Social Instruction - Friday night brought the beginning of Dashain celebrations, and with it, my introduction to beaten rice. I would spend the next two weeks trying to either avoid this particular version of a food I had been living off of for the past two weeks, or trying to suffer through it. It is essentially a dried and flattened version of cooked rice, which is delicious. Beaten rice, however, tastes like very thin bits of cardboard, no matter how much dhal you soak it in. This is the only part of the longest Nepali festival of the year know as [View Full Entry]

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Bhaktapur - Thursday is Bhaktapur day. Pell and I had been reminding ourselves all week. Now, Thursday had arrived, the children were all off to school; and that’s when we realized. “Thursday is Bhaktapur day.” That simple statement encompassed the entirety of the planning we had done for the outing. We had maybe glanced at a map to get the general idea of where it was in relation to Kathmandu, but ultimately we had done little to no research. Poor Bhesh was yet again approached by these two American simpletons in need of direction. So, Bhesh…how do we get to Bh [View Full Entry]

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A New Bedfellow - At first I thought it was just the heat getting to me as we climbed step after step, ascending to the top of the Monkey Temple at Pashupatinath. I was feeling weak and tired and decided I just needed some water. I had been hacking up the Kathmandu air pollution for the last few days like a true Nepali, and so was already feeling a bit under full capacity, but this was different. By the time Pell and I returned to Godavari I was officially achy. It had been years since I’d felt like this, but I [View Full Entry]

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Pashupatinath - “Good morning, Brother!” The calls from the children begin immediately as Pell and I walk through the gate at Ama Ghar. Every morning is essentially the same, playing out a now familiar routine. We say our good mornings to the children outside who are washing their stainless steel plates and brushing their teeth; to the children inside who are getting ready to leave for school or are studying in the eating area; and to the Ama Ghar staff who are tutoring, cleaning, or making us tea. We sit in the kitchen and have our ridiculously hot chia and biscuits. [View Full Entry]

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Godavari Village Resort - Just a 10 minute walk up the road from Ama Ghar is the Godavari Village Resort, complete with a famously delicious breakfast menu, conference rooms, relatively lush accommodations, and an outdoor pool. It was the last Monday before the big Dasain Holiday break and the younger children didn’t have to go to school; so Pell and I agreed to take them swimming. Not much arm twisting was necessary as the weather here is fairly hot and humid when it’s not raining. Many people, when they think of Nepal, think mountains, snow, and cold. They often forget tha [View Full Entry]

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Buddha Tan- Biratjan, one of the older children here at Ama Ghar, said the hike should only take us 30 minutes. Normally, that would be an accurate estimate, but on this particular occasion he failed to take into account the nature of our hiking companions: small children prone to sneaky manipulations that can result in unexpected detours. Yes, Pell and I had decided to take 11 of the younger ones for a hike up to the 50-foot Golden Buddha that sits atop a hill at the edge of the village. Or so we thought. The reality of the situation was that [View Full Entry]

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Children’s Day - The night before I had committed to waking up at 5am in order to accompany Bonnie, Bhesh, and some of the children to a National Children’s Day event in Kathmandu. Committing myself to such an early rising was easy—I knew I would be awake at 4am anyway. The neighborhood the apartment is situated in wakes up all at once, but in a very distinct sequence. First there is the confused rooster who decides to start crowing a good two hours before sunrise. His cock-a-doodle-do’s come in random spurts. Once you think he is satisfied that everyone knows it [View Full Entry]

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Ama Ghar- There are some things that will never change about me; this I am sure of. One of those things is my innate tendency to forget very important things; you know, like writing down the address and phone number of the place I’ll be staying in for the next month before I go gallivanting across continents and oceans to strange lands. I told the cabbie who collected me from the airport to get me to a place that had internet access so I could look up the number for Ama Ghar; then I disposed of a hotel representative of sorts [View Full Entry]

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Sachin - “Can you play anything (meaning everything)?” he said as his child-like eyes stared at my clumsy fingers plucking out a very poorly improvised tune. I told him, no, I’m only just learning. He explained to me that it is his dream to learn how to play guitar and asked how many months it would take him to learn to play anything. I told him it depended on how much he practiced and he nodded in agreement. Sachin worked at the airport. I continued to play as I was waiting for 2:30am to roll around. Every hour on his breaks [View Full Entry]

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Delhi - Delhi International Airport is…Delhi International Airport. There really is nothing to compare it to; nothing in my own experience anyway. I arrived from Frankfurt undecided on whether I should take a train/bus combo to Nepal from Delhi, or just simplify the whole process and buy a plane ticket straight into Kathmandu. My plane touched down at 8pm. It was hot, muggy, dark, noisy, and confusing. Bryan is overwhelmed and has a 2-ton suitcase to lug around. Hello, Jet Airways ticket counter. It, of course, was not at all that simple. After going through customs, the airpo [View Full Entry]

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