Birthday

4th of July party at the "American Club." This is not in the Embassy itself, I am sure because the security is too tight. The American Club occupies a very large central space downtown, and has security checks almost to rival TSA. So, the only non-Americans allowed into the compound are on diplomatic missions. This is my friend in the foreground, she actually goes to Duke in North Carolina. I had Gatorade and Cheetos and Oreos and Cracker Jacks for the first time since I left, I had almost forgotten how much I love Gatorade. The snacks here are Indian curry things, like dried noodles, or fried peas, or yak jerky, so these (the Gatorade and Cheetos) were a great taste of home.




New Road, Kathmandu. I wanted to go there to get fresh mango juice, as well as to go to the big KODAK store to ask what was wrong with my camera and the reformatting business. Apparently, I had accidentally set the memory to some temporary format or something, but they reversed my mistake. Unfortunately, all of my photos from the last few nights are lost. I am especially sad about the ones from the night of the 4th, when I actually turned 22.




I found myself staunchly advocating WTO and USAID.











This is much later, friends celebrating, friends from all over, seriously all over. That has been cool in Kathmandu, meeting people from around the world, so different but kind of the same.





22!



This is kind of an awful post, but I think the internet is about to go down for the day. It's almost 5 here, around the time when the electricity blacks out anyways. I will have to wait to tell you what happened tomorrow.