Day 1 was the program at the Ambassador's house that I mentioned in my previous post. It was nice - a veritable mix of American tourists, workers, researchers, etc. See the "Get Thee to a Nunnery" post for more about the Wednesday program.
Day 2 (actually Thanksgiving) found us going to the Fulbright Nepal director's house for a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, pie, cranberry sauce. Given the multi-cultural nature of the gathering, Daal Bhat (rice/lentil stew/curried veggies) was also served for those who didn't want (or recognize!) the American dishes. As much as I love daal bhat, I went straight for the traditional foods! The food was good, but I don't think anything can compare to family thanksgiving - the whole 'nobody cooks better than mom and grandma' thing is pretty impossible to overcome.
The company was wonderful and I met so many interesting people. One conversation with a lady from Canada who is deaf and blind, was particularly inspiring. CoCo has been traveling the world for several years making friends around the world and giving speeches motivational speeches. She communicates through tactile American Sign Language, and put up with my trying to remember ASL after a period of Nepali sign only! If you're interested in learning more about CoCo's adventures, she has an awesome blog: http://tactiletheworld.wordpress.com/
Day 3 consisted of an awesome comfort food dinner with Marissa and Swetha. After running some errands and getting things done during the day, we got down to cooking about 5. By 6:30 we had soft pretzels, homemade pizza, mozzarella sticks, chocolate chip cookies, brownies and my grandmother's awesome sweet potato casserole. Before the heart attack comments commence - yes we know how unhealthy it was. I think we were just all needing various tastes of home and comfort. It was wonderful and we had leftovers for days....well, all except the soft pretzels - apparently they were delicious enough for the dogs to get on the counter, get the bag of pretzels down and then eat both the bag and pretzels. Fortunately, other than some odd noises, the dogs seemed to be just fine. I've posted some pictures of the deliciousness below.
Cookie dough...'nough said!
Grandma Hunny's famous sweet potato casserole (the family farm meets Nepal!) and mouthwatering brownies.
Perfect soft pretzels and some of the best homemade pizza I've ever had.
The other part of Thanksgiving worth mentioning was our brush with a crazy cab driver. Coming home from Laurie's dinner, we took a cab back to the house after negotiating a reasonable price with the driver. When we were getting out, he tried to increase the price on us and tell us that we hadn't actually negotiated. We tried telling him that we all knew the negotiated (final) price, and paid him what we had decided on originally. This scene, unfortunately, is fairly common in Kathmandu, and usually ends with the driver driving away in a huff. This time, however, the driver began screaming at us, chased us towards the house and then tried to get into the gate. Fortunately, Marissa realized what was happening and the 2 of us slammed and locked the gate before he could get in. Thank God for automatically locking gates! Though we were terrified, we didn't realize just how scary the situation was until it dawned on us just how rare non-domestic violence against women is. More than likely, the cab driver had false bravado stemming from membership in a gang or something and the situation became about his pride being dented rather than money. SCARY! But we were so fortunate to get away.
Hope everyone had a wonderful, delicious Thanksgiving!
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