Holi Excitement

Hello again, friends! The past couple weeks have been business as usually. Well, other than having to dodge water balloons being hurled at me from rooftops every time I left the house…

Holi

Last Wednesday was a Hindu festival called Holi. I’m not really sure what the deeper significance of the holiday is, and it seemed like most people I asked weren’t even sure, but the celebrations include throwing water balloons from rooftops and covering each other with colored powder. People all over the city were walking around, soaking wet and covered with bright colors. I had heard some stories of water balloons being filled with not-so-nice things, so I decided to take refuge in my house and have a relaxing day reading my book on the roof, but even there I wasn’t safe! Some of the neighbors saw us on the roof and managed to target us with slingshots! Overall, I escaped unscathed, but some of my friends who ventured out came back looking like this:

My friends who dared to go outside during Holi.

 New Opportunities

Although my time here is quickly coming to a close, I’ve been blessed with a few exciting new opportunities! First, next week I will start doing some private English tutoring after school for a secondary student getting ready for upcoming exams. Between that and swim practices starting up next term I’ll soon be very busy after school. 

In addition, a friend and I were given the opportunity to do some teacher training! We will be holding a couple of English teaching workshops for Nepali teachers outside of the Kathmandu valley. We’ll be visiting the school and doing some observations at the end of this month and start planning a couple workshops in the months to come. 

This photo is from my recent trip to Pokhara. We crossed the lake by boat and hiked to the top of a hill to see the World Peace Pagoda, build by Japanese Buddhist monks. 

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I just added some new photos to my Facebook account! You can check them out here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.572126078282.2064217.69102077&type=1&l=48b560a067