Top Five

Top Five Things I Love About Nepal (in no particular order)

1. The Sweets
What I like about Meredith is that she's not me. A few days ago, after dinner, we went to a sweet shop a few minutes away from our house. They have a huge assortment of silver-and-gold-foil-topped sweet treats. We picked a few of our favorites: sponge cannoli thing, orange grain thing, bowl of watery rice pudding thing. And lastly, Meredith picked the one I would have never picked: dark brown ball thing. You can see it hiding in the back of the picture below. It was the best ever ever ever. It tasted like an American donut times ten in flavor and texture. Plus it had a yellow goopy thing inside.



2. Random Animals Wandering the Streets
There are many animals that roam the streets of Kathmandu. Mostly, it's mangy, depressed dogs that eat the trash and get kicked by shop owners. Let's not talk about that right now. There's no stray cats because Hindu's believe cats are evil and they shoot them. EXCEPT, a few days ago I caught this awesome picture:



Maybe the dog is protecting the cat?? Someone submit this picture to cuteoverload.com or something. Anyhow, I've also seen many cows (sacred Hindu animal) and yesterday came upon a huge goat! Some kids saw me and Meredith gaping and laughing at it and went over to prove their superiority over it:



My camera sucks so bad.

3. Avocados

Actually, I hate Nepali avocados, but compared to no avocado, I like them. They're watery and too sweet, but before yesterday, I thought they probably didn't exist in Nepal. We found them though!! Meredith is making her special guacamole with them right as I write this. I dunno if you've ever tasted her guac, but let's just say that's the only reason why I'm dating her.

4. Funny Spellings



5. Meredith's Impeccable "Sense of Direction" and The Sites We See On the Way

I admit that my sense of direction is at the bottom of the food chain, but Meredith believes that she is a god among gods when it comes to finding her way. Usually, she's preety good, too. However, she too is fallible and yesterday as she led us home, we got LOST. Yes, we eventually found our way, just as we would've if I was leading. As I questioned her guidance, she laughed and reminded me that she had a good sense of direction. On our journey we saw these guys playing ping pong on a concrete slab:



We also saw the ram I mentioned above. After a half hour, and what should've been 5 minutes, we found our way. As we approached the main road we saw a huge temple that we decided to go into. However, as we walked towards it we noticed it was encased in a weird compound type thing, there were armed guards, and everyone was looking at us funny. A guard asked us where we were going and we pointed at the temple. He shook his head and then Meredith asked where we were and he said: This is the central prison. Here's what we saw before the temple that should've tipped us off:



Ah.

So, clearly I chose those top five things based on what I had pictures of and what I am thinking about at the moment. But, I also like these things: the people, the business men, the Nepali language, the cost of things, the way it rains at night, when the dogs are quiet, being here with Meredith, our really wonderfully nice cook Susila, the pretty saris, the boys that run the buses, fresh vegatables after they're soaked in iodine and giardia-free, getting emails from my friends and family, writing this travelogue, being able to afford things, the himalayas as a backdrop to everything, the cute vests the Nepali boys wear, the hand-made goods, etc, etc.