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| Patan Square, Kathmandu |
Holidays at Home
Holidays are usually a boring drag, at least for me. Don't get me wrong, I love holidays and everything--seeing my parents and going back to my hometown, Kathmandu, are great, but the excitement usually wears off after a while, and I plunge into a state of boring monotony. My experience might sound weird to most, but you have to keep in mind the fact that I've given the best years of my life to Woodstock, and I really haven't had much of a chance to make friends back home. So you'll understand that I was more than a little excited about meeting some of my Woodstock friends during the recent winter holiday. Plus, because one of my classmates, a girl from Japan (who is not my girlfriend!), had come along to stay with my family and me for a couple of days, I had a better than usual excuse to get out of the house.
At around 10 in the morning, my Japanese friend and I found ourselves at Thamel (or freak street, as it is more popularly known) trying to shop for "hippy stuff." Our friends weren't due to arrive until 12, so she had two hours to shop like a mad woman, and, in her words, "keep me company." As usual, with my extraordinarily bad bargaining skills and her complete ignorance of the Nepalese language, we got ripped off in almost every store we entered. But two hours later, she walked away from Thamel happily, with bags full of, in her words, "junk." Just in time, we met our other Woodstock friends and headed off to lunch (I didn't dare tell her that she got ripped off; it's a girl thing, I realized a little too late).
After a hearty, traditional Nepali lunch and an extra helping of useless chatter, we walked away from the restaurant and decided to show our Japanese classmate more of the city. We took her to one of the old city squares, which still houses many of the ancient temples and palaces and, fortunately, has not been a victim of urbanization. However, given the short attention span that we have for all things historical and cultural, we quickly got tired of the sights and escaped to a more enticing environment, a bowling alley. Soon, I regretted ever going into the building, because I was put to shame by my Japanese friend, after losing every round of bowling and several video games to her. With my head hanging pretty low, I walked out of the building with her, and we said our goodbyes to our friends; I was swearing that the bowling ball and the lane were not up to "regulation standards" - whatever they are. Feeling totally exhausted and beaten by the end of that day, I still managed to regain my sense of duty as a host, and regrettably, asked my guest if she wanted to do anything else. In what I'm learning is typical girl fashion, she said she wanted to shop . . . for more "junk."