New Road and Hayley's Welcome Back Party

Sunday was spent with a trip to New Road, a shopping district of Kathmandu. Thamel is where all of the tourists go to shop, but New Road is sort of the Nepali equivalent. You can find pretty much everything there, and for a pretty decent price. Megan needed to find a charger for her batteries, which was easily discovered at the first shop we tried.

I had come mostly to purchase some sandals, which I desperately needed. You take your shoes off when you go inside of a home, so only having sneakers was quite obnoxious. They’re pretty comfortable too. We went for lunch at this roof top café that had the best pasta salad I may have ever had. After lunch I purchased a new sky blue kurta, which was more expensive than I was hoping but I’m still very excited to have. We also got a few movies, which they sell for fifty cents each, and went back to Yanik’s house to watch them.

Monday was a fairly standard day, beginning with my language class and RHEST. Afterwards I hung out at the house until later in the night. Hayley, one of the girls who did the Passage program with me four years ago, had flown into Kathmandu that morning and was having a welcome home party. It was amazing to see her again, she hasn’t changed a bit. The party was also pretty crazy, and I met a lot of interesting people.

Shristi and actually not her boyfriend

I seem to find myself around people a lot older than me, so meeting Shristi was really nice. She’s 19 and goes to college in Kathmandu. She’s done some modeling before, but was very down to earth. Our birthdays are actually a day apart(hers is September 12^th) so maybe we can have a joint celebration. Her boyfriend was also a very chill guy.

Trishna is on the left

Trishna works as a criminal justice reporter for one of the papers around here. She’s fiercely intelligent, and you tell that everyone at the party really respected her. She clearly cares a lot about Nepal, and wants to improve the country.

After the party Kishan picked me up and we chilled for a bit with his friends before heading home. It was a great night, and it was amazing to see Hayley again.