This September, Astha Thapa ’07 traded in the spectacular summits of the Himalayan mountains and sloping green hills that have surrounded her since her childhood for the flat lawns and wrought iron fences of Harvard Yard.

The view from her third-floor Grays common room may be less stunning than those in her native Kathmandu, Nepal, but it is one she has embraced fully since her arrival in Cambridge a few short weeks ago.

“I like Cambridge, it has such a homey feel to it. It’s so pretty, and you can walk everywhere,” the petite and lively first-year exclaims as she sips an Iced Mocha Blast at Au Bon Pain, a treat she’s already adopted as a favorite.

Harvard has offered many new tastes and freedoms for Thapa, not the least of which is walking around the relatively calm streets of Cambridge.

She says that Kathmandu, while surrounded by vistas of incredible natural beauty, is a city bursting at the seams, packed with people.

“There’s such population pressure, and it’s badly planned,” Thapa says.

The social pressures, especially for Nepali females, are also intense compared to those she’s found in Cambridge.

“Families are very important. In Nepal social life is everything,” she says. “I live with my grandparents, and my grandfather’s seven brothers all live in the same area.”

Living under the constant scrutiny of an extensive, ever-present network of kin left little room for typical American teenage rebelliousness.

“I never stayed out with my friends past 6 p.m. because I’m a girl,” she says, adding that her male cousins had no curfew.  

In Nepal, “people are always pressured to behave the way they are expected to behave.”

“Weddings, big social outings, everything is very formal in Nepal,” she says. “You have to be ladylike at these events, you’re forced,” she says. “But it’s good, it’s made me so sociable.”

Thapa says she knows her constrained upbringing and early curfew may sound bizarre to American students, but that it made perfect sense in the context of Nepali society.

“I can understand why you have to have it. It helped me spend more time with my family, to do my school work,” she says.

In Cambridge, however, movies, birthday parties and the festivities of Freshman Week have already kept her out in the evenings.