8/11 Aaaand back.

Today I found myself walking along a little muddy path strewn with broken bricks to provide footholds in the slick, with wholeheartedly green vegetation on both sides.  The leaves are so exuberant that I can't just call them leaves, they demand the respect of "vegetation."  Or maybe "habitat."

There were voices coming from a small house on my left, light and warm rain on my forehead, and the chicken-coup noises of the school I had just left dwindling on my right, where I had half a dozen fantastic classes.  I could have brainstormed and discussed being lost in the jungle with classes 6 or 7 for another hour each.  I survived class 8.  I could easily have spent another couple hours each in classes 9 and 10, talking about environmental problems, similes, metaphors, and dream analysis.  It was a great day.

Suddenly I remembered that I am in love with the world, and utterly blessed to be here.

How great is it to be someplace long enough to have emotional swings, frustration and recovery?  (Basically I had a ferocious man-period this month.  Normally my man-period just makes me more susceptible to sappy movies.)  My life here is not just constant enough to allow me "ups and downs," but has lasted long enough to allow me frickin stages for crying out loud!

I may have mentioned previously my expat friend who told me about the stages of culture shock when you live for awhile somewhere different.  First you love everything, then you hate everything, then you reach the balance and can fairly evaluate it all.

It's not always that clear-cut, but today I feel like I'm in the third section, and the music sounds sweet.

...Although come to think about it, I'm writing this right now because we had planned to spend the night in a little hill town nearby where you can watch the sun rise over the Himalayas and shine down over the Kathmandu Valley...but the bus drivers were stupidly greedy, trying to charge us four times what our host family told us the normal fare is, so we are staying here.  (And a quick peak at Lonely Planet warns that we would be lucky to get even a glimpse of anything during the monsoon season, and there's nothing in the town otherwise.)

When these guys were looking at my skin and the small daypack on my back, and quadrupling the price, I was ready to pop their tires and go home.  So maybe I'm on the border between stages 2 and 3...

OH!  AND!  Tomorrow begins Gai Jatra, or Cow Festival!  It is 8 days long.
Day 1: sisters tie a special thread band on their brothers' wrists.  K will be brother to our host family male, and his wife will be sister to me.  (I'll try to bring you five of them, Cait!)
Day 2: Gai Jatra.  Too many interesting things to list here, I'll try to cram them in a short enough blog afterwards.
Day 3-8: People openly criticize the government in skits and performances around town.

AND!  We awarded ourselves some relaxation time this summer, so we are spending next week in Pokhara, which is rumored to be absolutely gorgeous.  K is doing a yoga/meditation retreat and I am...I have no idea!  We'll see!  If they have an internet place I'll tell you about it.

Happy Gai Jatra everyone!

8/10 Out of steam

8/10  Crap.  We've only been here two months and we are out of steam.  Neither of us has any energy, K has stabbing pains after every meal, I am done with the main stages of a Nepali cold with just the endless weeks of coughing left, K's vision occasionally goes black while she's teaching, and I spent a couple interludes tonight vomiting uncontrollably, first in a squatty potty, and second in a western toilet that is not connected to any inflow pipes and so reeks permanently of the liquid contributions of the various teachers, staff, and higher level students who have been upgraded from the student bathrooms where tiny people stand outside the door, trousers around their ankles, peeing on the floor.

Stale urine is a rather stunningly commonplace odor in our schools.

We haven't been here that long, not even two months yet, and we feel run over by buses.  The heat is continuous, the bacteria more multitudinous than back home by an astronomical exponent, we are continuously on stage wherever we go, the classes are as demanding as classes of children always are I suspect, with the added bonus that large numbers of the students have no idea what we're saying, and then there's the food schedule.

We are expected for morning tea at 6:30, though nothing happens for two more hours, when we eat a massive, substantially spiced breakfast of rice and curry.  Then people don't eat until 1:00 when they have a small cup of tea and a biscuit, then nothing until 8:30 at night, when they repeat the massive rice & curry meal then go straight to bed.  So basically they eat at 8:30 AM, then PM.  12 hours of nothing in between, and try to sleep with the full belly at night.

I have lost an inch or two off my belly, which didn't really have that much to spare before, and have burned off all the muscle I incrementally built over the last year.  (And the other peacocks were just in the habit of nodding to me as we passed going to and from the weight rack.  Rats!)

I am whining like never before, I deeply apologize, but you're reading my whine-diary today.  Let me know if it's horrible.

8/7 WTF is going on?

Is there an astrologer in the house?  I am hoping you can give me an external explanation for WTF is going on lately.

8/5  Friday, politics/culture clash lead us to have a sulky sorta-host as one of our Nepal liaisons gets offended when we only spend nine hours of K's birthday at his non-party, instead of the 12+ hours he informed us we would spend there.

8/6  One of the signature differences between here and the various other homes I've lived in is the honking.  Ne Yorkers honk too much, Nepali make them look positively demure.  They honk to say they're there, they honk to say they're moving, they honk to tell everyone around them to magically vaporize themselves, they honk for no discernible reason whatsoever.  There are daily cases where I want to take the honker and try to teach them a lesson on critical thinking.
  "If the rickshaw spans half this alley, and you span the entire alley, how do you expect to pass him, even if he does stop and move over?  And if he's going the same speed as the crowd of cars and pedestrians around us, what result are you hoping for?"
On Saturday afternoon we were walking down the street, I had a pounding headache (without even a haircut to explain it) and a dude on a motorbike laid on his horn to warn a puddle that he as going around it.
Without conscious thought I found myself yelling "shut UP!!!" on the street.  People turning around and everything.  I was kinda embarrassed, and kinda wanted to begin a midnight campaign of horn disconnections.

8/7  Sunday is the beginning of the Nepali workweek, and I came to school to find that the offended party from Friday had decided that all the kids were going to spend the day watching students' dance performances from to years ago.  I came here to teach, and have a lot of things I want to cover with the students, and this type of time wasting nonsense is a surprisingly common occurrence.
But you deal with what comes, so I went to get some lunch (since the Nepali eating schedule is literally killing K and I, but more on that some other time).
On the way to town I passed a half dozen excited dogs.  As I got closer I could see that two had just mated, and were fastened at The Uglies in that interesting and repulsive way dogs have.  Meanwhile the other male dogs were all hyped up on pheromones, and one was biting the female on the back of the neck in another of those delightful canine behaviors.
I have learned that when abroad I don't know how things are done and to not interfere, so I could only watch helplessly as people walked around this dog, pinned and tormented, ignoring her yelps of pain, asking passerby "does no one do anything about things like that here?"

Animal suffering left a sick feeling in my gut, but I went back to forcing the ambassadorial kindness that is required when you are the only white man in town, and are a constant object of interest (unless there is a white woman next to you, at which point you become invisible).

There are these little pilgrim shelters scattered around town, and one had a dozen or so 16ish year olds from another school.  As I walked by, one yelled "hello!"  So I responded "hello, good afternoon!"  There was a chorus of muttered "afternoon"s, then one yelled "come here" with the Nepali tendency towards accidental demands.  I apologized "sorry, I have things to do" and kept walking before hearing "you fucking bitch."

So for the second time in as many days I found myself shouting in public, letting him know this type of language was not acceptable.  I suspect on another day I would have been stern but more teacherly, explaining what the words mean, but lately...I don't know...things feel...stirred, aggravated, and somewhat febrile.

Is it me?  Or is Mars out of alignment or something, because it feels like the god of war is sitting on my damn shoulder.

Nepali Shave

I'll try to stay away from the off-putting mega-blogs, which should be easy since the "cyber" kid is blasting techno remixes of Eminem.  (Why would you take a perfectly good song like that "Watch Me Burn" one and speed it up and umph-chss-umph-chss it to death?)

Last weekend we went to Chitwan National Park, where you ride elephants and look for rhinos and tigers, but that's a mega-blog waiting to happen, so I'll come back to that later.

I got back from Chitwan with a beard that was a jungle in itself and would have needed a three day/two night tour package commitment to hack off with my tired little razor, so, remembering Barberji's gestured question if I wanted a shave too, I went back to my new favorite barbershop as the monsoon began to rain on a typical Tuesday morning street of smoking bus exhaust pipes, scraps of pavement, and a few scrawny and patient cows ignoring the stray dogs who only occasionally notice their bovine cohabitants.

My buddy, Burning Eyed Barberji, was again not in evidence as I walked up, but his son/apprentice, Cautious but Stern Eyed and Incredibly Tan Barberito nodded at my shaving gesture and returned it with an open handed sweep to the chair.  He draped the same faded pink towel over my front, which still bore the leftover hairs of an unknown quantity of previous customers on it, but I hypothesize it's not too many since, judging by the degree of mildew smell (only moderate/non-overwhelming), the towel is washed regularly.

He started energetically rubbing some sort of preshave liquid on my chin, paying a lot of attention to my neck and not much attention when he swept further up, where he tended to poke me in the eye.  After the third near loss of my depth perception, I shot him a look in the mirror to find he was watching the TV in the corner.  I think the preshave liquid was water.

Barberji came in, and Barberito grabbed a big tube of caulk and squeezed out an appropriate amount for toothbrushing onto my cheek and whipped it into shaving cream with the little brush.  It was the first time I've felt shaving cream since 2008.  Barberji sat down and started watching TV.  When Barberito lathered my other cheek I got a glance at the screen and was deeply shocked to see a Bollywood-looking conversation going on...in a strip club!

The culture here is not as severe as the Middle East, but women's clothing is utterly unrevealing of any sense whatsoever that there's a body under there, and holding hands across gender lines is absolutely scandalous.  Yet here were some lass's yams twitching up on the screen!  I think a swatch of her bum was originally visible, but they had blurred it out.

(We watched a Nepali show the other week that apparently involves mild political satire at times, which you can detect when the sound cuts out entirely.  Nepali censors don't bleep, they mute.)

Luckily the scene was over by the time Barberito got out the straight razor and started methodically removing my facial chaos with short precise strokes that reassured me that he is in fact his father's son, and practiced wipes of the resulting funky lather onto his palm, which quickly looked like he was holding a rat meringue pie.

He did the razor thing twice, doing an impressive job over the impractical angles of my chin, and a much-appreciated job on the super-upper-lip hairs that, if left untended, fraternize with and impersonate nose hair to my chagrin.  Then he hosed my face down thoroughly and without warning with the sprayer thing (of the type we use for applying pesticide to a mid-sized garden).

Next he picked up a brick of white stone and came at my face.  I could only hope there were no strip clubs on TV at the time.  It was definitely a rock, but it was the smoothest and slickest rock I've ever had close personal contact with.  As the pores on my face stung into obedience I remembered seeing rocks that serve as styptic pencils in the hippy shops in Santa Cruz.  Homeopathic!  Cool!  The water streaming down my face after the rock tasted like a slightly mineral benign nothing.

It was preferable to the aftershave that came after, with it's alcohol sting.  Or the deep pore cleansing lotion he dabbed onto my face like chicken pox medication that followed that.  He even put a spot on my nose, which felt kinda flirty.  Then he paused to watch some TV.

It was, of course, at this point, with my face covered in white dots, that our school bus came by, slowed to a crawl by the jigsaw puzzle remnants of what may once have been pavement.  Dozens of little eyes looked over at me, though mostly of kids too small to have my classes.  I did make eye contact with Nishan, grade seven, who gave me his familiar shy and contagious smile.

I swear there were at least 4 more courses of antiseptic and pleasant-smelling treatments, which he topped off with a thorough rub down with the mildew-smelling towel, complete with all those previous clients' hairs.

I have been trying futilely to introduce the concept of Critical Thinking into the Nepali classroom.  But more on that some other time.

Because it was time for my beating.

He held his hands in the same loose namaste posture that Barberji had used, slapped me in the head with it, followed by a quick tap to the shoulder, then 6-8 practiced whacks around my noggin, followed by the bonking fists that left me a tad woozy.

I gestured a smiling request to omit the neck snapping attempt, since last time I woke up two days later with my neck muscles locked in a brick wall of agony.  I think it was a good idea, because instead he gave me an abrupt (and oddly stern) manly shoulder rub, gripping the (what muscle is that?  The trapezious?) shoulder muscle and giving it a single concerted squeeze.  I expected to hear him say "harrumph" for some reason.

I'm learning this country, bit by bit. Next time I'll skip the namaste-prayer noggin-bonks too, since I spent the afternoon and evening with a pounding headache, no pun intended.  And I learned that I want a straight razor.

Nepali Haircut

I got my hair cut yesterday.  I think that makes 7 countries where I've gotten one, 8 if you count the emergency beard removal in Guatemala.

There is a barbershop in between the veggie market and one of the convenience-y stores that has stacks of eggs and bags of potato chips hanging on long strings.  It was of course empty when we got there, but the vigilant barber soon showed up with his burning eyes and scruffy white coat.

His haircutting was speedy and precise while feeling chaotic and rushed.  The scissors never stopped snipping, usually in a rhythm of three, the first in the hair, the last in the air, and the second wherever it needed to be.

Then he got out the straight razor and I tried to monitor my attention and reactions for racism.  Did I feel more reassured when he changed the blade than I would have in America?  Did I pay extra attention to the authenticity of opening the packaging?  Would you find that justifiable?  Do I?

He tidied up the edges with expert strokes, which made me understand why barbers were the surgeons in the Middle Ages.  Those guys know how to use a blade.  Then it was aftershave powder with one of those little brushes, followed by a ferocious pinch at the nape of my neck that felt almost punitive...what did I ever do to you, Barberji?

Then he started beating on my head, karate chops before fists that made my vision bounce epically while I tried to hold my neck firm.

Once my vision calmed down he apparently forgave me and we made up with a brusque but enthusiastic massage, sweeping his hands up and over my noggin, down the sides, then around my ears in a precise and practiced pattern that felt like a very confused form of reiki.

He put one hand above and behind my ear on the left side of my head and the other reached around under my chin on the right, and then tried to kill me by breaking my neck.  Like Antonio Banderas in that one bar brawl scene in Desperado.  Luckily my manly sinews were too much for him, and he stopped just past the point where my uppermost vertebrae crunched like a car accident.  He tried again on the other side while I focused on not flexing a muscle, trying hard to avoid thinking about the damage we might inadvertently cause.  The second time, on the other side, he went a small amount further before the skeletal implosions began, though a millimeter feels like serious business at that point.

My neck didn't hurt beforehand, but after I swear afterwards I could turn my head like a damn barn owl.

Leaving the barbershop to pick up some okra for tonight's curry and cookies (digestives of course) for tomorrow morning's tea, I felt that I got more smiles than normal; I think the locals approved of my local barbershop participation.  And of course found my delirious smile highly entertaining.

An average day in Bhaktapur

6:00 AM the little pink travel clock goes off, K or I snaking an arm out from under the mosquito net to turn it off or poke at it for a snooze.

As I said in my birthday blog, there are only a few solar water heaters on roofs around town, and there isn't one on our roof, so my morning shower is night-chilled cold water, mouth clamped shut to avoid swallowing any.  It is still not entirely comfortable to start, but once begun I enjoy it, and I really do feel warmer, fresher, and more ready for the day afterwards.

My travel towel is irredeemably stinky so I air dry, brushing my teeth with the water since by now our stomachs are pretty used to the bacteria, and we are able to take more liberties than tourism would otherwise have allowed.  The bathroom is an open space, the shower head above the toilet, the sink to the side, so everyone has bathroom flip-flops since the floor is nearly always wet.

7:00 Morning tea time with our hosts, Saroj Sir and his wife Anita Ma'am.  Saroj is a teacher at Kalika Higher Secondary School, and is our English-speaking liaison in the area, though Anita understands more than she at first admitted, which she gave away with her infectious laughter at our jokes, stories, and stumbling learning curve of Nepali culture.  The tea is black, loaded with sugar, and there are always biscuits on the plate.

K and I sit at the table, trying to add to our day's lesson plans and talking to Saroj and Anita until around the
8:30 morning meal of dal bhat.  Dal is a lentil soup, served in a small dish, which is poured over the heap of white rice (the bhat).  There is usually also some achar (I'm guessing on the spelling) which is a pickled spicy salsa, a little dab'll do ya.  Then a side dish of curry veggies, usually potato mixed with a green gourd, bean, or local unknown.

You then smishsmash these all together and eat.  Using only your hand.  Right hand.  The fingernails on our right hands are noticeably yellower than on the left after a month of dal bhat.  You scoop up a bite in your hand, manipulate it down to the last couple joints of the fingers, insert the thumb underneath this loose ball, bring the hand to the mouth and scrape it in, using the thumb as a lever/elevator.  Licking fingers (even plate) is accepted and even encouraged.  A good burp shows appreciation for the food and is polite.  I have not yet managed this, I am sorry to say.

It is absolutely delicious food.  I expect to have trouble and reluctance returning to the Dictatorship of Silverware Oppression practiced in the west.

We went out to dinner on my birthday in a nice place downtown, and I would choose the food Anita (or our first host-mother Hema) prepares 10 times out of 10.

After this meal Nepali's don't eat again until around 8-9:30 PM, taking only a small snack lunch at 1:00, so the portions are massive.  Anita returns as many times as we allow, additional scoops of each component headed for our plates.  The ratio is very important, since you cannot leave anything on your plate (deeply offensive) and if you have too much dal then it gets too liquid.  Several times I have asked for a tiny bit more rice, to soak up the dal, which has arrived with a full round of achar, curry, and more dal.  It is a delicious stretch to finish every time.

K and I teach at two schools, three days each at one before trading places (there are six workdays in Nepal, Sunday is their Monday, and they have no summer vacation, just one week between grades).  We live at Kalika, and Himalayan is a 20 minute walk across town (and through a couple rice paddies).

If you read my pre-Nepal info blog you may remember that we were expecting a different school from Himalayan and a host family (we live in a room in a building next to the school).  Both of these were changed at some point, which is utterly in character with Nepal, where things tend to change ten minutes after they were supposed to start, and you usually find out about an hour later.

Planning does not appear to be a common practice; when we showed up (already twice postponed at our hosts' request by two days then four hours) there was still no bed in our room.  I helped disassemble and relocate one, surreptitiously squishing silverfish the size of housepets when no one was looking, feeling likely a princess for even noticing them.  Luckily the giant spiders were all dried husks.

9:45 Assembly at the schools.  The children line up in rows by class.  A teacher takes them through a series of drills, "cover up" means to reach up and put your hands on the person's shoulders in front of you, then sides and straight up.  They bow tiny heads, fold small hands, and close deep brown eyes for prayer, chanted in unison, and then (at Himalayan only) sing the Nepali national anthem, which I expect to be able to mimic with reasonable accuracy soon.

As they head up to the classrooms the teacher inspects their socks, hair, ties, etc for inadequate cleanliness or ironing (all the schools here have their own uniforms, two per week, changing on Wednesday).  The Principal Ma'am at Himalayan appears to be highly intuitive, grabbing kids seemingly at random and holding them back for infractions I can only guess at.

10:00 classes begin.  Two 40 minute classes back to back, 5 minute break, two more classes.

12:45 Tiffin Break for 30 minutes.  "Tiffin" is apparently an old English word for the small boxes that kids bring their snacks to school in, and the name has come to refer to the break.  The kitchen at Himalayan offers teachers a small snack, variable contents but reliably spicy beyond my western palate's easy comprehension.

On the first day I ate some soup, and was well into the resulting heavy sweating when the principal brought all the other teachers in to meet me, one by one.  I had brought some little cakes to share with the teachers (since it was my birthday) but instead of leaving them on a counter, I was portioning them out to shy teachers, who politely didn't look at my dripping face.  They seem to be shy/intimidated by us, and the principal urges them to speak with us, hoping we will improve their English, which is...of various levels.  It was another of those delightfully awkward experiences that I am so skilled at finding.

After Tiffin is a mirror image of the morning, two 40 minute classes, 5 minute break, then two more before school ends at 4:00.  There are 8 classes a day, of which we teach 5 at Kalika and 6 at Himalayan.

These class times are misleading to a western sense of scheduling.  That soup I ate the first day was given to me at 1:14, and Tiffin ends at 1:15.  Students tend to show up to the classroom 10-15 minutes after class "begins" and when I show up to a room on time I invariably have to wait outside for another 5+ minutes until the previous teacher leaves.

4:00 Students line up again for a short prayer, maybe an announcement or message, then dismissal.  At Himalayan I am instructed to follow the kids out to the main street to protect them, although the schedule there now has our two "leisure" periods as the last two, so I usually leave early (and for example type this blog).

4:30ish the kids have mostly left the school, and when we are both back at Kalika we have our second tea with Saroj and Anita.  Then we run any errands we may have, tell each other about how the various classes went and plan our next day's lesson plans together since we share most classes (K has 3rd to 8th at Himalayan, while I have 5th to 10th, we both have 4th to 8th at Kalika).

8:30ish evening meal of dal bhat, same as morning, just as delicious.  We don't usually linger afterwards because the culture dictates that someone always has to be available to serve, and Anita usually doesn't eat until we go home.  (When we were staying with our host family in Kathmandu we, as guests, were served first, given a headstart, then the grandmother, as elder, was served.  Once we had all finished the son was served, and once he had finished and we had all left the table, the mother would eat.  The father was sick/absent the whole time we were in that home, so I am not sure when he eats, but I believe it would be between Elder and Child.  Sometimes Saroj eats after we start, and sometimes we don't see him eat at all.  When he does, he manages an awesome Nepali quantity of rice.)
 
We get ready for bed and fall asleep around 10:30, re-stringing the mosquito net and pushing open the windows.  When we are lucky the sound of the monsoon rainfall drowns out the piercing whine of the incredibly persistent mosquitoes who will hover around our net all night long.  Other critters come and go at various times, our favorite being the small lizards, who we revere as protectors, optimistically hoping they will eat some of the mosquitoes, although the second night we watched a rather embarrassing chase where a spider seemed to effortlessly evade the little guy.

The reason why someone has to be available to serve food at all times during dinner is owing to the cultural rules regarding cleanliness.  The left hand is always considered jutho, or impure, since there is no toilet paper here.  Some toilets have a little bucket, and most have a spray nozzle.  You put water in your left hand, and clean yourself.

Us westerners at first usually find this fairly challenging/shocking, but it quickly became apparent to me that it is a superior method to toilet paper.

Of course you wash well with soap and water afterwards, but the left hand is still considered impure.  This is why you walk around the temples (and stupas) clockwise only.  You reach up to spin the prayer wheels, and must use only your right hand, the left should not face the temple.  Handling communal dishes, water bottles etc with your left hand makes them jutho.  Serving from a dish with your own utensil makes it jutho.  Once you have begun to eat food on your plate it is jutho and cannot be shared, except dry food like crackers.  A husband may give jutho food from his plate only to his wife, but cannot accept any from hers.

If food is made jutho, it is inedible (to others) and is dumped out.

Since food is eaten with your right hand, that hand is generally covered in dal, and is considered more impure than the left at that point, so you drink from your glass of water with your left while eating.  We drink boiled water, which is often still warm and seems to have an incredible cleansing effect, rushing through our bodies with unbelievable speed and irresistible urgency.

The most profane part of the body for Nepalis is the feet.  You must never touch anyone (or anything) else with your feet, or step over a person, object, food, or anything involved in worship.  This is sometimes difficult since every house has a small spot in front where offerings are made, so walking down the street involves watching carefully where you step, which is hazardous given that traffic obeys no rules, only tendencies, and during the monsoon season the puddles will last about four months, and sometimes reach epic proportions as muddy quagmires.

The only cultural aspect I have felt challenged by was the late meal then going right to bed.  K still struggles to observe the gender roles with unattached interest.

We are incredibly happy to be here; it is a singular opportunity to encounter a place at a level profoundly deeper than simple tourism.  It is also far more challenging and uncomfortable.  I find myself longing for a stint of "normal" travel, but expect I will crave this type of intimate interaction more frequently from now on.  I think I may be addicted.

And I'm going to miss the dal bhat.

I turned 31 in Bhaktapur, Nepal yesterday.

I turned 31 in Bhaktapur, Nepal yesterday.  This makes a different country every birthday for the last four years.  The blessings are too many to count.

I am at peace with the gradual increase of casualness in one's birthdays as age increases.  Gone are the frantic pool parties that defined my childhood summers, and I'm okay with that.

I woke up yesterday morning 6:00 AM under the mosquito net in our room in Nepal, aspiring to gratitude for the pure exuberant fantasticosity of that statement, as every day.  And it being my birthday added an extra layer of smile.

K is arguably the most skilled person I know at making someone feel celebrated and special, and her "happy birthday" wishes and CD gift of the mantras we heard at Swayambhunath (Buddhist stupa on the hill above Kathmandu) were already gifts enough.  No more required, but more to come.

Before my cold shower (there are a few solar water heaters around here, but not many, and not on our roof) I was reminded of the reality of reality by a not-infrequent visitor on our wall, this time one of the flat spiders who move faster than an animal with legs that long really should be able to move.  I had my deodorant wrapped in a piece of paper, ready to squish it, but declined its death in homage to my Buddhist/Hindu nature.  Instead I opted to try and herd it out the door by tapping the wall next to it.

After a few up and down circuits it made a frantic dash for the door before reversing course, reaching the edge of the wall and flying off, straight down into our things.  My 8 legged friend had reminded me that just because it was one's birthday doesn't mean the world dances to your tune, all things falling into place (as of course they do every day).  I smiled and took my cold shower, which are still not easy to begin, but are by now enjoyable once I'm in.

Every morning we have tea with Saroj and Anita, our hosts at Kalika Higher Secondary School, before eating dal bhat at 9:00.  This morning they shared the birthday ritual of Sagun (no idea of spelling) which includes the gift of a hard boiled egg fried in curry spices, with cucumber and home-grown radishes (the giant white kind, not the little red guys).  They lit the Ganesh oil lamp (think Aladdin) which they daubed with the ritual red paste and an offering of the veggies placed on top for the god.

Then they blessed me with a kata, the white scarf one presents to honored guests and sometimes hosts, red flower received and placed on one's head, and tika, the red dollop of rice and coloring in the center of the forehead that one receives on special occasions or as a sign of welcoming.  I felt more blessed and welcomed and included and honored than I could hope for.

Feeling at peace and in love with the world I began walking to school.  K and I alternate schools, each teaching three days at either Kalika or Himalayan English Secondary School before switching.  (I'll post an everyday schedule and details...one of these days.)

There are no other foreigners (beyond India, Bhutan, China, and maybe Bangladesh) in our area, and at first we were continually stared at on our travels around town.  We have been here long enough that the locals seem to have gotten used to us, at least in our specific neighborhood, though they still bring their children out to greet us (especially K who they still stare at with something that looks like awe) as we pass their homes.  Tiny voices shout out "hi!", "bye-bye!", or "namaste!" and shy smiles erupt at our responses.

It was my first day at Himalayan, which began with a surprise request by the principal for me to address the entire school during their morning assembly, a couple hundred little faces peaking at me from their evenly spaced rows.

We teach six classes a day there, and my introduction to each class began with recitals of the Happy Birthday song that varied from bold and shouted (10 year olds) to shy and blushing (17 year olds).  K had advised them of my birthday, and small right hands delivered birthday cards and gifts, left hands reached across to hold the right elbow in a sign of respect.  (The left hand is impure, there is no toilet paper here...)

For dinner our absolutely amazing hosts allowed us to take them out (it took some convincing), and we ate in a garden restaurant next to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Durbar Square (palace/temple/monument area) in Bhaktapur, considered by many (including myself) to be the most beautiful of the three competing such squares in the Kathmandu Valley.  Walking there, past ancient temples and palaces, and monuments/shrines uncountable, wearing our traditional local outfits, called "kurtha" and not feeling like dumb tourists doing so, was an experience in itself that left us smiling, dumbstruck.

We feel safe here in Nepal (though we are locked in every night behind two layers of metal bars with padlocks, and there are bars on all the windows) but I would still not normally take my camera out after dark, but with our host escort and four people I did last night.  The yellow street lights at night on the streets and red brick buildings is another manifestation of the maddening beauty here that I can only helplessly observe and enjoy.  I snapped a pair of quick tries towards it, one place, and as a result, just for spice, my birthday ended with us being followed nearly home by shady characters from the shadows, Saroj, our host, putting on his stern teacher's face and walking between us and them.

My own teaching instincts made me want to advise them that following someone is much less sneaky when you shuffle with your left foot the whole time.

They were menacing enough that I moved my memory cards from the camera case into various pockets to minimize loss if they did get my bag, but in the end they gave up and melted away.

Today was a "normal" day, and yet I find myself still overflowing with gratitude.  Maybe it has something to do with the half hundred people who wished me happy birthday on facebook and email.  Doubtful/cynical as I am regarding the internet age and facebook society, that felt good, real good.

I admit that turning 31 was somewhat more perilous-feeling than turning 30 was.  (After all, now I'm IN my 30s.)  But experiencing it in circumstances this amazing, and I mean that on a global level, made it all sacred.