Wednesday July 11th
We are in Pokhara for a seminar tomorrow. So we have some time to get laundry done, catch up on blogs and other work, mend and prepare.
I read over Matthew’s blogs and his reference to my attempt to buy a shirt last week for the pastoral conference led to think that I should expand on that adventure. I thought it humorous and perhaps instructive for anyone planning on traveling in this area.
The situation was that Matt and I had only taken cloths for three days. Raju was bringing the rest of our luggage. Because of his visa application, so he can attend ILC this fall, he met as at the time for the conference not the day before as had been planned. But my shirts were all completely “pitted out” from hiking.
So I ventured out to buy a shirt with no knowledge of Nepali, their currency or their shirt measurements. The shop owner spoke only a little broken English. It was no problem to point to a shirt. But he was totally baffled at “large.” He pulled one out for me, undid all the pins and forms, saying the whole time: “You’ll like, fit fine.” Even when I was unable to pull the sleeves on, he continued saying: “fit fine.” Ok so I showed him it did not fit fine saying: “Not fine, larger.” We went through the same process with three dress shirts, each larger but too small. The largest was 54, whatever that is measuring. So then he was trying to sell me a t-shirt which I intended to wear for teaching at Pastoral Conference. “You’ll like,” he says handing me one that says “superstar” in glittering letters, then one with a female singer on it and so on. Meanwhile I am looking around for anything, which might work. I finally spotted a polo shirt which seemed conservative. It was also 54 so I tried my “larger” request again to no avail. But I tried it on and because it was short sleeves and knit it was fine. So I had a clean shirt for PC.
Pokhara is beside a beautiful Mt lake. There is a German bakery across the street. When we first got here I didn’t even know Matthew had gone out when returned with cheesecake and a very satisfied grin.
