My 3D/2N trip in Sarlahi ended up becoming 4D/3N. Sarlahi was warm and humid - almost 40 degrees Celsius. My shirt was dripping wet all day. To give you a sense of how hot it was, I washed my shirt at 6pm after an entire day of field visit. We went out to dinner, and returned around 9pm, when my shirt was already dry! I slept straight from 10pm to 8am the next day almost every night. Perhaps it was the environment, perhaps I was getting over jet lag, or perhaps I just had a little too much of raksi (local alcohol).
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| Snacks (more like dinner) at Chewang Lama's... with freshly made raksi! |
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| One very cute picture I happened to snap. The girl on the left was very outgoing and speaks pretty good English. |
I tried drinking for the first time in Sarlahi. I learned that I still dislike the taste of alcohol, so I did not particularly enjoy it. It was interesting to experience freshly made, warm alcohol though. We had "happy hour" every evening from around 6pm to 8pm, where we had a flow of rakhsi, fresh cut carrots and raddish, and Nepali snacks. Dinner was right after that, where we almost always ate in the dark. Load shedding is prevalent in Nepal. While most places in Kathmandu have back up generators, they are almost nonexistent in rural areas like Sarlahi. People seemed to be used to the dark without electricity.
We took a 17 minute flight from the Terai region back to Kathmandu (for your reference, the drive was 7 hours). The view from my window seat was really breathtaking - from low lands to mountains to valleys. I took several pictures and videos, but really nothing beats actually experiencing the wonderful view. Here are some pictures.:
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| View from my window... Busy taking pictures for 17 minutes while playing Scrabble! |
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| Landing! |
I am now back in Kathmandu and started working. Figuring out one new software interface is challenging.. imagine figuring out two at the same time, while learning a foreign language. While I have people to guide me, most of the time I end up reading online guides to figure out the intricacies. I'm trying to get something to work in Crystal Reports... Hopefully by early next week I'll have that sorted out.
Met some other people living in the same guest house as I am. One of them is another intern in Patan hospital, W. She's also a rising senior, so I'm really glad to meet someone my age. Every one else here seems to be either at least 10 years younger and older than me. It's refreshing to be able to relate with someone else in the similar age group. W also has other friends from the same hospital who would like to explore the city together during the weekend. It's nice to not have to walk alone on foreign streets. :) And goodbye to eating dinner alone, which is still very hard for me to do.
It's Friday evening here. People are slowly winding down as Saturday is the official rest day in Nepal. Nepali work from Sundays to Fridays, 9 to 5. Think about Westerners who have 40 hour work weeks! Since I'm working in an American office I do not work on Sundays.. which is a good thing as I get to explore this city. Honestly I really cannot imagine working on Sundays. If anything, working half days on Saturdays are more acceptable to me than working on Sundays. Maybe it's just so engrained in my mind that "Sundays" are "off days".
45 minutes till we get off work... I'm finally getting to try momo's tonight, so I'm gonna include that experience in my next blog post. Yay!
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