Here are some more random questions that friends of mine have asked me to answer:
What is the weather like?
Right now, it’s pretty warm and sunny. Though apparently Pokhara has random weather that can change at any minute, it hasn’t shown those stripes this past week. In fact, I was thinking to myself yesterday how lucky I am. Spring has arrived here in Nepal and it’s only mid-February. And I didn’t even really have a true winter, at least not like what I’ve been used to my whole life. Yes, it was cold – but it was a different kind of cold. A cold that stays with you and goes inside your bones, but one that melts away as long as you’re outside in the sun or by a nice warm fire.
How’s the pollution?
Not as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, sometimes in Kathmandu, after being out all day, I would come home with a little cough. But after all I’d read and heard, I had prepared myself for worse. The most annoying part, actually, is the dust. It gets on your clothes and in your skin and hair so that you are never clean, and when you blow your nose, all you see in the Kleenex is dust and dirt (sorry for the image).
What are grocery stores like?
Well there aren’t a lot of them and they’re not huge corporate chains, but they still have pretty much everything you need. The one in Pokhara isn’t that big, but in Kathmandu I went to some very large, modern-looking grocery stores. I think the most interesting part of grocery stores is the absence of fresh produce. In grocery stores in the West, the produce section usually takes up like a third of the store and is always beautiful, spacious, and colorful. Here, you buy all produce from street vendors (if you don’t get it from your garden) so there is no need for produce in a grocery store.
What are banks like?
I only went to a bank briefly once because my sister needed to make a deposit, and the only two things I noticed were that 1) there are security guards at the entrance (and they searched my sister’s things and clothes but not mine) and 2) they still do things on paper, as opposed to electronically.
What is a typical dinner like? Does that family eat together?
I get the impression that, in general, families don’t feel the need to eat together. In Kathmandu, my baba would usually eat in front of the TV, and here my dada (brother) often eats by the TV in his room. Also, you don’t have to wait until everyone is ready before you begin eating – you can just start when you get your food. But at the same time, when you are eating with your family (even if it’s only part of your family), it’s definitely a nice time. People eat fairly quickly here, but afterwards we often sit around the table for another 10-20 minutes joking around and being silly. So even though dinner doesn’t necessarily have to be a family affair, on a busy school day it can be the only time for me to catch up and chat with my sisters and sisters-in-law, and I enjoy it for that.
What direction do the toilets swirl?
Haha, I don’t really know. My toilet at school doesn’t swirl at all – it’s the most disgusting smelling and looking squat toilet I’ve seen since Africa. My toilet at home doesn’t really swirl either – the water kind of jumps up, confused as to what to do next, and then tries to stuff itself down the hole in no particular organized order.
Who are you hanging out with?
My, myself, and I for the most part. I wake up, sip on my tea, read the newspaper, listen to music, get ready for school. All this is done alone because everyone else is busy rushing around to get ready themselves. I walk to school – alone. I teach my classes – and even though I’m surrounded by kids and other teachers, I would have to say it’s also an alone activity. I come home for lunch and eat alone – unless you could Gita, my maid who can’t speak any English. After school I spend about 30 minutes with my sisters before they have to tutor. That’s when I usually use the internet and prepare for the next school day. At 7pm, my sister in law comes home and we chat for a bit, but she’s always tired after a 10 hour day of work. As I mentioned before, dinner is really my social time of night. After, dada and his wife retreat to their bedroom and my sisters plant themselves in front of the TV (which I generally choose not to watch with them because it’s in Hindi, which everyone in Nepal understands fluently). It sounds sad and lonely, but I’m not. I’m still around people and I have interactions with all kinds of people every day, but this is definitely a solitary time compared to my month in Kathmandu, for instance.
Are many people on cell phones?
Yeah, cell phones have definitely caught on here, and I sense a frenzied obsession very similar to that one in Senegal. My sister carries her cell phone around with her everywhere (partially due to the “love note” text messages she gets from boys) and my dada is always playing with his, adding songs to it, taking photos with it… I’m probably the only one in Nepal who has a cell phone (oh yeah, I have a cell phone – a teacher at school lent me his extra one while I’m here) who doesn’t use it.
Are there lots of iPods?
No, no IPods. In fact, my sister just commented to me the other day that they don’t have IPods in Nepal and how cool she finds them. But they’d generally be wasted here, I think, because the amount of music that the average Nepali would want to carry around with him can easily fit in a cell phone.
What is funny is Nepal? What is the humor out there?
Well, obviously I don’t understand any of it. When I was in Kathmandu with Muna, it seemed that she was ALWAYS laughing with her friends. In fact, she would often remark to me how funny things are in Nepali and when she would try to translate the jokes into English, they would lose the humor. And in fact, I have noticed that Nepalis like to laugh. Big, boisterous laughs too. My family laughs all the time – and they all laugh at my silly little jokes (a big confidence boost). And they watch these silly, slapstick humor shows on TV that look so UNfunny. But whatever – I’m all for laughter (it’s healthy, right?) so if people are laughing, as long as it’s not mean-spirited, I think it’s great.
Q and A
