Hiking and Paragliding in Nepal

December 22, 2010 Our last day in Nepal...After too many days in the big city of Kathmandu, Michelle and I were ready to see the esteemed mountains of Nepal. Since it was almost Christmas time I was feeling especially nostalgic for the Alps and this was the perfect cure!! In fact, I think the Himalayas might be more beautiful and breath taking than the Alps! (crazy, huh?) It was absolutely gorgeous hiking up to the city of Sarangkot and watching the sunset from the mountain side. We went to bed early - one, because we were exhausted; two, because it was freezing and curling up in bed was the warmest option! The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch the sunrise (unfortunately with a million other people who didn't even make the effort to climb up the mountain...yes, there's a road that takes you right to the top). After the sunrise it was time to paraglide down the mountain!!

Sunrise from Sarangkot

Pokhara Valley

 Paragliding Start Point!

 And we're off!! Looking back on the Himalayas and our starting point

Igor, my awesome Russian pilot, and I mid flight!

Looking down on all the other paragliders -- Igor was awesome at finding thermals and keeping us high up in the air! I had wanted to go parahawking (the pilot looks for the hawks in the air and follows them because they find the thermals and float around - not losing altitude) but there's only one pilot that does this in Pokhara and he wasn't flying that day....but Igor naturally did this - AWESOME! Sometimes the hawk would be flying right beside us!

Beautiful!!

My Guilty Pleasures

When I travel I always have a serious obsession with photographing locks, colorful doors, and laundry lines!! So here are a few i spotted on my vacation to Nepal and India

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!

Lunar New Year Celebrations!

Our students, a few teachers, and OSA have organized several activities to celebrate the Lunar New Year! To kick things off we had an exciting game night with Chinese candies and calendars as prizes!

Chopstick Races

 Tricky Riddles

Le, one of my Vietnamese students, was so mad that I was able to do this twice (with the easy and the more difficult chopsticks) and she couldn't do it once!

 Hakima, one of my Afghan students, trying really hard to pick up the pingpong ball - she eventually got it!!

 Thuy, Xian, and Oanh -- past and present students

 Vietnamese Bingo!! AWESOME! I can't even tell you how much we laughed and how much fun this was!

 

Xiang Ba, another one of my students this semester at the Calligraphy table -- writing symbols that are beyond my abilities!

Happy Lunar New Year!

Today, February 3, 2011, is the Lunar New Year in Vietnam, year of the rabbit, and China, year of the cat.

Happy New Year in Vietnamese

Ngoc and Tien-- I love their traditional dresses - I want to have one made when I go to Vietnam!!

Ngoc, Tien, Vinh, and Anh on the Vietnamese New Year!!

Lucky Money :) How cute is the money folded into a heart!! Lucky presents are given to enhance relationships and it can be bad luck to refuse a lucky present.

AUW Symposium

Here are a few pictures from the AUW symposium, "Imagining Another Future for Asia: Ideas and Pathways for Change" held in Dhaka January 19-22, 2011.

There were beautiful posters of our students and inspirational quotes all around the venue!

 Ngoc, one of my Vietnamese students from white group (my 2nd class last semester), and I at the conference.

 

Tien, one of my Vietnamese students from orange group (my 1st group of students last semester), and I at the conference. 

 Michelle, Karin, and I all dressed up for the first day of the conference -- Cherie Blair (AUW Chancellor) and Sheikh Hasina (Bangladesh's Prime Minister) both gave remarks to open the symposium. When the day had finished we all bused to the Parliament building where we were received for a lovely dinner reception and guided tour of the parliament building. Due to high security throughout the day (meaning no handbags, cameras, cellphones, etc. allowed), I only have a few pictures of us in our saris at the end of the day in our hotel.

My new sari from India :)

Back at AUW

So much to blog about, so little time....Kristen and I arrived back from our Nepal/India vacation the morning of the 9th, the day classes were supposed to start but thank goodness they were postponed - we are just now starting our classes (last week was our first week for the academic seminars!). Since arriving back in Bangladesh it's been a whirlwind of illnesses (thank you Dhaka for my food poisoning!), 80+ esteemed visitors at AUW, and a campus-wide symposium in Dhaka. Now my time is consumed with planning a semester-long course for 2 classes and finding my feet as the adviser for several clubs that need a serious action plan! Thank goodness for many wonderful connections at the symposium! Oh! and Saraswati Puja is right around the corner (Feb 8 and 9) and Claudio, an international photographer who has generously donated 8 SLR cameras to the photography club, is at AUW to run photography workshops with the girls and document the festival - I can't wait!!

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!

 

White Love

White Group (from left to right) back row: Nusrat, Nazma, Rabia, Me, Ngoc, Anh, Aaliya, Yagel, Sumitra, Jesmin

front row: Israt, Jannatul, Pahima, Meher, Vinh

Time is flying! but when isn't it? It's the end of another 7 week course and subsequently the end of the semester. This time around I'm ready for a break and ready for the change that awaits us all next semester. Speaking of which...next semester we will all be teaching semester long courses instead of 7-week classes. I've spent the past few days not only grading and planning for our winter break vacation but also beginning to plan a semester-long course. I will still teach business leadership but will expand on the existing topics and emphasize self-leadership development.

In the spirit of Who Moved My Cheese here are the Writings on the Wall (with no editing) that the presentation groups created to inspire themselves and their classmates to practice leadership in regards to each specific topic from our course.

Ethics: “The more you’ll be ethical, the more you’ll take the world up.”

Psychodynamic: “Respect yourself and others to build a bridge of a good relationship.”

Transformational: “Transformational leadership is like a mountain, climb on it. If you succeed in climbing you can become a good leader.”

Culture: “If you don’t know anything about me you can’t make friendship with me.”

Women: “Never prefer to be the follower because of being a woman, other than make this fact as your straightness to be the leader for others.”

Our students really do say and write the cutest/funniest things all the time and it's hard to remember to write them down...I didn't do too great of a job recording cute sayings from the white group but here are two:


- "In first class I failed, second year I studied two classes and I became third position and then first position. Oh God! A big change!!" -- Rabia

- "I want my teacher to keep smiling because it rises the value of your face." -- Meher (in her first writing assignment where they had to tell me about themselves and their expectations of the teacher)

Never Never Land

'Tis the season for Christmas markets, gluhwein, schneeballen, and shopping....in Europe! After two Christmases in Europe, I will be spending this one in Asia. Thanksgiving usually marks the beginning of Christmas for me, cue the Christmas movies, cookies, and music but this year it's been a little harder to get into the spirit without the reminders...there are definitely no Christmas lights or gluhwein stands around Chittagong and certainly no snow! With the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes it feels more appropriate to think about having a picnic, with lots of OFF, on the Sea Beach in Chittagong. Despite all the reminiscing about my time spent in Germany I am looking forward to spending this holiday season traveling through Nepal and India. Even though Christmas night will be spent on an overnight train in India I have no doubt that it will be a memorable one. Anyway, after spending the past two years in Germany, Christmas Eve has become more important to me than the 25th....oh how I will miss Stille Nacht in the Partenkirchen Kirche this year :/

This reminscent post came after seeing many of my friends from Germany tagged in a note by a fellower GAPer. When I first arrived at ELR in January 2008 I heard quite a bit about this goodbye letter but nobody seemed to have a copy of it. Now she, Bethany, has posted her letter on facebook. Below is most of her Goodbye letter. I feel that it resounds with me even now that I'm in Bangladesh.

From Bethany, November 2007, taped to the back of every bathroom stall and above every urinal in the Abrams:


I have learned so much about myself and this place just in these last weeks, all things I wish I had grasped early on. I am passing my reflections on in hopes they will help you make the most of everyday here.

Look around, you are not the only one that has to leave their room to cook, do laundry, go to the bathroom, make a phone call or go online. You’re not the only one that has to wake up early, walk in the weather and put on an ugly uniform along with a fake smile. You are not the first overqualified person to scrape food into a slop bucket. This is a tiny price to pay for a humungous experience!

Never sell yourself or this experience short out of boredom or loneliness. You will not die if you are not the life of the party or the center of attention. You will not stop breathing if you don’t have someone to hold hands with in the hallway. The coolest person you could ever get to know out here is yourself.

Spend your time and money on the things that matter. Why get hammered every night in Garmisch when you can sip champagne in the south of France? Travel, travel, travel then travel some more!

We are not animals, better example; we are not 16 year old boys. For crying out loud go take a cold shower (alone). Go for a hike, read a book. Remember I got lucky; I ended up with “an amazing blessing I don’t even deserve” and not a terminal virus.

Develop an independent routine that forces you out of the Abrams. Frequent a coffee shop no one else goes to. Take a good book as a lunch date. Get an entertaining Deutsch lesson at the local theatre. There will be parties even your best friends forget to mention. It is better to know how to happily survive solitude then to have loneliness take you by surprise. You may otherwise end up eating the entire contents of your fridge, guzzling a 3 euro 2 liter bottle of wine and wake up on the kinderpath next to a pile of slugs with sheep poop in your hair…I’m just sayin.

Go outside everyday and take in a slow-mo 360 view of the Bavarian Alps. Trust me the goose bumps will never get old!

I hope you find the happy balance. I hope you never have to grow up and can stay in our Never Neverland forever…seriously though you are not really Peter Pan. Gravity does exist even at the Abrams and you cannot actually fly. Please stop sitting on second story windowsills it makes me nervous!

Bethany's letter reminds me to enjoy the day-to-day moments of anywhere I may be and that happiness isn't a destination but a daily ingredient of life. My time in Bangladesh is already passing too quickly and I know that these nine months will be just as integral as my time spent in Germany to my sense of identity on my quest to find direction in life.

Below are pictures of our AUW family Thanksgiving meal and 2 pictures from the past.

 Thanksgiving Dinner on the rooftop of Panclaish - How many times do you celebrate Thanksgiving on a rooftop?

 Our Thanksgiving buffet spread

Remembering the alps - the view from my bedroom window in the Abrams for 2 years!

Tallin, Estonia: One of the MANY Christmas Markets in Europe where I spent time enjoying caroling, gluhwein, cold weather, and Christmas trinkets