Neha's morning walk

Neha’s morning walk. That’s what people in my village call my morning run. Every morning I get up and atleast 2 people are like “going for your morning walk?.” Yes sir, I sure am. I hope to god I accomplish something here in my 2 years that people remember me as more than just the crazy white girl who ran every morning. Even people I don’t know or have never seen before are like “oh yes, you are Neha…you run to Karmachor every day.” Karmachor is the village I usually run to everyday, but its around 5k away from my village, so its far enough away that people there don’t interact with me on a daily basis, so I usually get some weird looks. Whats also funny about running in Nepal is that most people think I am running to get somewhere, like I am running to town because I need to buy something there. So often times I will be running and people will be like “stop and rest and we will all walk back to Dimik together,” even though I explain im running for exercise. My favorite is when I’m pouring sweat and the sun is out and some old lady will tell me to come to her house to take a break and drink tea with her, even though its about 80 degrees out. Now that its full on summer here in Nepal, I’ve been restricted to running either before 9am or after 4pm. I tried running the other day at 1pm and it was horrible. I came back so red in the face afterwards my family wouldn’t let me sit in the sun the rest of the day. Anyways, that’s going good…I usually run for about 50-55 minutes each morning which is an accomplishment considering I did like 15 min my first day here.

coming back from my run on Holi day, where you get tons of colored powder thrown on you

I celebrated International Women’s Day last week with the women of my village. I went to a huge mother’s group program in a nearby village…there ended up being around 300 people there. It was pretty powerful to be around that many women giving speeches and chanting all at once. My village women and I trekked about 1.5 (all in saris, which are quite hard to walk in let me tell you) to get to the event, and we had drums and homemade signs and chanted the entire way there. I wore my sister’s sari for the event which attracted too much attention for my own liking, but everyone was happy that I wore it. I surprised the women of my village even further when I got up and danced with all of them while they were singing a song. This was a big deal for me. I hate dancing Nepali style, especially in front of that many people, but I decided to suck it up and just dance around like a fool in my sari. Then I gave a nice little speech in front of all these people, which surprisingly went fairly well. Let me tell you, anyone who is reading this blog who is thinking of applying to PC…you better get used to public speaking real fast. At least in Nepal, if you are white, you will be made to give a speech at every single event you attend. I’ve gotten used to it now, and I kind of have a little spiel I give, but it was really hard at first to talk on the spot to large crowds. Anyways, IWD was fun and I feel like I got to know the women of my ward a little bit better. Then I got home and realized I had the most awkward tan/burn lines from my sari.

Walking to the International Women's Day program

my ward at International Women's Day

Unrelated to this blog post, but I made compost tea at my site

my house!

Last week I got to run my entire Agriculture Service Center by myself! I don’t exactly know what my counterpart was thinking when he thought this was a good idea, but he assigned me the job anyways. He was away visiting his family, so I thought to myself “this will be fine, theres 3 other staff members at the ag center anyways, ill barely have to do much.” WRONG. No one showed up the 2 days I was there. Not one other staff member. The first day about 20 people came in asking me all sorts of questions I had no answers to, but I made quite a few new friends and a lady I met that day even called me that night to chat. Since I couldn’t give them answers to their ag questions, I decided to tell them my life story instead, which seemed to satisfy most of them. I also watched 5 episodes of Greys Anatomy in a row, leading to zero productivity on my Village Situational Analysis, which is the big report that is due to Peace Corps in 2 days.

Last week I was reading Oprah magazine on my bed (thank you US embassy employees) with my head facing the door and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and A MONKEY WAS IN MY ROOM. The monkeys here aren’t tiny cute monkeys either, they are large and furry and have big teeth. I almost shit myself. Sorry for the visual, but it was such a frightening thing. The most frightening part of this encounter was that the monkey hesitated before leaving; it wasn’t exactly super scared of me screaming my head off at it. It left, but now Im too scared to ever hang out in my room with my door open again. Then again, one of my friends here found a python in her kitchen last week, so maybe having a monkey in my room wasn’t so bad after all.

We had “English day” today in the Panthi (my last name) household. This consisted of my older sister instructing me to only speak to her in English, which is super entertaining because we will be walking along and she’ll be quiet and then I’ll hear from behind me “Oh god, oh god its raining” or “My hair is very black.” I think after 2 years we will be able to converse. English day also consisted of my 9 year old sister running around saying “Welcome to toilet! Welcome to kitchen! Welcome to house! Welcome to room!” all day long. We have a ways to go there…. Also my 11 year old cousin came to visit last week with my family and I let him listen to my Ipod and before I knew it he was singing the explicit lyrics of Enrique Iglesias’s “Tonight I’m F*cking You” at the top of his lungs around the house. Probably for the best that most people in Dimik cant understand English… I’ve also been attempting to teach a little geography to my younger sisters as I realized it needed some work when I asked my younger sister where Nepal was on the world map and she pointed at Australia…I’m also in the early planning stages of painting a big world map at the local public school, which I hope to get up and running after my In-Service Training in a couple weeks.

And…for anyone who cares I discovered that the monkeys in my village are both rhesus macacques (very common) and gray langurs. The gray langur that came into our courtyard the other day was no joke, the size of a saint Bernard. I had never seen one around before either. It left pretty quickly after 2 dogs came to chase it. Hoping the next monkey I find in my room isn’t one of those…

Right now I’m in Pokhara for my In-Service Training with all of the other volunteers. I just got back from an amazing 5 days full of trekking and rafting with family friends from home so I will write all about that in my next blog!