09.07.19
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We left the Dhulikhel Village Resort on Saturday morning, August 7, to go to the SIT Nepal Program Center in Kathmandu. The program center is well-kept and beautiful--the gardener does a fantastic job of making the lawn area seem like a majestic wonderland. Furthermore, it was my first time seeing pomelo trees, guava trees, and avocado trees. We were also excitedly greeted by the two program center dogs.
We performed our oral introductions to the program center staff, which entails the following:
"namaste, mero aaphno nam Viana ho. mero Nepali nam Bhawana ho. ra, mero ghar Illinoismaa Skokiemaa chha."
In English, this means, "Hello, my original name is Viana. My Nepali name is Bhawana. And, I live in Skokie, Illinois."
A difference between Devanagari and English is that they do not start the beginning of their sentences with a capital letter--the only capital letters are for pronouns and for letters that are pronounced with more emphasis.
Afterwards, we received a tour of the program center, which includes the instructors' offices, bathrooms, storage rooms, library, study rooms, and classrooms. Later on, we prepared for the arrival of our homestay families, who were arriving at approximately 2:00 PM.
Another interesting thing about Nepali culture is that they do not emphasize punctuality. In America, people generally arrive to appointments early or right on time. However, in Nepal, the concept of time is different. Things just happen, but they might not be at a designated time. Furthermore, if someone says "just a minute," they could mean 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or never.
Thus, our homestay families all trickled in at differing times, starting from a bit after 2:00 PM until almost 3:00 PM. We treated them to tea and biscuits (also a very important part of their culture) and [awkwardly] asked them some basic questions in [our poor] Nepalese. After everyone was situated, we formed a circle and performed our introductions again, and our homestay families picked us out of the group. It was a cute, but slightly awkward, event, but I enjoyed meeting my family, which consists of my homestay mother (an older woman, whom I call aamaa), my homestay father (an older man, whom I call baa), my homestay older brother (whom I call dhaai), his wife (whom I call didi, older sister), their 10-year old daughter (bahini, but I use her name Anuva), and the 15-year old helping brother, bhaai, whose name is Nirej.
In Nepal, guest is God. Therefore, they treat their guests with utmost respect, and are very generous with serving food and snacks--because if guest is full, then God is full. They were very friendly and we talked for a while in the family room, where I threw in a few Nepali words here and there but mostly spoke in English. Thankfully, they spoke and understood English, albeit at differing levels, but my bahini speaks the most English. She goes to St. Mary's school, an English-based school founded by Mary Word, where all classes are taught in English except for their Nepali class.
They also like to sit in silence a lot--oftentimes, Nepali can just sit in the same room, doing nothing, in silence. It's definitely something I have to get used to, but to break the silence, I asked if I could wash my clothes (I had a lot of laundry...). My bhaii helped me with the process. He filled a large bucket with my clothes, water, and powder soap. Then he gave me another bucket and a bar of soap so we could scrub each article of clothing thoroughly. After returning them back to the original bucket, he filled a few other buckets with water and showed me to take each piece of clothing out, wring it, then dip it and wring it in another bucket. This was repeated for the remaining buckets, and then was finally wrung out, flapped, and hung on the clothesline. The rest of the family gathered around to watch us wash my clothes, and they jokingly said "This is the Nepali way," aware that many Americans use washing machines. I still felt a bit awkward with them watching me, but I'm also looking at it as a family bonding experience. They took the time to sit out there and be with me while I watched my clothes, which is something that the typical American would not do.
Later on, after expressing my desires to buy new clothes and shoes (I had only brought one pair of shoes and they were starting to stink...), Anuva took me shopping at the Bhatbateni Super Store, which is essentially a large shopping mall that carries everything that one could possible want. She opened up to me more and I now find her to be very charming and adorable--she even likes K-pop, which excited me because I have enjoyed Korean music for several years!
I ended the night eating daal bhat, the traditional Nepalese beans and rice, with chicken and pickled vegetables. I had practiced eating with my hands during orientation, but I was amazed at the fluency at how my dhaai and didi scooped up their food into their mouths. Also, as expected, they kept insisting that I have more food, to which I had to keep replying, pugyo (enough).
aamaa reigned me back to the dining table after I put away my dishes, and we talked for a bit more until she said subha raatri, good night, at almost 8:00 PM. Nepal doesn't have much of a night life; activities occur in the early morning, and after 8:00 PM is considered late. I unpacked my suitcases and took a shower, thankful in advance that this home had a Western toilet, toilet paper, and hot water for when I go to my rural homestay, who will have an Asian squat toilet, no toilet paper, and no hot water.
Also, unfortunately, my surprise gifts to the family weren't a surprise anymore to didi, who had walked into my room and looked into the bags that I had lying on the chair. Nepali people have a different concept of privacy, because they practice a sharing, communal culture, and so they often show much skinship (with the same gender), and walk into your room unannounced. However, when I explained that they were gifts for the family, she was delighted, which filled my heart.
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