Pashupati
Wednesday
was the official holiday for Teej. Indu Didi and I went to visit
Pashupatinath Temple, an UNESCO Heritage site and the largest Hindu
temple in Nepal. As Teej is a Hindu festival, the temple was
swarming with women in red, green and gold saris. Most of them were
either dancing or waiting in lines. There were lines everywhere, or
else it was just one huge line, a few kilometers long. I never did
figure it out. There was a sunken courtyard in one area, packed with
women dancing and singing. We finally maneuvered our way into the
temple grounds (we couldn’t go into the temple itself because we’re
not Hindu) and were met with the stench of burning bodies. On the
banks of the Bagmati River are numerous platforms where bodies are
cremated. We spent most of the afternoon people watching and
marveling at the amount of women and their varied saris. I have a
few videos that my friend took that shows what I saw much better than
I could ever explain it, but there's I haven't been able to find a
place with fast enough internet to upload them. :(
Teaching
Monks
I've
recently been corralled into teaching English at a local Buddhist
monastery/meditation centre. You know how they say to 'do something
that scares you everyday,' well this is my thing. I'm so out of my
league and so thankful that I have my Cambodia experience to take
from. Without that I'd be totally lost. After my first talk with
the head monk I discovered that what they really want is a full time
volunteer English teacher. I told them I could do two days a week,
three hours each day, but that was it. They've since asked me a few
times if I couldn't do more days a week or if I knew of anyone else
who would be willing to teach. :P
I
had my first class the other day. I brought along one of the other
volunteers from Umbrella, she's a teacher in real life and helped me
break the ice and get things going in the class. Before it started
though we had a chat with the head monk and were served a small plate
of fruit. :) So far, there are 4 monks and 1 girl in the class,
though the head monk said more may show up next class, as word
spreads that there's a new English teacher. Great. One of the monks
is a (the?) reincarnated lama. At first I thought he was a girl
because his hair is really long and he's young enough that his facial
features are still at that indiscriminate stage. Oops. That first
day we just did a few easy exercises with giving directions and going
over shapes. The monks are really shy and really quite. Getting
them to stand up at the front is like pulling teeth. :P I've decided
I'm pretty much going to use the lesson plans I had in Cambodia (at
least as much as I can remember), and hopefully that will give me
enough content to get started. It's definitely going to be a leaning
experience and I'm exploring outside my comfort zone, but hey, that's
what traveling is for right?
Rain
in Kathmandu
When
it rains here the roads become torrential rivers of water (and
floating trash) and mud puddles. When walking down the street you
have to dodge the puddles, downspouts from the roof overhead, and the
normal selection of bikes, cars, motos, bemos, kids, cows, etc. while
trying not to get splashed when said vehicles drive by. It’s
usually a lost cause. :P
Jenga
Blocks
I
found two Jenga block sets in the the Volunteer House and took them
over to the boys one Saturday afternoon. They started out just
playing the game, but that soon got old and they moved on to building
with the blocks. It's been interesting watching the progression of
their constructions, as their imaginations discover new ways of
building. At first their were simple towers and dominoes in a
straight line, but now the towers are intricate creations and the
dominoes have evolved into multi-demenional creations. If I show up
at the house without the bag of blocks, they're quick to ask me why I
haven't brought them. I wish I could find more, so they could make a
domino track around their bed-room, across the window sills, down the
stairs and out the door. What Kathmandu needs is a games store.
Chicken
Dinner
On
my over to the house yesterday I ran into one of my boys. I asked
him what he was up to and he pointed to a lady near-by, chopping up a
chicken with a knife that was at least a foot long. I clued in that
it was Saturday, the one day a week we get meat, and that he was
waiting to collect this weeks supply of chicken. There were 4
chickens in total, 6.5kg, to feed ~35 people. The chicken was
butchered on a wooden block, chop, chop, chop went the knife and
every thing (meat, bones, skin, gristle, cartilage, and even a few
organs) went into a plastic bag, with only a few morsels being tossed
to the waiting pup below. Later that evening, while eating said
chicken and picking the bone fragments out of my mouth, I tried not
to think too hard about how often the chopping block doesn't get
cleaned.
You
know a city is dusty when you rub your hands on your face and come
away with little shaving-like dirt bits. :P
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