Kathmandu

So there I was, a typical college student in Southern California. I was studying French and planning to spend my junior year in France in time-honored fashion. One day, I was idly reading over the external studies page in the college handbook and noted the paragraph about the program in Nepal. "Where's that?" I wondered to myself. I pulled out the atlas and found it. The capital city is Kathmandu.

Kathmandu! Where had I heard that name before? It held all the romance of travel and mystic lands. I knew I had to grab the chance to go there.

The study abroad program was carefully structured, with three weeks of language and culture learning first, then immersion in a host family, with language study continuing.

That first night in the home of my Hindu host family, a stone house with packed dirt floors and a mosquito net above my bed required all the sense of adventure I possessed. The whole idea of an American student living all alone with a Nepali family seemed crazy. They appeared welcoming, but also dubious about their first foreign student. My few words of Nepali seemed like thin ropes to throw over such a wide chasm. Luckily, words are not all we have for communication. The mother of the family wanted to show me everything and she took my by the hand and pulled me along. Outside and behind the house, she squatted down on the ground and I squatted beside her. She was talking all the time, and gesturing at the blank walls all around us. Suddenly my stomach contracted as I realized she was urinating on the ground. She was showing me the place for that!

So I began to learn what it means to be a participant observer, and the nitty-gritty of the romance of mystic lands. That was almost thirty years ago, and the children of that family are still close friends. I guess soon I will be grandma to their grandchildren!