Lost in time, lost in experiences...

Well, I think only two days has past since my last post, but it’s already really hard to put together my memories, it seems such a long time.

We have already visited the CCN office which is about 40 minutes walking from our apartment. The walking time gives a great opportunity to see a bit about Kathmandu: with all its small shops (that look exactly the same as in Ghana), sometimes cows and goats passing the road as well as cute little children dressed in uniforms. We are already done with two days of training at the office during which we talked a bit about our and the Nepalese organization’s expectations, as well, as we learnt a bit about Nepal and Nepalese culture and customs. I got to know for example, that even today, in the democratic Republic of Nepal (there’s no kingdom since 2006!) there’s still a high importance of the cast system and there still exist both love and arranged marriage. For example, even though there are no law anymore that would forbade marriage among casts, your family can still say that they would never allow you to marry somebody from other than your ethnic group. Also, they say that while in Europe, if you don’t agree with your parents, you can live separately, you would die like that here… It works also the same way with authorities and leaders: there’s no way to argue with a leader, instead, even if you don’t agree, the best thing that you can do is, that you find the positive aspects of this person, his motivation, and support in that – this way apparently indirectly you can represent your own opinion, too. Also, we were suggested never to call the police if there’s any problem, since if the misunderstand us, we can even be locked up for a few days…

On the other side, it was really interesting that quite a few things that we read about Nepal didn’t seem right… For example, today, our mentor, Yamkala told us, that shaking her head means “No” for her, too – in contrast with what we read at a lot of websites.. The same is also true for presents: she said that it’s not true that you are not allowed to open a present in front of the person, you got it from: at birthday parties for example it’s normal to open all presents. The only thing is that they will about never say if they don’t like the present – but I guess this is not so far from our European culture, either…  

So altogether we had two days very rich in information, but still we didn’t spend all our time studying. Both days we went out for lunch with Yagya and had real Nepalese lunch together! Well, I think, I will just love food here! Lots of spices, lots vegetables… Oh and one more interesting thing about the time schedule here, I just remembered: Imagine that after getting up at 5, having a small breakfast soon, a real Nepalese will already have lunch at about 9:30 am!!! and then have just snacks up to 9:30 pm when they have dinner! Fortunately we don’t have to adapt this system yet right now..:) Anyway, but about food: we already had rice and veggies the first evening with dull, which is made of lentils and which is really typical here. Then for lunch we had momo which is a special kind of dumpling with great Nepalese spices! Really good! And my stomach is even feeling good, too, so far! :)

Oh yes, and besides eating, we have already been out Kathmandu just to have a beer last night. It was a place that made me feel home at once: with live music and people sitting on the floor.. – yes, I think this is the right place for me right now! :) Anyway, I also have to take back my statement from my last post that everything looks like if it was in the ‘50s: I just realized that all the taxis here are Marutis which actually look exactly the same as my cute little Suzuki Alto at home! :)

Also, today we had an intercultural dinner at the office where I could at last use my paprika that I brought from Hungary and make a good “paprikás krumpli”. The only problem was, that I made it with “szalámi”, from which it turned out that it’s made of pork, which Nepalese people don’t eat at all. There were still some brave ones out of the Nepalese guests, who still tried it, so I count that as a success. Even though at the end we had some leftover, which they just through in a bag for us to bring home – it looks really funny in the fridge now…J