Thursday, February 19, 2009

Awkward Moments in this Nepal Trip

1. Somehow, men being naked in steam rooms is SO different than men being naked in a hot tub. (at least from a US cultural perspective). A Japanese man disrobed to get into the hot tub I was in, only to see I still had swim trunks on. He politely got out, put some trunks on, and re-entered the hot tub.

2. We traveled for 40 some hours to get to Nepal. Liz was anxiously looking forward to seeing her boyfriend Calvin when he greeted us at the airport. They have not been able to see each other for some time and are, of course, missing each other tremendously. There were several of us traveling together, so with luggage, needed a car and a van. I saw that the luggage was largely being put into the van, so I hurried over to the car to find the most leg room (I'm tall.) I sat in the back seat behind the driver (Nepalis drive in the English way, so, on the right side). I heard Liz say: "Brent, would you like to come up to the front seat for more leg-room?" Me: "No, that's okay". Liz: "No, Brent, come and sit in the front seat. Calvin and I want to sit next to each other." Me: "OHH" ....

Then into action...feverishly trying to get out the back door...door handle doesn't work. Okay...go out the other side. The back-pack strap is caught in the door and I'm snapped back into place. Roll down window and release outside handle and move as quickly as possible into front seat. Me: "Sorry about that".

3. My new shoes smell like monkey doo. Since I stepped in it. But monkey see, monkey doo a lot of here.

4. As we were walking through the forest preserve, the guide told us to walk down an upcoming 'path'. We were fairly high up at this point, and I kept waiting for the path to become visible as we approached. Nope. Just a cliff. Evidently a landslide took out the path a month before. Take a different way.

5. During this walk, I saw about 50 monkeys in a colony of sorts. They were doing all sorts of things....sometimes to each other. One monkey looked like he was giving a doctor's exam to another monkey.

6. During the trip, I spoke outloud when I speculated how much fuel and $ airlines would save each year by making people take bowel movements before their flights.

7. I also speculated outloud, if my travel companions had ever heard of the insides of pillows being made from human hair. They hadn't.

3 comments:

ButterPeanut said...

hurray for the AWK! My entire first 6 months in the Netherlands were one long series of awkward moments, and there wasn't even any monkey poop.

JaraBeara said...

brent. i love this.

amanda said...

brent. hilarious, i'm laughing so hard it is bringing tears to my eyes.