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Singing, music, and street noise. Greetings from Nepal. I thought you might be interested in hearing this. This side is puja music recorded at a famous temple about five hours walk from Gurkha. It's music a band played with some kind of brass instrument, like a trumpet, and a drum. Something like a drum, my boss ringing the bell. They play this apparently to call the people together, and after that they had the ceremony. They sacrificed a goat and a chicken which we later ate. They all threw flowers on the statue of the god and kneel to the statue of the god, reincarnation of the god goddess Shiva. On the other side is music made at a public ceremony one night, dancing music. They had two boys and two girls, sometimes a boy and a girl, who danced in front of the whole audience, and sometimes just one boy and one girl, with the band playing in the background. They danced, they never touched each other, the did the same movements all together. Each movement has a certain significance, which I don't know. Behind them was a band of soldiers, soldiers or something playing. This is the music you hear. It's taken at a crowded time so you hear other things like children yelling, policeman trying to clear out the area, so forth. The day that it was, a holiday, was the anniversary of the first day of the institution of the Panchayat System, which I am supposed to be working in. This is the system of local democracy. That morning they had up a big procedure at the playing field where they also had a band. They took a picture of the king, decorated it with flowers and carried it from one end of the town to the other and their backs followed by a band and people singing and walking, and this is the king is obviously a symbol of national unity to a very large extent. The only [?] divided country where communications are slow. Transportation is only by foot in most places. The king serves to hold the country together, especially because there's a lot of different groups living here. And different languages spoken. So they tend to regard the King as a symbol of national unity. Then in the afternoon, they had games the soldiers had games, volleyball. Other games. People watched, people came and went and at night, they had this dancing celebration, which I recorded. They also had a skit, a short skit. They gave out awards for the different people who've done well in the past year, youth activities or ladies activities or so forth. So it was very nice. At the time I'm recording this it's December 22nd, just three days before Christmas. So Merry Christmas, but you probably won't get it until Easter or sometime. So happy Easter as well. The few songs on this side are children's songs that some boys recorded and my house since the first week we were here [?].

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