I have to apologize to anyone who was hoping for a daily journal. Life here has been way too much fun to spend the time it takes to adequately summarize what I have been doing.
The last two weeks I have been living on the edge of Kathmandu proper in an area called Dhapasi with a great Nepali family. Unfortunately I don't have my journal on me to list off my experiences (actually writing about them at this point would take hours) but I can try. I am torn between providing justice to a few things or listing everything off but we'll see how it goes.
My first 5 days I was staying in a hotel before the program began. Throughout my entire stay there have been friendly people wherever I go. So it is hard to write about all the experiences I have had. Just this morning I was waiting for a haircut and met a hip young nepali chap. He helped me find a tailor and to get some traditional nepali clothes made for when me. After we went back to his house (a room with a bed, dresser, and stove) and he introduced his wife and we had tea. I have plans to meet him on Shivaratri (Lord Shiva festival) next month and go to Pashupati, the most popular pilgrimage site for the day. While not everyone has been so inviting this incident was not out of the ordinary. Moving on, in my first week I visited a Hindu temple (Dakshinkali - there is a picture) and some monasteries around the town of Pharping (this is outside the KTM valley) and hiked a hill to hang prayer flags at the top. I visited Pashupati and Bodnath for the first time and went to both again with the program. There are constant cremations at Pashupati and it is one of the holiest Hindu temples. Most of this was with Nima. Wandering the streets is always interesting and me and Helen (the crabby old lady of the group, shes cool sometimes though) walked to Durbar Square and Thamel (the tourist 'hood).
Then the program started, my name became Ram, we visited countless temples, saw Buddhist monks chanting and drumming in a monastery, learned about Thankas from the painters in Thanka schools (there is a picture of one on my flickr site), caught glimpes of the Himalayas from rooftops and hilltops (yesterday we did a day hike up to 7000ft (this is chickenshit compared with the mountains), eaten many delicious meals usually with my hands, cooked up some french toast for my family, gotten sick and taken antibiotics and recovered, hung out with the other person in the program (a 25 yr old teacher from cali named Rebecca, she is cool), danced for hours to neverending Nepali folk songs once with a live band, went to a wedding party and an engagement party for a different wedding, developed my Nepali to perhaps a grade 1 level, freezed my ass off shivering through the night in concrete room, celebrated Rajeshs daughters 7th birthday, learned to make momos (dumplings) and then been forced to eat 35 of them, met classes of smiling children on a visit to a school, discussed politics, and learned a whole lot about a very intereting culture.
I finally got some photos to upload and they can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23604840@N03/ or if that doesn't work go to flickr and search for russ_vin. The photo desciptions will come later I have to run to class.
Much love to all my peoples I will try and write or make some calls
