Nepal/India faves

I may never get around to going through all of my pictures from my 3 week vacation to Nepal and India but I wanted to post a few favorites.

At a Buddhist temple in Nepal

At the end of the day when we were waiting for our bus to take us "home" to Agra after a day of sightseeing in Fathepur Sikri I went to buy a bottle of water... I had a long debate about which stand would have the safest water and I wanted to make sure I chose a stand that had properly sealed bottles of water! Well, I got way more than I bargained for! 10 minutes later the vendor took a huge knife to my bottle of water to get it open - yup, it was sealed alright!! While waiting I happened to see these cute men sitting around a shoe polisher. 

Kristen swears I chose this cute old guy to be our tour guide at the Agra Fort so I could take pictures of him...it's only 1/2 true! How cute is he?!

 

Beer camel! No, really! Our camel entourage had just arrived at our final destination in the dunes and we were enjoying the sunset and I made a comment that anywhere else in India or Bangladesh someone would come along trying to sell us something! Then we saw this guy. We didn't think much of him at first and then he asked us if we wanted to buy beer! We all busted out laughing because the timing was too perfect! Sad for him, we had already bought beer before setting off into the desert!

Delhi was where we got our shopping quota! Luckily we met a wonderful woman in Agra who we ended up staying with in Delhi and she told us about this special market that was going on - complete with festive music!

India

So much to write about, so little time....I'm back from winter break and had a wonderful 3-week vacation in Nepal and India! Life has been pretty busy and hectic since returning. I spent the first couple of days home in Bangladesh sick (thanks to food poisoning). Then, 80+ esteemed board members and visitors, including Cherie Blaire - AUW's newly appointed Chancellor, visited AUW to observe classes, meet students, and see the site of the new campus - designed by Moshe Safdie. Following these events at the AUW campus, the entire campus (400+students, faculty, staff and families, and visitors) stormed Bangladesh's public transportation as we made our way to Dhaka for the AUW Symposium, "Imagining Another Future for Asia: Ideas and Pathways for Change." In the interest of time (lesson plans are calling my name!), check out Jess' blog for more on the conference!

I realize that was a very skeleton update but I'm teaching two semester long courses this semester, TAing, and advising three clubs....and sometimes sleeping.... I haven't even had a chance to look through all of my vacation photos but I thought I'd post a few that I have looked through. Of course when you go to India the first thing everybody wants to know is, "Did you see the Taj Mahal?" So here are a few pictures from the TAJ!