[Oops...it's been a while...but I still have that list of things to write about...I'm working on it...!]
I like to do touristy things – to see interesting things and visit different places, even here in Scotland, but I really hate looking like a tourist.
It’s hard when you are a different colour, though, to NOT look like a tourist. But being able to drop a bit of Nepali into conversations would generally counter this.
That, and knowing what prices to be willing to pay a taxi driver.
One driver, after we haggled from 500Rps to 300, when we got in the car said “so, you are volunteers?”!
Anyway, I really loved the language lessons. Our Nepali teacher was SO encouraging.
“Ekdaam Raamro!!!” She would exclaim! (Very good!)
And learning something completely new, and very obviously functional and useful for the time and place was great.
Some things I learned to say in Nepali, above and beyond the “hello, how are you?” chit-chat included: asking the price of things; being able to name various fruit and veg; naming classroom objects; describing the colour and whereabouts of things; and numbers up to 10.
I was very proud of myself.
Unfortunately, little snippets like that aren’t particularly useful in conversation…because you get stuck very quickly!
In English an attempted conversation might look like this:
“Hello! How are you?”
“I’m well, and you?”
“I’m good!"
"Is this your pen?”
"No, that's *insert name here*'s pen."
"Okay"
“So…uhm….potato?”
