Because "Serious" is so 2008.

*This is a letter to “Jeremiah Goldstein.” He was chosen to be a part of the IFP Nepal 2010 program.

Dear Jeremiah,

Congratulations on your acceptance to the Nepal IFP Program. What a summer you will have!

As a veritable expert on everything, especially those things related to spending two months in Kathmandu, I would like to offer you some tips. I will promise only to curb your fears and enhance your pleasure. Take heed and carry a big carrot:

1. Due to the economic crisis, the masala (Nepali for “spice”), the financial meltdown, and the high altitude you will more than likely suffer from some sort of stomach thing: just go with the flow.

2. Bring LOTS of money. This will enable you to partake in a vast array of imperialist feeling activities: frolicking in the rolling fields of the Garden of Dreams with its big white column drenched buildings and afternoon swims at the Hyatt while eating a Caesar salad topped with crumbled bacon and a 2002 Blanc de Blanc vin de Francais.

3. Bring a lurid, pink North Face rain jacket. Because of the monsoons, Jere-ji!

4. This sentence likes to wear bug spray, sunglasses, and sunscreen; this sentence thinks the last one was probably a hall monitor in high school.

5. Drink cappuccinos every day. If you choose the right place, you will get a complimentary cookie. You may also find this time appropriate to people watch and/or make small talk with waiters. You will feel at home; you will feel local; you will feel like one of the gang; you will probably cross your legs.

6. Rides on public transportation serve as educational and cultural relativism exercises. If your head is in someone’s armpit, you know you have succeeded.

7. If you are at a restaurant with a large group of people, please, do not hesitate when there is only one food item left on the dish: GRAB it or someone else will. This shows strength and virility.

8. As you are in a landlocked country, avoid using phrases such as: “The ocean breeze is lovely in Kathmandu!” There will be uncomfortable silences or awkward chuckles, lip biting and eyes wandering (maybe rolling).

9. For peat’s sake, bring a backpack and a portable, durable water bottle—it is necessary that you look like a backpacker at ALL times. In that vein, walk around with your IFP group in Thamel every chance you get. You will blend in! Say things like, “This chaos is burning my Zen I think I’ll go trekking to cool off”; also, consider wearing a hemp vest.

10. Don’t cry about the arrested development. Embrace it and then write about it on your blog. Make sure to use words such as “empowerment”, “potato”, and “character building”.

That should do it. Of course, each trip is unique unto itself and like the snowflakes we all are, the experience you have will indubitably diverge from mine. I hope you do not feel the need to travel has been obfuscated by this comprehensive list of tips, dramatizations, poetry, and vociferous travel writing. Go. Be. Exist. Cross those legs!

Bright Shiny Stars to You! I wish to hear of your progress. Please do not call me or email me. I only receive snail mail; I rarely respond.

Warm Kindness and Best Sincerely,

Whitney “Gloria Gaynor” Fisher