An Amazing Race Sort of Day

Have you ever seen the Amazing Race show on TV? I absolutely love the show and secretly want to be on it one day. Okay, not so secretly…I think Julie and I should do it together after we finish our time here. Anyway, you know how on the show they are always looking for a certain location for their next clue. Well, today we had some definitely moments where we were looking for places that we could not find. Actually, the whole day was a bit bizarre…a "good cultural" day, so I'll describe most of it to you.

The morning was normal. Went to school and then ate lunch at a place that, in my opinion, has the best nan in the city. From there we went about .5 miles to get some paperwork I needed printed. After that was finished, we needed to find an airlines office. You see, I had booked a flight for this weekend to Katmandu, but when I checked the other day, it said my status was "canceled." Problem. The website also said that there were no more tickets available for this weekend. Problem. I needed to go to the airline office and make sure I got on that plane because I had done everything right and they had dropped the ball.

Back to today, I had the address of the office that I had gotten off the internet. I confirmed it with a man in an electronics store…after he told us our first president was George Bush, our current President's birthday, and about how great President Reagan was to work with Gorbaciov and the French President (whom I didn't know had anything to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall). Following the mini-history lesson on our country, we basically retraced our steps .5 miles to find this place. It was supposed to be on the 9^th floor, so we got in the elevator and the buttons facing us were 3, 16, 17, and 18. No 9, so we opted for 18 which turned out to be a restaurant. The man there said that the airline office was back close to where the print shop was. So, we decided to take a rickshaw back to where the airline is "supposed" to be. We went into this building and rode the elevator up and down, but…no airline office. The man in this building said to go back to the part of town we had just come from (so this makes 5 times I've traveled this stretch of road today). He writes what turns out to be a partial address on paper and sends us on our way. We try to find a rickshaw and Julie broke her shoe. So now she is walking BAREFOOT around the city. We eventually find a rickshaw and weave our way around town for about an hour in traffic and only actually travel about a mile. When we get to that part of town, we asked several guards and rickshaw walas (men) where to go and got a different answer from everyone. We finally decided to turn the corner since a policeman pointed that direction. As we are walking, I see a "woman" tug on Julie's backpack. I thought that was a little forward for a beggar, but wasn't overly concerned. When Julie turned around, the "woman" spoke and out came a man's voice. In many South Asian cities, eunuchs dress up like woman and beg. People believe they have magic powers and can curse people, so they are terrified of them and give them money with no question. We, on the other hand, try to avoid them. Well, this one would not leave us be. He began tugging on my orna (symbolizes virtue in this culture) and I had had enough. I took off my show and batted the air. He backed off a bit, Julie gave him what for, and then we speed walked into the nearest mall and let the security guard take care of him. While in the mall, I decided to ask a travel agency there were to go and he gave me some better directions. FINALLY, we found the airline office and went about trying to get a ticket for this weekend. That was the easiest part of this whole journey. Apparently this happens frequently and the website isn't too accurate on the number of tickets available so it was a quick fix. I had my ticket! This whole process took 3 hours!

On to the second place we were trying to find. We needed to go to a different part of town and happened to find a "shoe fixer" on the way. Good news for Julie's feet. These men sit on street corners and fix people's shoes every day. He fixed Julie's shoes in about 30 seconds to the equivalent of 13 cents. Our next destination for the day was the internet office. You know how in America you have automatic bill pay or you can mail your bills in; not so here. You must take the internet bill to the internet bill pay office. Problem being, as seen above, people give poor directions and addresses are rarely up to date. So, we take a rickshaw until we think we are pretty close and then start off on foot trying to find it. We look, and look, and relook because often the store you need is hidden above, behind, or beside other stores. And, as we look we walk and walk and walk. Finally, after several calls to people who have been there before and walking another mile, we find it and pay our bill!

After a few more stops, we made it to the "pit stop" in our leg of the journey…our flat! I'm not sure we could have come in first place today, but we did get everything accomplished. Now, don't worry, generally a day doesn't contain all of these "cultural teaching points", only a few a day…which is much more manageable.