My day starts off with me sleeping in until 7am (yes sleeping in!) My host family wakes up at 5am every day to exercise and do whatever else one does early in the morning. I shower and usually have breakfast around 8am, after everyone else is well into their day already. My breakfast is always accompanied with “aap” (mango) since it is mango season right now.
Since the Nepali work day does not start until 10am, I usually linger around the living room to hang out with my host family or try to get some readings done before I leave for work. Around 9:30am I get ready for my 20 minute trek to work which is at an NGO called Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO, http://enpho.org/). Now this is where things get tricky. Did I mention that Kathmandu doesn’t really have street names or numbers? So how do I get to work? Well I exit through my families black gate, take a right down the winding street and to the busy Chowk I live near, keep walking straight then go diagonal once I reach a building which has been deemed the Flat Iron building (yes like the one in nyc), then past the international school where children wave at me, past the ironic Kurt Cobain lettering sprayed on the wall, left at Yum Yum noodle stand, right at the main road with lots of traffic, straight past two gigantic piles of trash taking over the sidewalk (no wonder everyone just walks in the street), then finally left at a construction site which leads me down a dirt road to ENPHO.
While at ENPHO I am working from their resource center on the fourth floor which has a great view of the neighborhood. I usually spend the morning reading or editing. Then around 1pm some co-workers from the 3rd and 4th floor have a group lunch in the meeting room. Everyone brings a dish to share but instead of sitting down and eating from plates, everyone stands around the table and starts grabbing at the rice, roti, etc. (and whatever else) all with their hands – it’s a total chow down fest. The co-worker who invited me to my first group lunch kept telling me to push through, get a spot, and start grabbing because the food will be all gone in 10 minutes.
It was so weird at first – a race to grab food? But now I really look forward to our group lunches where I can sample different Nepali homemade meals. As for my participation, I usually bring cookies from the store around the corner - I hope they don’t mind.
After lunch I really look forward to the masala tea which is served to the whole office (~50 people.) Then I complete my day with more readings and research if I have no scheduled meetings. Around 6pm I leave for the day and walk home past the construction site, up the main road and around the giant piles of garbage, left between a Pepsi sign and Coke sign which leads me to Yum Yum noodle, then a right past the empty international school, past the Kurt Cobain spray paint, then my beloved Flat Iron building, through the busy Chowk then down the winding road to my black gate where the housekeeper has this uncanny ability to always know when I am approaching the gate.
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