Days 30-31: Sushaan's 5th Birthday!
Trip Start
May 20, 2008
1
24
77
Trip End
Aug 19, 2008
Kathmandu,
Nepal
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Friday:
Day off work. We all walked enmasse to the one main landmark I still hadn't seen, Boudhanath Stupa, the largest such shrine outside of Tibet and home to the world's largest Tibetan refugee community. A severe rainstorm made the walk unpleasant, but it cleared by the time we got there. While the stupa itself was smaller than expected, the whole area had a neat aura about it, with many a monk chantings coming from the adjacent monasteries. Many pigeons were also present, and little 12yr monk students came out with a cage of doves and set the doves loose among the pigeons, I guess as part of some ritual.
Saturday:
Complete transportation stoppage across the whole valley in protest of fuel prices, couldn't get much done. Nighttime featured Sushaan's 5th birthday! I got him a soccer-ahem-football as a present. The entire extended family, almost 20 people, crammed into our tiny living room to celebrate and watch him blow out the cake's candle. It was fittingly chaotic & ADD. They sung him "Happy Birthday" in English... and kept singing... and kept singing, looping the song over at least ten times as each family member blessed his forehead. The birthday cake was about the size of a Frisbee, and was cut into slices no bigger than large ice cubes. One of our little sisters asked what birthday cakes were like in our home countries, Ladina said Swiss cakes are about as small as the Nepali one, I (feeling like a pig) demonstrated the apparently unusually large size of American bday cakes. The family also disassembled the cardboard box the cake came in, cut it into little pieces, and used the cardboard pieces as plates for each cake cube. Gotta love their resourcefulness.
General:
There's another road-transport-shutdown today, the day of writing, as well... There have been little or no bus services for most of the past week. Violent fuel protests & tire burnings broke out in the poorer sections of Kathmandu virtually every day for the past half-a-week... I'm thinking it's time for another conveniently-timed mountain trek soon, but we'll see. I'm also considering moving in to the orphanage in order to be of better help there if the buses don't get their act together soon (it's out of walking distance.) In any case, don't worry about the chaos, Pepsikola is immune to it.
Did You Know:
- Swiss & German people don't get along well with each other (according to Ladina.)
- Young Nepali men are culturally not allowed to drink until they get a job and support themselves. Interestingness.
