Arjun’s Note: So I know I haven’t been doing a lot of my own writing lately, but I’ve had a lot of stuff going on. I recently brought you Federalist Paper No. 420, by my good friend Jeff. Now I want to bring you something entirely different; another one of my good friends, Dougal, is abroad in Nepal for the semester, and occasionally sends dispatches via internet cafe. Here is his first one.

Part 1

I’m in Nepal now; have been for almost a week.

We’ve been living at the program house, which is this awesome little courtyard with a few buildings in the middle of this pseudo-suburb — it’s like a rural village, sort of, but also not at all. On Monday, we move into our family stays; haven’t found out who it is yet.

The scenery is amazing, and it’s still too foggy to even really see the tall mountains.

We’re learning Nepali really quickly compared to a college class, but that’s probably because we do it two to five hours a day, six days a week, plus practice with each other and actual Nepalis outside of class. The class sizes of two to three also help.

Very different, in a lot of ways. The eating with your hand is fine (the food is awesome, so much better than Sharples — it’s amazing how much variety you can squeeze out of dhaalbhaat, rice with lentil soup), “charpi business” (charpi = toilet) isn’t as bad as you think. Nepalis don’t like dogs a whole lot but they’re all over the place, possibly with rabes, and every night they bark nonstop form nine to sometime after midnight. (I’m not really sure when, because I’m generally in bed before eleven, and up before seven.)

There’s way more demand for electricity than there is supply, so each of six regions gets only about eight hours of power a day. This is fine except for the computer / phone situation, because we’re busy all the time and the only internet access is at cybercafe type places (which actually aren’t cafes, generally, just computers; it’s way cheap, though, and there’s one right down the street).

The program has 13 kids: 7 from Pitzer, 3 from Pomona, one from Wesleyan, one from Colorado College, and me. Everyone’s pretty cool.

The caste system, officially illegal for the past 40 years, is still definitely in place. The low-caste (and poor) kids who live nearby, who some of us have made friends with, are uncomfortable coming into the program area because the landlord, who’s a highest-caste priest, would get mad.

Everyone is really nice, though, especially to Westerners. (Little kids wave and shout “Hello” as we walk down the street to get the bus to Kathmandu.) The neighbor kids are also fun; I played badminton with a few today. Karomboard (I think?) is also fun — similar to pool, but you flick little poker chip-type things. Much harder than it looks.

I’d post pictures, but the internet here is soooooo slow. Maybe it’d be faster from a place in Kathmandu. Kathmandu, by the way, is crazy — bustling city, tons of traffic and very crowded streets, vendors selling everything imaginable for way cheap, and then you turn a corner and there’s a sixty-foot tall pure white tower, a guard tower from at least five hundred years ago. I bought this cool touristy traditional Nepali shirt for 250 rupees, or about $3.25.

We’ve also had cool lecturers, including one who is currently involved in writing the new Nepali constitution. This guy is a former education minister and top development planner, and he’s been speaking at our program for thirty years….

Still not really sure what I want to do for my project, but I have a month or two to find out.

Family stays next week, and then in March, we go to Chitwan National Park, where we will ride elephants.