To me the perfect day of the festival was the one that I spent home and did nothing.

To understand why it was perfect to me first I better describe what a usual festival day looks like in a Nepali village. The most important part of the year is the first two weeks of October when Dashain begins. It's a two-week-long holiday when people celebrate God knows what. I managed to ask at least five locals about what they celebrate at this time of the year but the responses were quite various, ranging from "family" till "food and drinks". So once again I had to turn my face to Wikipedia and I found that actually Dashain is meant to symbolize the victory of good over evil and it is the most important national festival in Nepal. My favourite part of the celebration is that villagers build big swings from bamboo and the children play there all day long.

But the people who I asked were right in a sense that during the festival families gather together and indeed there's a lot of eating, drinking and gambling going on in the villages.

The locals here were very nice and almost all houses in the near villages invited us to celebrate with them, which meant that we go there, eat and drink as much as we can and then go to the next house and start it again. That went on all day long till we decided to go home. Of course by the time we got to the last house we couldn't eat or drink anymore and we still had to climb back to the school in the dark. So no wonder why an average day of ours was very exhausting. However after the third day of the festival I made up my mind and said "It's a holiday to me too!" so I took a day off and did not go anywhere. I probably missed a lot of rice, raksi (traditionally home made Nepali alcohol), spicy food and good conversations but still it was my best decision since I came here.

That day was just simply perfect. It was the very first day since September when I had literally nothing to do. There was no school, I did not have to do chores or go to Damauli. So I stayed in bed until 9 a.m. then just sat under the tent all day long, writing my diary, listening to music, watching some documentaries. It was simply perfect.  Although I have to admit even the easiest day challenged me in some ways.

After doing nothing the whole day, I got very hungry in the evening. Usually it's Mina who makes fire and cooks for us but there was nobody around except me.  I was excited that finally I had a chance to eat something other than rice so I decided to peal the last 5 potatoes and make french fries since I had no better idea. I often cook at home but cooking here is very different... First of all I had to go for firewood then cut them into small pieces. By the time I finished all the preparations, I was already sweaty and dirty. Making fire is not nearly as easy as I thought. I mean making fire outdoors is not rocket science but there in a fireplace where is not much oxygen left after I put the wood in, keeping the fire alive is pretty difficult. After half an hour somehow I managed to have proper fire, so then the cooking started!

 Frying the potatoes was fairly easy however cooking on fire is a bit different then cooking on a stove since you can't change the size of the fire. It is as it is.

With all the preparations it took me around one and a half ours to make french fries but at the and I was proud of myself and happy because that was my first "western" dish since I came to Nepal. I know it's bit of a shame that I celebrated Dashain with french fries at home but do not worry, the next day I started going to local houses again and eat with the villagers.