It's All Nepali to Me

Somewhere on my long, constantly changing, and tastefully colour-coded to do lists was a deceptivly simple looking item - learn Nepali. I never expected that working from a 'teach yourself' book and reading dialogues with S. over chai once a week would lead to fluency (although I think the consumption of chai and not coffee certainly enhanced the learning). But I also didn't expect that there would be so many other things to do before leaving that I wouldn't get much further than learning the alphabet and telling people my name.

So I'm trying to throw myself into things a bit more now that I'm here. I have daily lessons every morning, and spend my afternoons amusing the locals with my manglings.

It doesn't help that I'm living in the tourist end of town where everyone speaks English. And, unlike when I was in Poland and looked enough like a local, I can't try and fool people into thinking that I speak the lingo.

It's always fun to lose the fear and just have a go at things, the guesthouse owner humours me, as does the guy where I buy my paper every day. And my teacher is suffiently earnest to not laugh when I tell her that my mother is Australia, or that I have a girlfriend.