Monday, November 3, 2008

Nepal-oween

The night started out on track...




Nepali institutions meet: a teeka (the red dot Hindus put on their foreheads), Dal Bat (the quintessential Nepali dish of rice and lentils) and ‘load shedding’ (ie power outages - there’s not enough electricity for everyone in Kathmandu so authorities cut power ~30 hours a week in each neighborhood.)

...and stayed that way for most of the night.



Smiles! Costumes! Fun!

John McCain even made an appearance.




(Fittingly he was thrown into the dump the next day.)

Then, at the end of the night things got weird. I was walking home and…




This is me trying. Halfway out.

…I fell into a manhole!?!!!

Getting out was tricky. Uncontrollable giggles prevented my muscles from working. The two friends with me were useless, too – they hovered above laughing, crying (from laughing) and taking pictures. It took a good 5 minutes to calm down and pull me out. (Five minutes flies by when I'm cleaning up the table from dinner or catching up on email. It slowed to a blurry halt that night!!!)

"The incident" left me with a French-baguette-sized bruise on my shin, mysterious slime on my red pjs (which I’d planned to return the next day) and… a fun story.

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