It's surprising how quickly such a different place can feel like home. Despite being here for under a week, although this grand adventure began a week ago today, plus or minus some hours to account for time-zone differences, Kathmandu, or at least the Thamel neighborhood where the Kathmandu Guest House is located, has become very familiar. I have a breakfast place already where, in a perfect example of reversion, I ordered bacon with breakfast (this confession only bears import as while here I'm attempting to keep a vegetarian diet). Slip-ups notwithstanding, the longer I'm here, the more it begins to feel like home, and this group begins to feel like family. The Guest House does not feel like just a place I'm staying, but rather it seems to be a place to come home to.

Work with Shtrii Shakti remains fascinating; it's so delightfully progressive, and I love every minute of my work there. The staff is wonderful-an odd assortment of students, interns, women, and activists. My boss, Indira, was in fact one of the 1000 Peace Women nominated, as a group, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

An interesting thing in regards to the work of Shtrii Shakti is the presence of praxis-the place where theory and action meet. As with all activist groups driven by intellectuals, to change from simply words into action remains the fundamental difficulty, but Shtrii Shakti attempts to do so, and does so very well, especially with regards to doing so in a cultural sense. Shtrii breaks down in to Sh-women, t-training, r-research, i-information, and i-intervention. It moves from the research and theoretical to practical application. Major projects of late have included gender master's training where men and women are trained in Kathmandu and then sent out to the villages to encourage discussions between women and women, men and men, and women and men about sexuality and sexual and reproductive health.

Football fever is present everywhere, which is shocking especially as neither Nepal nor Kathmandu are fielding teams in the World Cup. All over though tv's are on showing the fanciful footwork of the finest footballers, and everywhere everyone, including staffs when they are between work!, stop to watch the matches. One note quickly on the staffs of restaurants- I have never experienced better service anywhere. The staff takes your order, and then after serving, they wait near you to see if you need anything else. They do not serve you the bill unless you specifically ask for it; otherwise, you simply sit, chat, enjoy your masala tea, the Nepali tea of choice served with milk and sugar, made very similarly to a chai.

That's it for now but a more reflective post will come soon.