One month of Catch Up… sort of.

I’m sure all 3 of you that check my blog have been on the edge of your seat waiting to see what I post next. Apologies for neglecting the blog… how Joy posts EVERY day, I have NO idea. The end of October/beginning of November proved to be super busy, which is great, but left me no time to blog. So here’s my post to catch you up on my life in Nepal so far… but I’m posting about my trek separately because you should have a choice on if you want to read more about how much I love this place.

Where did we leave off? Ah yes… Tihar. October’s second holiday/festival. Tihar was the last week of October and gave me 3 days off from the office (Tuesday – Thursday… yeah, you read right – Monday and Friday I had to go to work. Nothing like mid-week holidays to throw you way off track!). I spent the days off seeing little puppies and street dogs get garlands of bright flowers and tika, gawking at cows with receiving tika and having hundreds of strings tied onto their tails, watching the sky light up with fireworks and hearing screams and laughter on Laxmi Puja and experiencing Bhai Tika (more on this in a bit) with my office friend Rashmi at her family’s home.

Tihar is all about worshipping. One day they worship dogs by giving them tika and throwing garlands of flowers (malla) around their necks… even the mangy street dogs! It’s the one day a year people actually do something nice for the dogs. Even the little puppy that survived the horrible mom dog and all of his other siblings dying out in front of my house got some love. He disappeared soon after that… but maybe someone took him in (that’s what I’m going to continue to think anyway).

My little puppy (I wish!) which I named Chijbij (things in Nepali).

On Laxmi puja, Hindus worship cows by giving them tika and malla as well, so riding around town you see the random cows being attended to by passersby. Tradition goes that string that Hindus wear on their wrists are supposed to be tied to a cow on Laxmi Puja to expedite their journey to nirvana. My friends Natalie and Sam were in Darjeeling during Laxmi Puja and Nat was determined to tie her string bracelet onto a cow… so they had their taxi stop on the side of the road when they saw a cow! Laxmi Puja is also to worship the goddess of wealth – Laxmi. Businesses, offices, shops and homes decorate with malla and lights to bring Laxmi to their place. This is also the day the firecrackers, fireworks and sparklers reach their height. EVERYONE is out celebrating, it’s almost like new year’s.

Bhai Tika is the day that Hindus worship their brothers by giving them blessings with tika (which I mentioned before) and gifts. Oh yeah, the sisters get money. Gotta love these holidays with gift and money giving! Luckily, I got to experience the holiday with my friend Rashmi’s family in Kirtipur (just outside of KTM) which means I got to see how Nepalis celebrate the day and I get adopted by a Nepali family for the day. :) Rashmi, her nieces and nephews, and I were given the task to prepare the ceremony location… which meant using flour and colored powders to create an area with religious symbols. I drew an elephant (to represent Ganesh), the sun and lots of flowers (not sure what the flowers mean, but I draw a pretty mean flower sometimes). Rashmi’s mom started getting the tika ready which for Bhai Tika includes different colored powders. As the ceremony began, boys sat facing the girls and the blessings were given. After gifts and money were exchanged and all of our foreheads were given pretty, pretty multicolored tika, we ate a LOT of food. Then Rashmi and I headed to a community talent show to see young people sing and dance to hindi music and perform skits.

Drawings we made for the tika ceremony.

Me giving tika to my adopted for the day brother.

Rashmi and I during the ceremony.

My adopted for the day mom and I (thanks Rashmi for letting me borrow her for the festivities!).

After that holiday… everything at work started to get hectic. I love it, though… I’m finally doing stuff that seems important and my team is starting to really think of me as on their team. I went with the SSMK team to Nagarkot (remember… known for its beautiful sunrises) to participate in a planning workshop with UNICEF and my org. We’re developing a new project for SSMK that deals with increasing youth participation in sports and using sports as a vehicle to teach life skills. You know what I’m talking about… leadership, team-building, fair play, etc.? Those are all life skills that are important for youth in Nepal to learn to build character and become successful. And… sports kids are healthy kids who perform better academically. Interesting how my parents didn’t let me play sports… but I guess I still turned out okay! :)

Remember that Nike campaign back in middle school (well, for me anyway) that showed little girls staring directly into the camera and saying “if you let me play sports…” Yeah, that’s kind of what we’re going for in phase one of our project. Convince the parents that sports during development is a good thing. Parents and teachers around here have pretty negative perceptions and attitudes about sports, so we’re going to have really try to change their minds for this sports project to take off.

But… anyway, so the planning workshop was REALLY productive and very cool. It’s like fitting everything my P&I (planning & implementation) group did over a whole semester into 3 days. I much prefer it this way. And I got to make some contacts at UNICEF here in Nepal and from the UK. Not to mention… I got to meet Deepak Bista (a 2008 Olympian for Nepal) and Paras Khadka (winner of the Emerging Young Cricketer of South Asia award… and very cute!). I also got to finally see a beautiful sunrise in Nagarkot after seeing a foggy one with Raj earlier in the week. Yay!

My team leader Binita and I at one of the best hotels I've had a conference at (the views definitely put it up at the top).

That weekend was the EA International Directors’ Meeting in KTM, so I attended that as well and got to meet with all the country directors from my org. It was a great time for me to meet them and find out more about what types of projects they are doing in their own countries. It looks like video might be our next big step so that will be very interesting.

So that was my crazy October/November. After the Directors’ Meeting, I went on a week long trek with Sam (an Australian that’s come to live here for the next 5 months). This post is *already* way too long, so I’ll post separately about the trek. And congrats if you read all the way down to here!