Nepal #1: I made it back alive!

Where should I start? Over the past three-week adventure I've been saturated with facts, stories, anecdotes, and Nepal-specific peculiarities. My goal is to regurgitate them in some type of interesting and useful form that helps me remember as much as possible.

As I sit at this computer (in Belgium, with fast internet connection, at a desk, on a chair, showered, with a toasty basket of machine-washed laundry waiting, belly full of non-rice food items, slightly buzzed after sharing a Stella with my grandmother), I've created the following list of topics that I plan to cover in future blog posts. This should make me feel obligated to write, right?

Nepal in General

• Top 20? most useful Nepali words!
• 5 Immediately apparent Nepali quirks 
• Call Break
• Types of roti
• Three geographic regions
• Water management in Nepal
• Brief history
• The group journal! 

Kathmandu

• How to cross the street in Kathmandu (and other scary things)
• Bhuddist and Hindu sites (monkeys!)
• Salwar kurta shopping
• A visit to the Patan Hospital

Village Home-Stay (my favorite part of the trip)

• Introduction to my host family
• Dal Bhat (Lentils and Rice). How could this be so interesting? Just wait!
• Recipe: How to make chiya (delicious Nepali tea)
• Recipe: How to make tarkari
• Hmm... I'm a woman and I need to 'shower'... 
• A visit to the blacksmith
• Husking rice the human-powered way
• Making leaf plates
• Working in the village store
• Bhutan refugee info
• Shamanic ceremony

Trekking

• Route map
• A typical day on the trail
• Incredible views along the way

Please let me know if you have any suggestions, preferences as to the order I post these, or if there's something I shouldn't bother writing about (whether or not you were on the trip!).

Virtually all of these posts will have pictures and/or videos (yay!). Unfortunately these must wait until I return to Boston in a few days...