there are some other details about nepal that i could write about that i haven't yet. well, maybe i already said this one, but i love the clothes the women wear here!! sometimes they wear western clothes, but often they wear all these beautiful different colored clothes that look so comfortable too. here is an example. it's not the greatest picture (i didn't take it) but you get an idea. the pants that i like the best are similar to that--a bit baggier and more styled, i think. so comfortable!! and the kind of shirt that goes with it is great too, because both the pants and shirt are easy to move around in together, and both are modest, and there are so many different colors and patterns! i love to look at the clothes of all the women walking around, and i wonder why other women in the world don't dress like this too. i had a couple outfits made for myself. =) the other nice thing about the shirts is they can be worn with regular pants too, which i'm sure i will also do.
here it is normal to eat with hands, i guess like in india. the nepali people in the family ruthie lives with will just sit down to eat with dinner and half of them will eat with their right hand and half of them won't. i guess a lot of the time they eat with silverware, but sometimes not. when ruthie and i went on a picnic with kids, we didn't bring any silverware for anyone, so everyone sat with paper plate in one hand and eating with the other hand. i used prawn chips to help me scoop things because i'm really bad at eating that way... i guess no one specifically taught me how to do it yet either.
here they also drink a lot of things directly from the bottle or from a pitcher, without bothering with cups, but never with their mouth on the bottle--instead they just pour it into their mouth. ruthie is so good at this. i get it all over myself. for the kids they will tilt back their head and open their mouth and she will pour it in. people will come into the kitchen in the house and pick up a pitcher and pour liquid into their mouth. =) i think the reason for this being so normal is so that multiple people can share from one bottle of drinking water. because you don't drink water from the tap here, drinking water comes in giant 5 or 10 gallon bottles that are often put into maybe 2 liter bottles, like a giant bottle previously used for sprite or something and carried around to share.
so i have learned some words in nepali since being here.
sati = friend
aloo = potato
didi = older sister, but in chinese it means younger brother!
"china" means "don't have," which confused me a lot at first. i thought all the kids were talking about me or about china all the time, because "don't have" is a pretty common phrase. actually they weren't talking about me at all. =) and i think it's funny about this phrase too because in china a word that sounds like "mayo" means "don't have." so "mayo"="china"="don't have." heehee.
also, something that sounds like "dos" means ten, which confused me also because i kept thinking it meant 2 because of spanish. and i don't even speak spanish...
one interesting thing about nepali is that it conjugates like latin. i think it negates like latin too.
one thing about nepali too is that people speak it with english words mixed in all the time. ruthie told me the kids especially do it with words they learned in school (or just school-related words) that they know in english, but not in nepali, or it just comes naturally for them to say them in english instead. but everyone does it to a certain extent, some more than others. for example, i hear the kids talking and i hear, "bla bla bla ruthie didi bla bla bla reading book bla bla bla bla bla ." so now you know how much nepali i understand. =)
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