No monkeys in Nepali class

Thursday morning we had a new type of cultural lesson. We started taking language classes at a local language school with Anne Lise. She has been living in the country for five months and is not learning the language as quickly as she would like. When she mentioned that she was going to start lessons, I asked if we could join her. She said we could.

Parbati was our teacher at the language institute. She taught us simple forms of my, your, his\hers sentences (my name is Ben: mero naam Ben ho, and my home is America : mero ghar America ho). Our teacher (shikshikaa) was very good; all three of us learned a lot, and she used hardly any English. We’ll continue to take lessons until we leave.

After the lesson Anne Lise needed postcards for donor thank you notes. She then went home to write them, and Amanda and I attempted to get good deals on a second personal bag and a water bottle (the orange one we have leaks). Later we asked our host what she would have paid for the items, it was invariably less. At least we did bargain with the shopkeepers (saahuji) to bring down the price substantially from what they asked.

I then used my slightly good sense of direction and headed for Swayambhhunath, commonly referred by tourists as Monkey Temple due to the high density of Monkeys. Eventually we got there. It’s a bit of a climb just to get to the base of the temple. And the temple has an impressive amount of steps to the top. At it’s entrance I mistook a fully dressed semi-holy man for the entrance fee attendant. After he had smeared us with red powder and flowers I presented him with what I thought he was requesting for entrance. I’m sure that man has not had a donation like that in a while. Of course once we made it to the top through the hecklers, beggars and hundreds of stairs we had to pay entrance again.

The temple (stupa) is really quite magnificent. It reminded me of a small version of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. The main fixture was the stupa itself. A huge half sphere with a relic deep inside. The square base up to the spires is all supposed to represent the path to enlightenment. Most visitors don’t seem concerned for much more than ritually making the metal scrolls spin. There were, however, several other temples as well. For Nepalis, Buddhism and Hinduism seem to coexist. I’m pretty sure on that hill there were some Hindu temples. One such temple was for the god of polio. According to my guide book, the gold-covered temple is still one of the most worshiped places. It is worshiped by people who want to keep them and their children safe from the sickness.

After looking around we found a back staircase that was a third as long (with no ticket booths) than the front. At the bottom was a taxi waiting for us to take us back to home.