so this is the day.(notes from my acclimation)

I feel like I am mak­ing great strides with the lan­guage. I have many Nepali friends that all seem to love help­ing me study(not to men­tion laugh at my pro­nun­ci­a­tion) I try to go into “the jun­gle” or “the vil­lages” every other day on my bike. My butt is really sore from the authen­tic offroad feel of the roads and paths here. Right now Im just meet­ing peo­ple and eat­ing at dif­fer­ent peo­ples homes. Thes helps me learn cul­ture and its just really good to sit down with smil­ing peo­ple. Ive also met a hand­ful of won­der­ful peo­ple from the states.Robert nd Megan and thier lit­tle bruiser Titus are my very near niegh­bors who i bother with my phili­soph­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal rants and rab­bit trails .…while we all work to learn and adapt in this wild place in the mid­dle of the Himalayas.

Im jour­nalling every­day with silly mun­dane details to remem­ber my time hear…mapping the jour­ney. here are a few randm days from this past 3 weeks.

Oct 6 day3.

tossed my dal this morn­ing. I think Im eat­ing the rice too fast. not sure. I was able to eat the rest of “brunch” after my hurl­ing expe­ri­ence. Met Dukpa, Saroj’s brother in law(at least he calls him that) and went to a record­ing stu­dio to meet his band. shared a lit­tle james dean trio and mike craw­ford with Chetn the engi­neer. went to Duk­pas house, ate biri­ani, watched a pirated jack black film with hindi sub­ti­tles. on the way home had samosas and takari at jawalakhel. learned how to make aloo parathas when i returned home. Get­ting into the pre dawn rhythem of yoga, prayer, read­ing, lan­guage study, jour­nal­ing, and cheeya before lit­tle brother (Tar­gan) wakes up.

Oct 17 d 14

woke up (in a stor­age room for car­pets in Boudha) and did a water­color of the dry­ing car­pets. found my way up to arubari via gen­eral instruc­tions over a muted phone. toured Heather adn Maika’s house and had Cof­fee!! and Pasta!!!(with cheese and chicke) told the kids sto­ries from the PCT. Met all the pets(over 10) had a chaotic singing time with the kids lead­ing the songs fol­lowed by a very won­der­ful and encour­ag­ing dis­cus­sion with Heather adn Maika about rela­tion­ships, tran­si­tions, and com­mu­nity. watched dragon ballZ with the kids(so funny to see the kids bust out when an amer­i­can actor says Namaste). walked down to the ring road. met a col­lege kid who helped me onto the wrong bus.. on that bus another man fig­ured out where i was head­ing and got me off the bus and onto another. when they found out where i was going i was just pushed off of the bus… luckly i had done some expor­ing in my niegh­bor­hood and after a sur­real few minu­ites of being really lost in a for­eign city in the mid­dle of the night i found my way home. It felt so good to walk in that door. dal­baht with a small glass of coke. early to beed.

Oct 21 day 17

Went over to Robert and Megans and played with Titus while mea­gan talked to a friend online. Took a HOT SHOWER! what a joy adn bless­ing. went explor­ing to find the ger­man bak­ery and the bike shop. bought a sweet trail map around the city to broaden my wan­derng range. walked to Dur­bar Square in Patan… look­ing for a scarf… and ended up paint­ing the old city with street kids con­vers­ing and watch­ing all around me. went to chetn’s stu­dio and lis­tened to more of Dukpa’s songs. Went to the momo cart..had momos adn got cheeya for Tar­gan. went home and when the power went out( as it usu­ally does in the evening) i lis­tened to Heartat­tack­Time Machine while watch­ing the motor­cy­cle and taxi lights cre­ate a won­der­ful abstract shadow effect on the ciel­ing. made roti and when Tar­gan returned… of coarse more momos!

Oct 27 day 23

went for a walk with Nabin around his neigh­bor­hood. real­ized one of the men I met the first day at the wed­ding was the owner of top of the world coffee(which Dan had an email con­tact and Robin read an arti­cal about before I left) walked by his house. sat and watched some kids to tai kwon do. bought peanut but­ter and and bak­ing pow­der for Megan’s banana pan­cakes. Had cheeya and egg san­wiches with the fam­ily. rode up to arubari explor­ing north­ern kath­mandu. set up the slack­line for the kids to walk… my arms got very tired after help­ing the 10^th kid across. watched a doc­u­men­tary on Ladock with Maika.. did my first night ride home. crazy. and awesome.