Once we arrived in Kathmandu, we went to the Radisson hotel, where we stayed the first two nights. The Radisson was quite nice and helped to not create a completely sudden shift in culture for us. We explored the city the day we flew in, and we got to see sights from famous temples to wild monkeys in a local vendor/ temple area. Considering I have never been to Asia, I was taken aback by the cultural differences I saw right away. The prevalence of religion is obvious by the temples and culture in the city. There were beautiful buildings amongst the less developed buildings, showing the diversity in income as well as lifestyle in the city. Kathmandu was also hit 2 years ago by a widespread and severe earthquake that left many buildings severely damaged, which is still apparent today. The following day we met up with the students from the largest campus in Nepal who will be studying with us for the next few weeks. Their college has almost half a million people in it (and I thought ASU was huge!). The 8 students from TU are all amazing and extremely nice, and I am excited to get the opportunity to work with them for the remainder of the trip. We also visited the Resource Himalaya NGO in Kathmandu, which plays a critical role in creating the country's public policies, which I was very interested in. We also got to spend some more time exploring the city and shopping around for cheap, local goods. Overall, my impression of Kathmandu was that it was a city that had a unique opportunity to approach sustainable development that I am excited to learn about. While factors like the lack of infrastructure may have been a struggle for me to understand and relate to, I am looking forward to learn more about Nepal and the other cities around the nation in addition to Kathmandu.
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