July 2014

In July I:

took photos
rode an elephant
went to Hindu festivals
ate dhal bhat
went canoeing
went to a Nepali paper factory
ate momos
bathed with an elephant
saw a wild peacock
obsessed over eggs
bought a salwar
tried lychee candies
went to a local Nepali market
saw a wild elephant
attended a Nepali wedding
tried a McVeggie burger from McDonald's
took a great picture of a puddle
went to a Tibetan Refugee Camp
ate a lot of Pringles
watched a Nepali photography award ceremony
saw a wild rhino
walked through a photo gallery
went to India
went to the KAT centre
sat at a mind numbing event in Nepali
saw the Taj Mahal
went to Monkey Temple
was scratched by a monkey
made new friends
was published
went to a Nepali orphanage
did bucket laundry
got caught in a monsoon
witnessed a motocycle accident
was sexually harassed on a bus
rode on a bike rickshaw
went to a mosque
watched children swing on prayer flags
went to a rice paddy
listened to Sunny Sunny Pani Pani

Times a Ticking

Okay, it has hit. I have 10 days left after today. I still have so much to do and see.
I have every last day planned out so that hopefully I can get everything done.
Can't wait to be home, but I'm really going to miss this place...

Sunny Sunny Pani Pani

You know how certain times of your life are defined by the most popular song at the moment? For instance we can all think back to the craze of Call Me Maybe the summer of 2012.

Well in Nepal the summer for 2071 (it is 2071 by the Nepali calendar which is very much dominant here), that song is Sunny Sunny Pani Pani. Sunny as in the sun outside, Pani means water. Sunny sunny pani pani; Sunny sunny water water. They repeat it over and over.

I have heard this song nearly every day. Okay not quite, but I've heard it a lot and when it plays the locals go crazy.

Here is a glimpse into Nepali dream culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTfkSDlDvM0

Culture Shock: It's Heart Healthy

The thing is Nepal isn't really scary anymore. I walk through oncoming traffic to ask a Nepali man if the bus he is on goes to "Bhat Bhateni." And, not only do they mostly recognize me now, (really one bus guy saw me yesterday and just nodded before I even asked) since I really only travel between Baluwater to Ten Cuni, and Ten Cuni to Bhat Bhateni, but I've also mastered the pronunciation to sound Nepali. If you say Bot Bottany, not Bot Ba-teny, they understand you the first time perfectly. Same goes for saying Teen Koonay, instead of Ten Kooni, and definitely don't try to say Kantipur (or you'll end up in Kiritpur). The men that collect money on busses have even stopped ripping me off-- keep in mind I had no idea I was being ripped off for about seven weeks, but all of a sudden I'm getting two rupees back at the end of my bus rides. The cashiers at the grocery store don't even try to bag my items anymore, knowing I'm the white girl that just puts it all into my backpack. The men at the momo stand outside the grocery store know my name, though they call me Prianna like everyone else in Nepal, which I've been told (time and time again) means something like "lovely" in Nepali. I know how to get a taxi and not get ripped off, a skill I must admit I've only acquired in the past week. I know how to get a micro bus to Bishal Nagar from Civil Mall. I know to answer that I'm from "America" and not "the United States," "the States," or "the U.S." - Nepalis will have no clue what you're talking about, to the point that they will think you said "Italy" (which I considered playing up, since sometimes I think it'd be nice not to be from where I am, based on the responses I'm left to deal with). I feel like I know all the secrets.

I get it. Now. But it has been a hell of eight weeks to get to this place. And it is kind of disappointing to have to leave this- everything I've worked for all summer. I finally get it, I can finally do it, and off I go.

But, I need to go, I need to. So from here, all I can hope is that, maybe the growth I've seen in myself here, the boost of confidence all of these baby steps have brought me, will carry over into my future travels and maybe even at home.

New places will always be a little weird and take a little time, but I think if I do it enough, maybe every time will be just a little bit easier. And easier sounds nice.

I counted yesterday, and I have about 123 days in The United States once I get back from Nepal before I leave again. Just enough time for me to re-adjust, and then throw myself into the foreign "deep end" again. I was talking to one of the interns the other day about culture shock. And isn't there something to be said simply  by its existence? I think feeling it and experiencing culture shock can teach a person so much. As painful and terrifying as it can be, I think its healthy. It makes you feel something on the inside, it makes you question all of your ideals and intentions and dreams and goals and you are forced to find something within yourself to adapt to accomplish those dreams. Like running a marathon (not that I've ever come close,) but you set your body in front of this insane challenge that is going to take it so far away from what is normal to you, but in the end you'll be stronger for it. Culture shock: it's heart healthy.

So I'll enjoy my two weeks of Nepali normalcy, then I'll take probably four weeks to go through some serious reverse culture shock thats awaiting me at home in Novi and Athens. Then I'll have just under 100 days to be in my comfort zone at home, and then back to culture shock, and I'm not going to lie, I'm really excited to see what that will be like after what Nepal has put me through.

If I thought I had a travel bug before, I must have a travel dinosaur now, because that little thing inside me pushing me to go and see, it seems to have grown.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/kellie-donnelly/2014/07/the-hardest-part-about-traveling-no-one-talks-about/ 

A Home in Transition

I live at Lovely Home. Lovely Home is known to a lot of people here in Kathmandu. It is called Lovely Home because, well the house is quite lovely. We introduce one another to outside friends by saying "he/she lives at Lovely Home with me," and people understand.

I have lived with five constant Nepalis, several not-so-constant Nepalis, and two French girls, one French guy, two Canadian girls, one Canadian guy, one Chinese guy, one Chinese girl, three Saudi Arabian boys (we think?...) , one (sort of) British/Canadian/Costa Rican girl, one American guy, and three American girls in just the past eight weeks of my life.

This home is always an adventure, there is always a friend and rarely an enemy. I feel like I've learned more from all of them than possibly any Nepali... maybe... that or it's a really close tie. We eat three meals a day together, we sit around together at night, we do bucket laundry together and when it starts to rain when one of us isn't home we run out and grab their drying laundry from the line. We eat toast, and share peanut butter, we eat dhal bhat, and celebrate together when we rarely get noodle soup for dinner. We learn Nepali from Shila at meal time and we get asked "enough?" by Jenica. We wake up and fall asleep at the same time. We take turns buying toilet paper and we scream frantically to squish massive spiders together. We name the rats and the mice that live at Lovely Home with us, Carlos, Rodolpho, and Siddartha respectively. We chase Tommy (our host dog) down the street when he breaks his way out of the gate. We make "late night" Bhat Bhateni (the local grocery store which closes at 9:00 pm) runs for chocolate together. We make inside jokes until we are crying we're laughing so hard. And some nights? The really good ones? We sit up on the roof together and talk about life. 

This is Lovely Home.

So, when someone leaves, at first it just feels so empty. Then, it starts to fall back together and feel normal, until new interns come, and we count down the days for new interns to come. We love new people. Because sharing this house with so many crazy people you'd otherwise never meet, is half the fun, and the other half is getting to show them the ropes, which is when it really hits you... I've been the veteran of this house since my second week. And right now there are only two people here currently that will be here after me. So new people will come soon and its odd to think that now I don't know them, but they will be the hugs I receive on my last day in Nepal, and they will be the faces standing in the yard waving as I drive off with all my luggage.

Its an odd cycle of life here but it keeps everything new and exciting.

Only 15 days left... Holy Cow...

Initiation, Puddles, and a Countdown

Yesterday I watched a 1-year-old vomit into it's mother's cupped hand on the bus, and then she would dump it out the window, she wasn't sitting next to the window, I feel like I should mention that. Did she jump up and rush off the bus? Did she find a bag? Did she stick her kid out the window? Nope. She just kept cupping it and dumping it. Then the baby cried. Then she began to breast feed it. Having seen this, well, I feel like it was a sort of initiation into Nepali culture; no longer can anyone deny that I saw the real Nepal.

I also fell asleep on a different bus ride and successfully woke up at every stop to see if it was my stop. I got off perfectly at the right time. I also feel that it was sort of an initiation, only locals can master that skill.

My assignment was to take photos of the effects of the rain in the streets. So, pretty much, I was told to take pictures of puddles. I was determined to find the best photograph of puddles I could. And, to be honest? I think I did it. I felt like Rory Gilmore in season two when Paris assigns her a story on the re-pavement of the parking lot of Chilton, and in the end the teacher complements Rory on turning a "seemingly mundane" story into something heartfelt and touching. Turns out other people liked them too and I was published online, in The Kathmandu Post, and a short photo story in The Kantipur Daily. You want a puddle? I'll show you a puddle.

Not going to lie I'm counting down the days until I get home... hours even, 419 hours until I'm in Detroit. That being said- I am starting to feel the sadness creeping in as well. This place has become a strange little home for me, and I've found so much of myself here. But- as a Nepali man once told me "Home is home, some even say home is sweeter than the heaven above," and well I couldn't agree more. Home is home, and I'm a big believer in "home is where your mom is," and my mom is in Detroit. So I will count down these last 419 hours with a touch of sadness at the thought of leaving this new strange home, but just looking forward to hugging my mom.

That One Time In India

So around 11:00 am I landed back in Kathmandu, Nepal. The flight from Delhi was really short, I fell asleep nearly before we were off the ground and woke up to read my book. It was a quick and bumpy landing then a cheap (ish) taxi ride back home, not much has changed, except for the one business in my neighborhood has come quite a long way on reconstructing the wall in the front that holds the gate, not that any of you care about that. I walked in and about a half hour later I was eating dhal bhat again... It wasn't the dhal bhat alone that made me wish so desperately to be back in Delhi...

The weekend went like this...

I arrived in Delhi around 9:00 pm, just a little later than expected due to the monsoon that was occurring. I exchanged some money so I could have Indian Rupees and headed out the doors. There she was in a glistening see of Indians: Amanda. She even made me a sign that she held over her head that said "Brianna Griesinger," and for those of you wondering it didn't have a smiley face on it.

Due to the monsoon, there were no taxis available so Amanda and I struggled our way around until finally we got one. After Amanda gave all of the instructions necessary to the yah know local cab driver, we arrived at her guest house. Her room was wonderful, equipped with bright lights, an air conditioner, and a TV that had English channels. She also prepared for my visit with a few snacks in the room for that night. We went to bed pretty late because we both had so much to say, and well let's face it, I was mesmerized by the TV.

We slept in, since we'd been up so late, and Amanda had the day off from work. We woke up, got ready, and the guest house made us egg sandwiches (I'm currently obsessed with egg, so I was quite pleased). We headed out and Amanda bought me a metro card and we went on our way. First we went to this super old little village type place of ruins right off of a lake. It was raining so we sat and talked all about the last seven weeks. From there we went to a market that in ways reminded me of Oaxaca and in others reminded me of Kathmandu. We bought some salwar tops and a few gifts for a few of our favorite people ;) . Next we headed to get South Indian food and it was just as good as I hoped. We headed home to rest, because even with the rain in the morning, Delhi is hot. We hung out in the room until, ya know, well, our stomachs settled down a bit... and then we headed out to the mall to buy pants to go with my salwars. We also stopped and got ice cream cones (from McDonalds, nice and safe) and then headed home.

We woke up around 5:00 am on Saturday got dressed, and woke up our taxi driver off the couch to remind him he'd agreed to drive us to the train station. (While that last sentence was a loose translation, lacking the details, everything I just stated was oh so very true). We made it to the train station in time and found our platform. If anything has ever smelled awful in my entire life its the Delhi train station we were at. Poverty and dirt at its finest. Mothers stand facing the tracks on the platforms and their children squat without pants on and hold their mothers ankles mean while crapping, if you can even call it that, more like diarrhea-ing neon yellow, into the train tracks. Sorry for that, but hey you're the one that kept reading past "crapping, if you can even call it that, more like" which really is probably where you should've stopped, I however had to say it, for I feel it important for you to know the state of this train station.

Then we went to the Taj Mahal.

No really that's about how it happened, after some haggling and ya know paying way more than we should have... we got in an auto rickshaw, and then walked through a "neighborhood," down some dark stairs, through a few more streets with curves and twists and asking a few locals... we reached the Taj Mahal. The security is actually pretty decently intense considering it's India, unfortunately we lost some valuable items in the process. But just past security, there it was, in all its glory, the freaking Taj Mahal (as Amanda and I kept calling it). It wasn't one of those places you hear about where like you see it and your like oh it's tiny and dumb... it was magestical, as I like to call things, it was big, really big, and white, really, really white. We walked all around and saw it from all sorts of angles and views, we took photos and we strapped on our little booties and we went inside the freaking Taj Mahal. It was bizarre to actually be there. Amanda and I kept just looking at each other and laughing, in disbelief.

After we went to the Red Fort I believe it was called which was beautiful and had super cool views of the Taj Mahal. The problem was it was hot. Very hot.

We did other stupid pointless things and then, literally ran to catch the train back to Delhi.

Sunday we slept in and took the metro into Old Delhi, it was a bit more like Kathmandu there. Tons of people out and about, people screaming and running at us simply for being white, markets and religion and monkeys and mosques and it was just really wonderful. On top of everything else our bike rickshaw driver had a good soul, but really I loved him dearly, he was amazing at his job.

I also have to admit, we went to McDonalds (there are none in Nepal, and a zillion in Delhi alone), and I tried a McVeggie Burger, because when in India, and at McDonalds with a McVeggie Burger on the menu, as a vegetarian I HAD to. It was utterly delicious.

We went back and rested in the room and went traipsing out for a good quality dinner before I returned back to the land of dhal bhat.

And well here I am, sitting in Lovely Home writing a blog post, missing Amanda dearly, counting down the hours until I reach Detroit, and desperately desperately trying to re-inspire myself as a photojournalist for these last three weeks.