Nepal - family visit

The thing about having henna-d hands is that it marks you as one of *those* tourists like elephant pants or greasy hair does. And not only was I henna-d but my hair had transformed into a weird sticky mess. It felt like none of my shampoo had washed out and it was just glopping together. (N touched it and said it wasn't as bad as she expected -- which I suppose means that it looked terrible.)

On New Years Day, we (and our bad hair) were invited with all of the out of town guests to A's mother's house for lunch. Luckily we were passed by the groom's family's bus as we walked to the house; otherwise we would have been lost in the pleasant suburbs. Lunch was daal and rice, spinach, turnip pickles, bitter melon, spicy potatoes, carrots, cucumbers and a variety of desserts that tasted surprisingly like incense. The only thing I didn't enjoy were the peas that I laboriously separated from my rice and the bitter melon which tasted intensely green. (For those of my family members reading, bitter melon is that spiky cucumber that TiAn would grow and Gram stole until she realized it was gross.)

After lunch, we met up with Dipak (D), his friend Raj, and his daughter Aarushi for second-lunch. D is the husband of our friend Ambika from grad school. We drove up past Swayambunath to a place overlooking the city where people come to enjoy the fresh air. I'm not sure it's high enough to be fresh air but it was a pleasant enough place to catch up and chase Aarushi around. Then we went back to D's house where his mother had prepared us a delicious meal of rice and daal, chicken, spinach, and spicy potato. My apologies to Mama D but I couldn't finish my rice. She served us more and more despite N using the most Nepali phrase we know: "pugyo!" "I'm full."

Then we distributed presents which was a little bit awkward because both N and I had forgotten that D lives with his extended family and we hadn't really brought easily shareable gifts. It seems like the most talked about gift was a lime green snake that went "chomp." Aarushi chattered on the whole time (after the first silent half hour) and the only words I recognized were "Mama's English friends", "snake chomp!" and "baby monkey sleep"

Then N and I returned tot he hotel to prepare ourselves for the wedding. Evidently my head is smaller than the average Korean's and doesn't absorb moisture as quickly.