Day 7-8: Partying in the Third World

Our big events for the past two days have been the SUU recruitment presentation today at our host college, and yesterday celebrating Buddhas birthday.  Both of these event were fun in their own right, it was very interesting to see how another religion celebrates the birth of their main figure, and how interested the students here at Little Angels are in progressing their learning to obtain masters and doctorate degrees.  I have already written about the great emphasis these students put on their learning in an early post so for this post i will just sum up our day celebrating Buddhas birthday.

Most of the area was pretty excited for this national holiday it involves prayers at shrines, parades through the streets, and a general sense of celebration.  The place that we went was a temple on top of one of the higher hill in the valley.  Once again we had to climb endless steps to reach it, Buddhist and Hindu's really make you work to worship, it is definitely not a religion for out of shape people.  the nickname for the temple we went to is "Monkey temple" due to all the monkeys that live there.  Most were scared away by the crowds today, but there were still a few stragglers.  Overall the atmosphere is similar to any county fair or carnival in the states, you have your vendors selling stuff, people gathering to dance, and families enjoying a day together seeing the sights.  We hiked up the stairs and spent time exploring the temple and enjoying the view looking out over Kathmandu.  I also listened to a choir singing praises to pictures of a prominent Buddhist teacher, and others taking turns in a dance circle very similar to those you see at high school dances in the states.  Overall it was a really fun time just being here in Nepal for such a special occasion, and being able to participate in it with the Nepali people.  I love seeing events like this to remind us just how similar we are.  Tomorrow we start the next part of our trip west from here to Pokhara, and i am looking forward to the new experiences we will have in that part of the country.