Making new friends is always an adventure

Dear all,

As some of you already know, I'm back in kathmandu, eagerly awaiting a visit from my parents. In fact, they will be here (if all goes according to plan) in less than 24 hours! Predictably, I'm all a flutter, and I spent most of the day running here and there to make sure everything was as ready for their arrival as I could manage it.

And it was in the midst of all this running around that I met my new friend. I was walking to a nearby store when I first spotted him. He was standing just a ways down the street from me with a look on his face that I've come to know very well. It's a face I often see on tourists around the Thamel area, and it universally translates to "oh my god, I'm so lost." I generally stop and offer help if there is any indication that my tourist in distress speaks english or spanish, so I took a quick inventory of the most recent victim I'd stumbled upon. He was tall and white, in a black north face style jacket and I guessed he was American, so I walked over to him and asked "Where are you trying to get to?"

Usually the answer to this question is "Thamel", which always makes me laugh because it often comes from tourists already in Thamel, but this time the answer was very different. After a moment of confusion, he managed to say "I from Russia. Russian? " Now it was my turn to be confused. Of course, I don't speak Russian, but while I tried to figure out what to say next, he started speaking very quickly in the most broken english I've ever heard (and trust me, I've learned to speak English through the lens of several languages). I managed to catch the letters U.N. and so I figured he was working for one of the U.N. development programs. "Ok", I thought, "We're in luck. If he's U.N. staff, he must speak Nepali." So I switched over to Nepali and repeated my original question. He managed to say that his nepali wasn't good, but it was clear that it was actually terrible. So now we were back at square one.

It was at this point that I noticed he was clinging to a small business card as though it were a string of prayer beads, and so I motioned that I'd like to see the card. He handed it over to me, and to my dismay I found it only had the name of a neighborhood and the name of a shop written on it. I don't know what jerk thought that would be enough for this poor guy who speaks neither English nor Nepali to find anything, but I knew right away he was never going to make it anywhere without a full intervention. So I grabbed him by the arm and towed him to the nearest shop with a female shopkeeper. Then I politely asked her how to get to Sundhara (the neighborhood he was looking for.) Fortunately, Nepalis are generally very helpful when it comes to directions, so she pointed us in the right direction and told me we were about a 15 min walk away. So I once again grabbed a hold of my new friend and towed him in the direction the woman had indicated. Of course, because I didn't know where we were going either, I stopped every other block or so to ask other shopkeepers for directions. Finally, someone explained to me that the shop we were looking for was a hair salon in Kathmandu mall.

Looking back on it, I realize now that my friend had also tried to explain that he was going to get a haircut, but I hadn't understood the first time through. In fact, the poor guy tried his hardest to keep up a conversation the entire time, as I pulled him through side alleys and traffic. But with questions like, "Your American friend kathmandu is big?", we didn't really get very far. Still, the whole thing was so silly, I couldn't help but enjoy myself, and I found myself giggling through most of our pathetic exchanges.

Finally, we found ourselves standing in the salon. And once again, I wanted to hit whomever had given him that stupid card. The salon was by far the fanciest salon I'd seen in Kathmandu, and it was full of upper class Nepali guys who looked like they'd walked right out of a fashion photo shoot in New York or some equally trendy place. This was no place for my simple seeming Russian friend. But what could I do?
So I marched him up to the counter and for some reason, I turned to him expecting him to explain either to me, or the fashion plate behind the desk what he wanted. Eager to please and by now a little flustered, he held his hand near his head and made a scissor motion with his hand. The guy behind the counter looked disgusted and told me in perfect english, "He can tell me what he wants in English. I understand." I tried to calm the now disgruntled stylist by explaining to him that my friend only speaks Russian. But then I had to try to explain how I'd found myself in a salon with a guy I didn't know, who didn't share a single language with me. I started to say that I found him on the street, but that didn't sound right in any language. Then I tried to explain that I didn't know what he wanted any more than the stylist did, but that didn't help the situation. Finally defeated, I asked when the stylist could fit my friend in for a quick simple haircut. We agreed that he'd see my friend in an hour and by pointing at the time on his cellphone and showing him one finger, it seemed that my Russian friend finally understood that he would need to come back an hour later.

By this time, I was running incredibly late for my own appointments (I have salsa class on tuesdays and while I love a good deed every once in awhile, dancing is still my oxygen.)So I tried to leave him at the salon and started walking back out to the street. But like any other lost puppy, he started to follow me. I thought maybe he didn't understand that he was supposed to wait, but then he said "Seven." Just like that, as though it were a complete thought. Funnily, I understood it as though it had been. He was asking if he could call me at seven. I rushed through an Ok, eager to get my shopping done before class. Fortunately, seven o clock has come and gone without a phone call. Not that I didn't like the guy or anything, but I just can't imagine how we would manage a phone call. It would be impossible.

Still, a part of me hopes I'll run in to him again on the street, just so I can hear the rest of the story (and maybe see what those stylish boys did to his head :P). But next time I see him I hope he's with a friend who knows at least one of the five languages I speak.

Anyway, I hope you find my day as entertaining as I did and I'll be writing about my parents' adventure very soon. All my love and some of my giggles to you all!!