First Halloween in Kathmandu

In my update post of a few days ago, I overviewed four major things to update:

1)  Getting the puppy

2)  Nepali Tihar festival

3)  Halloween

4)  Pokhara

(1) and (2) have already been posted on… it’s long enough from (3) that I think I may just save my pictures of it for next October.  There’s not too much to share for it anyway–as I also mentioned in the overview post, we were both sick throughout the last half of October.  The being sick ranged from a flu-like thing that never wanted to end, to an instance for both of us of general tummy trouble, including vomiting.  The “flu,” we’ve been advised, was probably caused by our allergies going insane from the dusty air here now that the monsoon season is over, leading to miserable secondary sinus infections; we’re now both on daily allergy medicine and breathing just about normally.  The tummy trouble could have been anything from an actual virus going around (several of our friends and coworkers had problems around the same time) or something caused by food, which is REALLY common here; in any case, that’s cleared up nicely, too.

The Halloween-related point is that we didn’t actually do anything for Halloween.  We were invited to three different parties, and were too sick to attend any of them.  The only pictures I have are of our own household decorations.  But at least we did celebrate the day some on our own–all October I read a book of H. P. Lovecraft’s creepy stories, including “The Call of the Cthulhu,” and what I personally [and apparently at least some critics agree] think was even scarier, “The Color Out of Space.”  And we watched the first episode of “Carnivale” and some Simpsons Halloween episodes.  But that was all.

Then, on November 1st, we fussed about getting the puppy set up with our household guard–who really likes her, and plays with her and pets her both.  And, with suitcases packed, we headed for the Kathmandu airport…

But since the internet’s not cooperating this evening (it keeps dropping out for no reason), I can’t upload any pictures, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to add some more.  And maybe add at least a couple of Halloween-themed pictures here?

In honor of Halloween, giant bats soar over the Kathmandu foothills of the Himalayas!

Think I'm joking? Look carefully at this picture--it's not out of proportion. There really ARE giant bats in Kathmandu, and they like to sleep upside down in the trees near Thamel. (But, no, the ones in the previous picture weren't real--though this one is!)

Puppy Update:

Due to great interest, I’ll add a paragraph or so on the puppy daily, or at least any time there’s something new, ok?

The puppy now has a name.  It’s what I mentioned before–“Alaskan Himal.”  But mostly we’re still just calling her puppy, occasionally interspersed with “Alaska.”

She’s learned how to sleep through the night!  On Friday I was up until 2 am, and took her out then — but she didn’t wake us up at all, even though we slept in until almost 9 on Saturday.  Then, last night, too — she went out a final time around 12, and didn’t wake up until we did at 7:30.  This is MUCH better than taking her out three times in the middle of the night, which we used to have to do.  The first week she lived with us, she seemed unable to go longer than about three hours without waking up and whining desperately to be let out of her crate and carried outside.

During the day, too, she’s making less messes in the house–and when we’ve left her in the laundry room while everyone was gone, on two separate evenings over the last few days (for a total of over 9 hours, combined) she’s only made a single mess overall.  Instead, she waited patiently until we were home to take her out.  I think she’s diligently working on that getting housebroken thing!