Goodbye KTM... for now...

It's always easy at the end of a long trip like this to tell yourself that five months wasn't that long after all, and everything worked out pretty darn well. It has been a good trip in many ways; I've made lots of new friends - both foreigners and fellow visitors, I've improved my Nepali to the point where getting by every day isn't exhausting, and I'm coming home with much more thought out and better organised data.

So the trip has been good in many ways, and here at Lozguistics I like to keep things on the more lighthearted end of my time here, but there have been less-than-fun times as well. I've gained an impressive amount of weight thanks to a lack of running and an excess of rice and sugar tea, I'm pretty sure the aforementioned tea has left me with at least a couple of dental cavities, I spent at least 2 months with lice and at times I felt more homesick than I even have before.

But you take the bad with the good and there's been enough good to balance things. And it's definitely time to go home, digest my data, return to normal eating habits and be able to drink tap water. It's much easier to say goodbye to a place when you know you're coming back. My only regret from the last 5 months is that I didn't go see Bryan Adams play the first rock gig by a foreigner in Nepal last night.

Iron stomach

On this field trip I am cursed with the twin good fortunes of being well-fed by the friends I live with when I'm in the village, and also having a very robust digestive system.

Last trip I was also relatively well fed - but spent more time living alone in KTM where I had more autonomy as to what I would eat, and how much. Also, for most of last trip, I was - to a greater or lesser extent depending on the week - quite sick. It's not something I really mentioned on the blog partly to prevent unnecessary worry and partly because it was so persistent it wasn't worth mentioning. So even with an unhealthy diet and a lack of exercise routine last year I still managed to come home not looking too different to when I departed (I did lose a heap of weight in the middle and ate a lot of cake to make up for that).

My iron digestive track has lead to the development of a stomach a little less solid and a little softer.

I have never eaten so much in my life as I do in the village here - and growing up with a Polish grandmother I can tell you that is not a flippant statement. How they eat so much rice is beyond me. The strangest thing is that after a week we had to sit down and have a serious conversation because my friend has been concerned that I'm not eating much. I pointed out that Nepalis eat a lot more rice than Australians - I didn't point out that since they won't let me do any work I'm not as hungry as she is after 8 hours in the fields.

Of course, having a more robust digestive system has made me much more cavalier about where I eat and what I eat. I still don't ever think I'll be able to eat the fresh coconut sold on the streets of Kathmandu, no matter how much my mouth waters every time I walk past - but I have eaten all manner of questionable things on this trip and remained unscathed.

I'll just have to hit the salads and bike riding when I get home.

Cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese

This morning I decided to throw in the transcribing of stories for a couple of hours and stroll over to a farmers market I'd seen advertised in one of my favourite cafes.

It turned out to be a goldmine of foods that I've been missing from home. As you may have guessed from reading the title to this post there was cheese! Mozzarella, feta and some rad pungent French-style stuff. There was also cake that tasted like cake, and bread that looked like bread. And avocado. The only things missing from my list of food stuffs I regularly day dream about were Portuguese tarts, cherries and decent ice cream. But it was more than exciting enough as it was.

I know where I'll be every Saturday that I'm in Kathmandu.

KTM weather

As well as being a great time of year for festivals, this is also my favourite few weeks of weather in Kathmandu. The nights are finally getting cool enough to think about using a blanket, but not so cold you don't want to get out of bed in the morning. The days are sunny and warm, and frequently the sky is getting clear enough for a good view of the mountains that hem the valley.

Combine this with Kathmandu emptying out for the festivities, and a few days without classes or elicitation sessions and even I'm feeling relaxed!

Waiting...

I'm sitting in the guesthouse garden waiting for my room to be cleaned. I'm sure I could be upset about the fact that it's 1 o'clock and I still can't get back in to my room, but the weather's so lovely today, and I've managed to clear out my inbox a bit so I guess it's not such a waste of a morning.

I've also managed to straighten out some of my tech problems this morning. This involved less technical brilliance on my behalf and more going to buy new gear. While I'm often heard to complain about Thamel and its tourist shops, they do come in handy sometimes!

Half way throught the week...

In trying to be positive about the 6 day working week in Nepal, the only thing I can come up with is that half way thought the week happens on a Tuesday night, a whole half day earlier than for you five days a week lot.

Not only am I comfortably transitioned to the second half of the week, but I'm beginning to transition to the second phase of my field work... I'm almost wound down asking questions about things I had to chase up from last trip. That's not to say I now understand things perfectly, I'm just moving on to more naturalistic narratives, conversations and things like that - certainly makes a nice change!

Fieldwork Beyond the Work

Although I frequently complain about the mindboggling volume of work involved in in this venture, there are some fun times as well.

Today S. and I were invited over to A.'s house for lunch. I haven't really spent any time there beyond elicitation sessions, but it was a lot of fun. We watched some mysterious Tibetan action-drama film and ate great homemade daal-bhat.

Today is 'bhai tikka' day - where brothers put a tikka on peoples'foreheads. A. did the honours for the family, despite the fact she's not anyone's brother, and S. and I walked home with full bellies and big white tikkas on our foreheards. Apparently red tikkas are Hindu and white are Buddhist, you learn something all the time.