monkeys, leopards, leeches...OH MY MY MY

I am back in Thamel having finished training and my first week at placement. To sum up training, I learned that if a leopard comes toward you on a path and there are no intersections in the foreseeable future, duck and find a religion. Most other things I read about in preparation, such as feet are are the lowest part of your body in all senses. If somebody's legs are stretched out (which you can only do if nobody is on the other side of the room, or else they can see the bottom of your feet, which is the worst disrespect) they will wait until you move them before thinking about stepping over you. If they must step over something, they will touch their fingers to the object, then their head and then their feet, connecting the highest part of the body with the lowest as a physical appology.

Another useful lesson was to not ask where amaa (mom) is if she is not serving you daal bhaat. She is most likely "impure" (or menstruating) and is not allowed in the kitchen; nor is she allowed to sleep in a bed raised above the floor during this time if she shares a room with baa (dad). We were told to tell our families that our country makes a pill that allows us to NEVER get our periods, if they ask. And they ask everything and anything. The first question I got with my training family was if I am married. The second was have you eaten daal bhaat in the last 30 minuets. This did not mean that they were offering me food before dinner time, but it is simply a formality to ask if you have eaten daal bhaat, since they don't ask "how are you?"

The other things we learned in training were about the scams that happen in Thamel. One of which happened to me a few hours after we discussed it. I was at Monkey Temple, and a teenage boy came up to me asking if I would buy him milk for his little siblings. Apparently they take the milk carton and return it for 3/4 of the price to buy drugs. So if I ever think someone is truly in need, I need to open the carton so that they have to drink it. But there is a daal bhaat center for the street kids if they actually want to get food, but there are too many rules for most of the kids to follow, namely don't sniff glue.

In our training village, Bistachaap, I lived with a family with 2 bahini (little sisters), an amaa and a baa, 4 goats, one cat, and 20 spiders. I learned that Adrienne's amaa, who lives in the house across the path from mine was my father's mother...making Adrienne my aunt! Adrienne actually had two amaa's, because the first one couldn't produce a boy, so the husband married another. Now that the husband has passed, the amaa's live together!

Four spider bites on my face, 20something misquito bites on my body, and four leeches on my feet later, training was finished. I am now living in Badikhel, about a 50 minuet walk from Bistachaap. I have a bai (brother), two bahini's, amaa and baa. [Nora..] their names are Ram hari (ramro means good, so I think it means good Hari), Sunita and Sangita. Then I have a third sister named Sarita, but she was married last February and lives in a different village now. I was invited to go with my sisters to Sarita's village for a festival next Saturday, which should be very interesting! The festivals are starting to pour in!

My family is really lovely. Unlike the training family (which didn't work out as well as other volunteer's families did), my perminant family asked me if I liked chilis, and since I said no, they haven't put any in my dhaal baat, making it eadible now!! The father always watches Hindi music videos on his tv before bed, so the girls sit in the kitchen and chit chat over chiyaa. Everyone is very calm and the amaa is always smiling. My littlest sister told me she sees a lot of promise in my Nepali and in 5 months she will help me become fluent!

And the village is beautiful! I keep thinking of the Josh Ritter lyric, "clouds clung to mountains without strings." The rice paddies are a little hard to navigate, especailly when every laughes at the way I jump through them to avoid leeches. The leeches should be gone in a few weeks when the rainy season ends.

The build site is quite interesting. Because of the drought a few months ago, all the festivals and Moaist strikes that prevent the workers from going to work, everything is VERY, VERY slow. Right now, the volunteers are moving sand into the first floor to make plaster for the walls, but it took us about 8 hours over the past two days to move what seems like a shovel full. And then we had to bring 100 pipes down a huge, rocky hill, because they needed to bring them to a different construction site, and no real workers were there to help, and the Jeep can't make it up the hill at all. We moved 50 in 2 hours. All I can say is I will be very fit by the end.

Other than that I have spent my time reading and washing my clothes in the river.

Though I can only remember a time when you are supposed to avoid animal feces while walking, I am loving Badikhel.

More updates soon! Would love to hear how everyone is doing! Taataa! (Bye!)