-Tihar > Dashain, in my opinion, in terms of fun. The equivalent of Christmas carolers came to the house on Wednesday to sing for us. We would head up to the terrace after receiving blessings and light candles all over the railings. It was amazing to look out over the expanse of the valley and see every house lit up with candles and string lights and firecrackers/fireworks exploding all around. Christmas + 4th of July makes for one sweet holiday. We went to Thamel for dinner on Thursday and EVERY building was completely draped in lights. I wish the flash on my camera worked, as is was like Christmas had been rained on Thamel. (For the Salem girls) While walking to Cafe Mitra, Shehrish and I randomly bumped into Marvin and Linda, who were being shown around Thamel by Manisha. We knew they were in Nepal, but to run into people out of the blue is always quite strange. Small world.
-Tihar was a lot of fun. Family and friends arrived to Shehrish's house around 12 for the festivities and once the blessings were performed everybody had lunch. The meat eaters had some sort of pork dish that everybody loved and I was treated to vegetable biryani, my current favorite food ever since Anmol Foods got shut down for using inedible ghee in their cooking. Everybody ate and then gathered around to play marriage, a staple of any Nepali festival. I went into Dashain as a sucker but came out a little ahead for the festival. The Tihar crowd seemed a bit more fired up to play and I was not looking forward to getting cleaned out. The game started out rough, but I never lost my initial Rs. 1000 buy-in. When we were on for doubles I made a 56-point hand, which paid huge and put me way in the black. We played all day long, and my stack of money kept fluctuating, as it's quite the swingy game and I was playing with much better players than myself. My brain was scrambled by the Nepali banter after several hours of play. I can follow the dialogue back and forth for a time, but having to focus on card playing with all the chatter got to be too much. I cashed out around 6 o'clock, up a whopping Rs. 10, or about 15 cents. Not the greatest end result considering at one point I was up a few thousand, but at least I didn't lose. The big winners walked away with 6000-7000.
-John Dewey (my school) recently has installed the system of 'housing' kids, much like in the Harry Potter films. I was skeptical toward the practice at first, but am now thrilled to be the House Master of 'Habrok', which means something along the lines of legendary hawk. Since sorting hats don't really exist, we had the kids come up four at a time to select one of four colors which would put them into a house. I selected blue for the Habroks and we anxiously watched to see which kids would join our respective houses. I wasn't hoping for anybody specific, as I like probably 95% of the kids; rather, I was hoping to NOT get certain kids. In the end, everything worked out well for me and I avoided all of the undesirables. Since copyright laws are largely ignored in Nepal, I may just customize the Seattle Seahawks or Atlanta Hawks logo. We're essentially the Gryffindor from Harry Potter; full of the best and brightest. I'm only kidding, but I did get a really solid bunch. Habroks forever, happy Halloween.
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