Real professional there, Em

Sometimes we pretty young things here in Kathmandu like to go out to "da clubs" (as the kids, I believe, say) on weekends to dance around and blow off some steam. Lots of fun, and an opportunity to meet some really interesting people (...). So last weekend we called some friends who are involved in the party scene here in Kathmandu and headed out for a night of shakin' our booties.

This week, a colleague comes past my office and says to me "you're famous". I am, reasonably, confused. He clarifies "you're in the paper, in the society pages, with all the pretty girls". ! Yeah, here's the page, from the Himalayan Times "About Town" section:

That's us on the bottom, Henga, me, Joanna and
Lily. The caption reads "ready for some rock 'n' rollin"!

I then slunk off to quietly die of embarassment. We're also all over partynepal.com

Teej!

Update:

We also went to Pashupatinath temple on Sunday, where we saw hundreds of women lined up to pray for the Teej festival. It was a sea of red and gold, and music and dancing. So gorgeous!

A small section of the line of ladies,
praying for their husbands

This weekend was a woman's festival called Teej. I was simply told to wear red to work on Friday, so I wore a red nepali-style corta. Turns out that this festival is not so much about celebrating women, as it is for women to honour and pray for their husband's long life! It involves fasting and everything. Some of the people at work joked that years would be added on to my future husband's life because I participated.

Friday was the day before fasting though, so it involved lots of food, singing and dancing. This was the boardroom at my office:



They pulled me up to dance, at which point I kind of swayed and clapped awkwardly and then sat down again. It was still lots of fun though.

Amusements, and not-so-amusements

Hello my loved ones! Miss me yet? Y'all better. Anyways, I've been here in KTM for a couple of weeks now, and you may be wondering how I'm doing. The answer is: pretty good. Perhaps not as crazy awesome as I was the last time I was here, but that is to be expected, as this time it is all about work.

How is that work going, you ask? Also pretty good. Turns out I'm working pretty much directly under the country director, eek! This means I'm on my own, since he's so busy all the time. I'm trying to be proactive and seek out work with different departments, but it's slow going for now. Hopefully I'll settle into my role better soon.

In other news, the other volunteers here at the house are quite nice. A few of us went out this past weekend to a Nepali amusement park! Really it was more like a carnival, with a ferris wheel and one of those viking ship things. Also the ghetto-est games ever! We played one where you rolled ping pong balls into holes for points. I won (I shit you not) some mothballs as my prize. Adriana did a bit better. She won 2 clothes pins. There was also a "haunted house". This consisted mainly of following a small child through darkend tents while he waved his flashlight around and went "woooo-oooh-aaah!".

Boot Ghar! (Nepali for haunted house)