Where In The World Is Vincent Giannotti: 7th of July: a taste of America

I write you this as I sit in an internet café a few blocks from the flat which Ian, Nick, and I (the male portion of the Fulbright English Teachers) currently reside. To say that writing this is a struggle would be an understatement. Not because I have experienced so much over this past week that it is difficult for me to determine where to even begin (although on any other day this would be the case), but rather because I am in a Mo Mo coma. These divine dumplings are a Nepali staple, but when Nick and I were challenged to eat the family size portion of fifty in one sitting, we naively took on the challenge for this lunch. So please forgive me, the challenge is over, the Mo Mo are in our bellies and are paid for by our friend, but with the way my stomach is feeling I am not sure I would call us ‘winners’.

After getting the run down with various offices of the US embassy and other NGOs this past week on how to stay healthy, what to do and what not to do to stay safe, along with a plethora of other information including how to get married or divorced here, we also were invited to the Embassy’s 4^th of July event at the US commissary (which is run by a Canadian…). This event was held on Saturday July 7^th and was only for US citizens and their friends. It felt like I was in America. It was the first time that our group, outside of the Embassy, had been surrounded by native English speakers. As we were offered BBQ and Budweiser, it was easy to forget that we were in Nepal. I think an event like this, which I associate more with family and friends rather than patriotism, would have been much more difficult to attend had I been away from all of you longer, but I am still in the tourist or honeymoon stage so the event was more bearable.

Living only with other Americans, and spending the majority of my time with other Americans has quelled, or at least subdued the major culture shock so far. We are at the Fulbright Commission 5 days a week, 9 to 5 studying Nepali and receiving teacher training. But we are easing in, with every new Nepali lesson we acquire more vocab and confidence. A similar thing happened to me in Botswana when for the first 10 days we were staying in a hotel and receiving a crash course in the language; it wasn’t until I received my piece of paper which had my host families information that my heart started to pound and I really began to feel like I was getting out of my comfort zone. That experience would repeat itself in various manners throughout the rest of my stay in Botswana, but it only happened once I began to truly immerse myself in the culture. I expect that to be the same for Nepal; it is easy to head back to our flat after a day of practicing Nepali and check out of Nepal for a while as I respond to emails, make my own food, or read a book, but living with a host family is going to provided me with an incredible opportunity to enhance my language skills and help immerse myself into the culture. I am totally excited for it.

But until then, I am enjoying the tourist life. Checking out the sites and embracing my little knowledge of the area has been exhilarating. I have been exploring the different shops and restaurants, finding out the ‘true’ prices of goods and not just the tourist prices. I am becoming more and more acclimated with the city and can walk myself to most of the necessary places without a map. Finding shortcuts through alleyways is the next step though. It is disorienting (to say the least) to navigate through the tightly weaving alleyway systems which make up a good deal of the city, which provide no visual reference points, due to the height of the buildings, all while dodging motorcycles, little children, and stray dogs. Soon though, soon.

After the American Club, we met up with a Nepali who went to school with Julie (a fellow ETA). He is back this summer in Nepal through the Anne Frank Project. When he went to college in the States it was not only his first time hearing about Anne Frank, but also the Holocaust. Astonished to find this out only when he left the country, he began to come up with a way to teach Nepali about the atrocities which took place in Europe. This is the second summer he going to Nepali schools to teach about the Holocaust through the story of Anne Frank. He is also in the process of petitioning the government to cover it in the world history textbooks.

He took us out to the countryside of the valley. After exiting the ring road which surrounds the majority of the city, rice patties become more and more prevalent, until they surround you on every side, with houses dotting the road or in far off fields. After trekking down a muddy path which wound through the paddies, we reached a trout farm where, with other Nepali, we caught our fish with nets and enjoyed the trout fried in a bamboo bungalow perched on top of hill overlooking the paddies as the monsoon season rain pounded down. After days of weaving through traffic, inhaling lots of dust, and coping with the ever present sounds of honking, this was a much needed breather.

Tomorrow we head to Gorkha, outside of the valley to receive some in classroom experience and see one of our possible placements.