Foodmandu

We have just discovered Foodmandu and we just love it!
You can choose any restaurant from their list, order and they will deliver the food to your doorstep within an hour.
Tonight we will have Afghani chicken, butter chicken, rice and garlic naan. Yummy!
Here you can see the website and order. If you live in Kathmandu, that is.

Happy Easter!

As usual we did some Swedish traditional things to keep Leya connected to her Swedish heritage.
This year we were happy to invite our darling Kochan from downstairs.
My mother is born in the district Småland, directly translated to Small land, even though it is a pretty big district, and when she grew up the crane came with candy.
Of course they never actually saw the crane.
It's like the tooth fairy leaving money under the pillow at night when you lost a tooth.
As a kid you believe they exists to a certain age or til your elder sibling tell you that it's all a lie and your whole world falls apart.
I think the crane bringing candy is a local tradition, for example has Nicholas never heard about it.
I believe the Easter bunny is more common, but I like to hold on to these old traditions that makes the kids happy.
Watch the candy and gift hunt here.

We have a lot of cranes in Sweden and it's a special time at spring every year for bird watchers and other bird interested people to go to Hornborgasjön, directly translated to Horn castle (the medieval kind of castle) lake, when the cranes arrive from warmer regions.
The record is more than 26 000 cranes.

My parents has a couple, they live in couples, that comes every year.
You can recognize the male crane since one of his legs is dipping when he is flying. His is named Tom and we have been able to follow him every year from when he was single, got married and had a kid.
One year he was insane coming to my parents' house pecking on the windows and cars really early in the morning.
They filmed it and my dad was on the local news.
Not everyone can be proud to have an annoying crane waking you up every morning.

Painting eggs is another tradition and I must say it's much easier in Sweden since almost all eggs are white, so you can see what you have painted more clearly.
Apparently the Christians were fasting for 40 days, maybe some are still doing that and when they were allowed to eat again, at Easter, they had a lot of eggs saved.
Here the girls are painting eggs.

Happy Holi!

Today we are celebrating the festival Holi and, as usual, we are hiding indoors.
Holi is the festival of colors, but in our neighborhood it's more like a color and water war between kids and teenagers and I've never liked those kind of surprise, splash games.
Leya celebrated Holi in school yesterday, since it's holiday today, with a water war and face painting.
She loved it!

Today we did some color experiments and you can watch one here.

Me with hair

My friends here in Nepal are of course curious to see what I looked like with hair and my mom was kind enough to send me some old photos.
This is when I was 22 and was saying bye bye! to our puppies before I went on a five months trip to New Zealand on my own.

This is an old goody from about 25 years ago. It's my father, my 4 years younger sister Tess and me in our kitchen right before dinner.
I guess it's some kind of holiday since we have the party glasses on the table.

My parents went to Madras, as Chennai was called then, a long time ago and my mom brought home a sari that, I must say, suited me pretty well.

2003 Nicholas and I got married in Rome, Italy and by then I'd started to loose my lovely hair.
We found an amazing hairdresser that managed to cover the hairless spots with this creative hairstyle.

We were married in a small, very old chapel by a retired government representative and this place was like a walk-through-wedding place for Catholics who are not allowed to get remarried in church.
We were eight people in total celebrating our marriage and we had an amazing dinner at a local Italian restaurant.
It was the best wedding ever and I'm still in love with the gorgeous guy next to me!
(Well, not the guy next to me in this photo.)

Happy Shivaratri and Women's day

Monday it was the festival Shivaratri, the celebration of the Hindu god Shiva and the only day each year when it's legal here in Nepal to smoke something heavier than tobacco.
One day I will go to the temple Pashupatinath and celebrate with all the other crazy people.
There are so many sadhus, holy men, gathering for this festivity.

I'm so proud to live in a country where the Women's day is a public holiday.
Not even in Sweden, that is supposed to be sort of equal, there is a special celebration for women the 8:th of March.
Here are women performing a dance dressed in Newari traditional clothes.
Read about the Newar people here.