Well, there were two weeks of testing, two days of teaching (I taught some carols and did a lesson where students had to invent their own holidays), and now there is a month-long winter break. My plan is to stay in the Valley for a week and catch up with all the people I've been meaning to catch up with, and then go on a trek to Khotang to visit my friend who is teaching there. So updates may be sporadic for a bit.
In the meantime I thought I would mention some of the blogs that provide me with continuous reading material during the days that I am in Kathmandu and have easy access to the Internet. These two are written by friends of mine, fellow Fulbrighters in Nepal. The first is a fashion designer who writes a weekly fashion column for the Himalayan Times in addition to her research. The other is a photographer who works with Tibetan refugee communities. Check out his photographs to get a view of life in Nepal that goes way beyond what I can describe with words:
These two are about language and linguistics and I check them sort of obsessively whenever I'm in Kathmandu. The Language Log is really famous as far as linguistic blogs go, and I've already mentioned a couple of their posts here. I went to a talk given by one of the main contributers of the Language Log, the linguist Geoff Pullum, back in California. He referred to his enemies as 'prescriptivist loonies.' The design of Omniglot is more or less the inspiration for how I write this blog; I wanted to pick out little things that interest me about life here rather than write straight-up diary entries.
Language Log
Omniglot Blog