali! Or at least the basics. You all have probably already figured this out, but it means, “My name is Hattie. My home is America. I have a mom and dad. I have younger brothers. I eat dal bhat (rice and lentils).” Impressive right?? I’ll be having my third intensive language course today. The English Teaching Assistants are taking language lessons at the Fulbright Commission. Gita has been working with four of us, me included, and she is great. Despite having only had eight hours of lessons, I feel like I could make a (very small) bit of Nepali small talk without falling on my face. Progress! We’ve started to learn the alphabet as well, which might be my favorite part. The characters are beautiful, much prettier than the Roman alphabet. Of course, a lot more confusing, but… we’ll get there.
I really cannot believe it’s been a week today since I left the states. We were discussing it last night, but time moves so strangely here. In some ways, days seem to fly. It doesn’t feel like it could already Wednesday, the week should just beginning. But, at the same time, it seems like it’s been ages since I left the states. I’d guess that the days are flying because we’ve been so busy. We’ve been given a lot of free time so far, but there is always something else to fill it with. And, conversely, the US is just really far away. It took two whole days to get here. So I think that the geographic distance and the cultural distance is being translated as a time difference in my head.
So, what’s actually been happening? The travel to get here was definitely intense. The journey to Kathmandu is not the kind of trip you take on a whim. It takes some serious stamina. I flew from Philly up to EWR and then from EWR to Delhi. The flight was about 14 hours, longest flight of my life, and my television was frozen. This could have been really awful except that I am the worst procrastinator in the entire world and, luckily, I’d only gotten three/four hours of sleep the night before. I slept probably 10 of the 14 hours, so the flight actually flew. After a ten hour layover in Delhi flew to Kathmandu and arrived at about 9:00 AM, so unbelievably confused about what time it should actually be. Jet lag is only really wearing off now, so we’ve been crashing 8:00 PM every night. But that also means that I’ve been awake at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning. I end up reading or journaling until the day starts.
Saturday we went to Durbar Square, probably the biggest collection of temples in Kathmandu, for Teej. Teej is a woman’s festival. Women gather at temples, dressed in their wedding saris of red and gold, to pray for their husbands and celebrate marriage. The festival involves fasting and praying and dancing. We got henna and made a few friends, it was a lot of fun.
Sunday was relaxing. Didn’t do too much except go to a Tea Tasting at a French restaurant in the tourist district. I’d always been curious about tea, but I didn’t know much. The tea making process seems about as complex as the beer brewing or wine making process, and I had no idea. I also learned that all the different types of tea come from the same kind of plant. Who knew?
Monday and Tuesday have been spent mostly in language class. We also had a security briefing yesterday, to learn about all the horrible things that could possibly happen while we’re in Nepal. But otherwise, uneventful. Nothing else earth shattering to report.
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