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From Stuffed to Hunger

There’s a lot to say about the past couple weeks, and again I regret not having any formal writings on the details of our experience and activities, but I had two specific experience that stood out to me enough to share.

The first occurred during our stay at Namobuddha Monastery. Up to this point in this trip, we had experienced excessive amounts of the delicious local Nepali dish dhaal bhaat. Our homestay families in the village were famous for the amounts of rice and potatoes they would pile onto our plates, oftentimes despite our protests. All this is to say that we had gotten used to eating well.

The monastery was different, though, and not hours upon arrival my stomach had figured out that something was terribly wrong. Meals in the monastery were delicious–in my opinion some of the best on the course so far–but the plates were decidedly smaller. And, as fate would have it, I had a knack for accidentally signalling the servers to serve me less. I struggled to find the point to my challenge, as the instructors had suggested I do, as to me it felt like I was just incredibly unlucky.

Then, one lunch, I was served a mountain of rice that dwarfed even some of my village meals, which, of course, I devoured. The pain and bloating that resulted from that meal put my slight discomfort from being hungry into perspective. In other words, I regretted it.