The day after trekking was the Tij Festival where only woman can celebrate it. It is a day where woman and girls fast from 12am to sunset for their husbands to have long and healthy lives. I tried it, yes, but it was harrd work especially in this heat!!! I bought a nice red and beige Kurta (Salwar Kameeze or suit) and wore tikka (a dot of red paint on my forehead!) then we went with other households to a temple in Lubhoo where it was packed with woman from all over the area. Since my "Mum" was still in her year of morning for her father-in-law, he was not allowed to enter the Temple so I went in with my "Sister". I went round while she touched each ornament and put even more Tikka on her head while saying prayers. We then entered this one building where only woman were allowed in it, even though there were men surrounding the outsides, peeking in.... :s.
Once inside, there was loud religious/Nepali music being played and there were females sitting all around except for the middle where you had them DANCING!! Yes, dancing, and, yes, I was made to dance, in front of a couple hundred Nepali's, including the men outside! It was all of us female volunteers and it wasn't any kind of Westernised dancing, no no, I was TRYING to do the more traditional way everyone else was, yes, cringe. Anyways, the day ended and I got to eat WHOLE lot at sunrise!! Only then I found out that my "Mum and Sister" only ate some fruit and sugared water and were going to be fasting AGAINthe next day, boyyyyy, I was not up for that!
Oh yeah, one of my volunteer friends - Jamie - he lives with a house full of woman so he decided to fast with them, hahahah, it was so cute!
We found out that us volunteers are extremely lucky because we came at a time when all the festivals are happening - Tij, Dshain, Krishnas birth, as well as it being Monsoon season, resulting in a whole lot of days off!!!! Speaking of Dshain, we get 7 full days off -so exciteddd!!!!
So a couple of weeks ago my monthly cycle had to unfortunately play havoc with me, kmt, I came on... This meant that I couldn't enter the kitchen because then I would make the food and water impure..... :| so I had to eat my meals at the doorway.... also, I couldn't touch the well outside to get water, because I would them make the whole well impure!! Great, when it turned out that my "Mum" was on at the same time, leaving us with my "Sister" to help us out (how -when she's at school most of the time!!), oh yeah, another thing, no male member of the family can touch us, hence the reason why my "Sister" can only help us. It wasn't too bad, cos I had my "Mum" to eat with, if she wasn't there, you better believe I would've gone straight to my room!!
Thursday 10 September 2009
Monday 7 September 2009
Part 2 - HOTEL IN THE CLOUDS!!
OKAY!! So I haven't even mentioned my trekking experience from like two weeks ago!!! We started our journey at like 7am cos if we'd started it later it would've been DAMNNN hot going up the mountain!! Boyyyy, do I wish we'd had some warning as to what was coming, actually, maybe not cos then we would've chickened out!! Anywayzzzz, we were basically going uphill, like throughout!! I tell you, my thighs were burning - I best have got some toning done!! So, it was kind of ok going up, apparently due to the friction of our footwear paired with going uphill. The guy leading us kept on telling us "15 minutes, 15 minutes!" Believeeeeee he was saying that every half hour - kmttt!!!! Finallyyy, we get near the top about 2 n half hours later!!!! and the guy was like "There's a hotel on top where you can get french fries" - we were like "yea, yea, WHATever!!!" and what's on top??? A DAMN HOTEL!!!!??!?!!!! It was absolutely gobsmacking, We got onto the balcony of the hotel and I was literally speechless! The views were amazing, you could see the whole of Kathmandu Valley, and all the houses looked so miniature!!! The clouds were actually eye level with us, like something out of a film - you felt like you were in the clouds!! We stayed there for abit and yes - we got our french fries, hahaha!!!!
Coming down was TOTALLY different story, the friction with our footwear was no. longer.there. People were slipping left, right and centre!! And who got the brunt of it- yes - me. Cos of my crappy trainers I was landing on my arse a good 7 or 8 times, now, the first few times were hilarious, but after a while, nope, nope, nope, my arse (and my spine) weren't feeling it anymore. I was sooooo pissed off, one of the helpers had to actually help me down, step by step, like I was an Old Age Pensioner- kmtttt!! What made it worst was that we were going down little pathways and literally on the edge, so it was easy to lose your footing, had you not been looking where you were going!! All in all it was a wicked experience and I'm really happy I did it (and that we weren't prepared beforehand!) - but would I do it again - no way in Hell.
Coming down was TOTALLY different story, the friction with our footwear was no. longer.there. People were slipping left, right and centre!! And who got the brunt of it- yes - me. Cos of my crappy trainers I was landing on my arse a good 7 or 8 times, now, the first few times were hilarious, but after a while, nope, nope, nope, my arse (and my spine) weren't feeling it anymore. I was sooooo pissed off, one of the helpers had to actually help me down, step by step, like I was an Old Age Pensioner- kmtttt!! What made it worst was that we were going down little pathways and literally on the edge, so it was easy to lose your footing, had you not been looking where you were going!! All in all it was a wicked experience and I'm really happy I did it (and that we weren't prepared beforehand!) - but would I do it again - no way in Hell.
Thursday 3 September 2009
Part 1........
Soooooooo, yes Iknow it hasbeen a while since I posted....apologies!!
I think us volunteers have kinda morphed our mindsets to those who actually live here - Haha!
Take for example my friend Meena, everywhere we go now, she asks the price of something and straaight away she says "I'll give you 200 rupees!", she doesn';t even listen to the asking price, she goes in head-on! Funny shit! Even trying it in the village when everyone knows you DON'T haggle in villages!! Shame on you Meena!
A couple of weeks ago it was Father's Day here in Nepal, and I was rattling my brain thinkin about what to get for my host dad, turns out, a few sweets is appropriate enough, so I bought a couple of "expensive" bars of chocolate, and then come night time, when he got home from work, my "mum" made me actually "present" the sweets to him, kinda funny, kinda awkward... :s, it was a really cultural thing, then they had some indian sweets and we had to feed him!!
Have I told you that my "shower" consists of a bucket in the toilet...!!! Yes, that it what I have to use everyday, my "mum" gets me a big bucket of water from the well each day and I have to wash myself next to the squat toilet....how nice. I literally have to block my nose and breathe through my mouth, in fear of actually gagging! But I'm used to it now, what I'm still NOT used to is the freezing cold water flowing down my back, you'd think because of the boiling hot weather it'd be fine, but nooooooo, still freezing. Haha, funny story, the other day I was taking my "shower" and realised there was one of those fast, jumping spiders right above my head, yeaaa not nice, so my "mum" hears me screaming , lol, and I run out in my towel and all she does is swipe it into the water and it falls down the drain, believe she told my whole family and they were laughin about it the whole night!
The other day my "mum and sister" took my to get some red bangles for the coming festival, which was nice of them, after I found out that if people see a woman wearing red bangles then it means she is married, I guess it's a good thing considering I really don't want any Nepali guys approaching me anyways..... :D Then my sister took me to visit her school, which was really interesting because she goes to a private school, and I've seen what a government school looks like, and it is soo different! My sister has better, cleaner facilities, whereas the school is made out of clay, with everything a mess, also due to an earthquake which happened in 1989. Back to my sisters school, she showed me her class.... those kids are PACKED in. There's about 50 kids in each class, boyyyyy, and how they are all smart, I have no idea! Back in England a class of that size would run riot!! Also, because she has her SLC's (equivalent to GCSE's) coming up, she has to start school at 6am Sunday to Friday and finishes 6pm, are you maddd!??? It's unbelievable, and people round here go bed late, like 11pm/12am, so she and other kids like her only usually get about 4/5 hours sleep! Wow!! I NEED my 8 hours for sureee!! But nowadays it's more like 10 hours cos of all the work we do!!
Run out of time, have sooo much more to write about, will try tomorrow morning!!
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I think us volunteers have kinda morphed our mindsets to those who actually live here - Haha!
Take for example my friend Meena, everywhere we go now, she asks the price of something and straaight away she says "I'll give you 200 rupees!", she doesn';t even listen to the asking price, she goes in head-on! Funny shit! Even trying it in the village when everyone knows you DON'T haggle in villages!! Shame on you Meena!
A couple of weeks ago it was Father's Day here in Nepal, and I was rattling my brain thinkin about what to get for my host dad, turns out, a few sweets is appropriate enough, so I bought a couple of "expensive" bars of chocolate, and then come night time, when he got home from work, my "mum" made me actually "present" the sweets to him, kinda funny, kinda awkward... :s, it was a really cultural thing, then they had some indian sweets and we had to feed him!!
Have I told you that my "shower" consists of a bucket in the toilet...!!! Yes, that it what I have to use everyday, my "mum" gets me a big bucket of water from the well each day and I have to wash myself next to the squat toilet....how nice. I literally have to block my nose and breathe through my mouth, in fear of actually gagging! But I'm used to it now, what I'm still NOT used to is the freezing cold water flowing down my back, you'd think because of the boiling hot weather it'd be fine, but nooooooo, still freezing. Haha, funny story, the other day I was taking my "shower" and realised there was one of those fast, jumping spiders right above my head, yeaaa not nice, so my "mum" hears me screaming , lol, and I run out in my towel and all she does is swipe it into the water and it falls down the drain, believe she told my whole family and they were laughin about it the whole night!
The other day my "mum and sister" took my to get some red bangles for the coming festival, which was nice of them, after I found out that if people see a woman wearing red bangles then it means she is married, I guess it's a good thing considering I really don't want any Nepali guys approaching me anyways..... :D Then my sister took me to visit her school, which was really interesting because she goes to a private school, and I've seen what a government school looks like, and it is soo different! My sister has better, cleaner facilities, whereas the school is made out of clay, with everything a mess, also due to an earthquake which happened in 1989. Back to my sisters school, she showed me her class.... those kids are PACKED in. There's about 50 kids in each class, boyyyyy, and how they are all smart, I have no idea! Back in England a class of that size would run riot!! Also, because she has her SLC's (equivalent to GCSE's) coming up, she has to start school at 6am Sunday to Friday and finishes 6pm, are you maddd!??? It's unbelievable, and people round here go bed late, like 11pm/12am, so she and other kids like her only usually get about 4/5 hours sleep! Wow!! I NEED my 8 hours for sureee!! But nowadays it's more like 10 hours cos of all the work we do!!
Run out of time, have sooo much more to write about, will try tomorrow morning!!
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