I really thought I'd be better at this whole blogging thing, but alas its been over a month since my last post and there are too many moment to accurately/fairly portray! So I'll start with last night, my exciting adventure today, and the coming two weeks of travel!
My Nepali home stay is the highlight of my SIT experience, and I really don't want to leave my new family. Last night I came home, and we had a delicious dinner cooked by ama. I had bought a few kites for my little brother, and he explained to me how to tell which kites are good and which ones aren't. He loves flying them, and some of my favorite afternoons have been sitting on the roof doing my Nepali homework/watching him kite-fight. My brother can do fancy tricks with his kite, so it goes wayyy up until it is just a dot in the sky, and suddenly it nose dives down, down, down until, at the last minute, he yanks it up and swings it in little circles, each time making it go higher. So memorizing, and really distracting when I'm trying to practice my Devnagri script!
Anyways, as I was talking with my brother, my baa walks in and asks to borrow my camera to take pics of the almost full moon. So I hand him the camera, and follow him up to the kitchen roof, where we sat for almost 45 minutes taking pictures of this beautiful moon and practicing my Nepali. The moon was so clear and crisp against the deep blue sky, and I was so content.
This morning I woke up early to Skype my parents, before heading out with friends to apartment hunt!!! During the month of November, our program requires us to go out and conduct our own research study. Two friends and myself will primarily be based in KTM, so we decided to try and find an apartment. A daai ("older brother") took us to an apartment, but there was a scary dog, the ama didn't want to rent to us for just a month and its didn't feel right. The next apartment was wayyy to small for three people and wasn't super clean/well stocked. But the third time was a charm and we found a place in a perfect location (with a safe neighborhood) with good landlords. And there's a western toilet, hot water, wifi and a back-up generator for load shedding!!! The whole affair was so informal - my friend wrote out a contract on paper, and we made everyone involve sign, traded contact information, double/triple/quadriple confirmed the arrangement and put down a small downpayment. And viola, I had suddenly signed my first lease of an apartment ever, in Nepal of all places! Even now, it feels so crazy and I'm SO excited!
Tomorrow we leave for Pokhara and then we fly up to Jomson (fingers crossed the weather stays good for the plane). The area of Mustang is suppose to be similar to Ladakh as its part of the Tibetan plateau. I can't wait to be back up in the mountains! We will be gone for about two weeks (trekking, doing a longer stay in a village, and practicing field research), and I'll be very off-the-grid (aka don't expect to hear from me!).
I'll do my best to let less time post before my next update, but no promises! :)
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