I really had no intention of bringing up the Internship Nepal program again. However, I could not help but notice the redesigned website, especially when Mr. Nardev Pandey’s last email told me that he would “post my part of the say in this matter in the Internship Nepal website shortly,” and to “please keep watching.”

My first response on seeing the redesign was that it was much cleaner and visually appealing. Mr. Pandey removed some of the items that current and past interns have found somewhat misleading. The program is no longer made up of professors, former interns, volunteers, senior journalists, and social workers. Instead, it was conceptualized by them. There isn’t mention of monthly meetings with Nepali senior photographers and weekly progress reports (though at the time of my viewing, 8:26am PST on July 5th 2006, the programs section of the site was not working). The promise of cultural and language lessons, however, can still be found on the FAQ page. Hopefully he has rectified this by offering these courses.

I was not surprised to see Mr. Pandey’s response to my blog posts. What I was surprised to see though, was that Mr. Pandey felt it necessary to share my passport information with visitors to the site. It seems that Mr. Pandey wants to portray my leaving as due to my personal unhappiness with my living conditions. I did indeed post that I greatly enjoyed my hot shower and flush toilet, but that was more at the relief of being away from Mr. Pandey, and not the actual physical comforts. I made sure to mention that I was only paying for two weeks of the program, having spent less than one week there and with the website listing a one month minimum. Nor did I express any disappointment at the selection of the Nepali Times as my placement for the internship, only the fact that it was not actually prearranged with the editors having knowledge of the program. The actual reason that I left the program, as stated before, was that Mr. Pandey felt it necessary to consistently lie to myself and Rene about anything from cell phone availability to aspects of the internship.

Sadly, Nardev Pandey never responded to my email when I asked him to address the truth behind many of his statements. Perhaps he was just upset or felt the need to discredit me after googling his name.