nepal: numerals & new nian

i just watched mr. popper's penguins, and the lady that always has to use words that start with "p" is pretty awesome, so i thought the title of my post should be all n's. oh, nian means year in chinese, so i guess i cheated a little there.

in nepal, they have their own number system! well, it's really just a different way to write the digits. but it's on all their license plates of cars. i've seen it other places too. look at this link. the numbers that look like 9's are actually 1's. this link shows all the numerals in order. these numerals are also used on calendars and other things like that. they are different than chinese or japanese numbers that are only used in writing. chinese and japanese numbers would never be used for actual math calculations or anything like that. but the nepali numerals are used in that way. i guess now nepali children are taught those numerals as well as the ones the rest of the world usually uses to do math. anyway, i thought it was so interesting, because i didn't know there was any place in the world that uses numerals other than ones we would normally use.

on new year's ruthie and i spent it with nepali people at the community center. there were some games and singing, etc, and it all ended with a bonfire, which was good because people were getting really cold! the entire celebration was actually during a time that there was no power, though we were able to have lights in one room, and it got progressively colder as it got later at night. all of us were sitting on the floor of this room right next to each other with blankets around us trying to stay warm. and then we all gathered on benches around this bonfire.

[insert picture from ruthie here someday...]

then they got out big bowls of raw meat (actually buffalo, more like water buffalo than what you would think of as buffalo--think of beef, it was like that, and quite tasty). they took these square metal cage like things with handles that could open and close and put the raw meat inside, and placed them on the fire and turned them. bbq! then they cut up all the meat and passed it around. and we also had sweet nepali tea in metal cups, which made us warmer too. yummy.

happy new year!