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!)

when toilet paper is a luxury

I don't have a lot of time, but I am doing well and still enjoying the culture shock. The village is absolutely beautiful! I will make sure to write about my experiences next time, but for now here are photos:

Nepal Photos

which way is the street with no name that looks like every other street, but is different?

I SAFELY arrived in Kathmandu, after possibly making the black list in the Dehli airport for not understanding Hindi, and when finally understanding that they were asking me if I had a lighter in my checked luggage I responded no because since I don't smoke I didn't remember that I bought some to light candles. They put my name on the naughty travelers list and confiscated the evidence. The flight from Dehli to Kathmandu was breath-taking, as I watched the clouds slowly reveal mountains and the greenest rice paddies I could have ever imagined. I always found architecture models funny because of the way that foam board creates topography and skips several feet to the next level, but the paddies look exactly this way from the plane.

As a disclaimer to the next part I would just like to state that I love it here and am very happy. However, the drive from the airport to the training guest house almost made me turn around and fly home. I thought that drivers in Rome were bad. Even though they drive on the left side of the road here, you would never know it. If someone has an exit on the right coming up in an hour, they will drive into on-coming traffic for that entire hour. "Merging" is a nightmare. Not to mention the goats, cows and roosters that roam freely and feed off the grass on the side of the highway. I had a ten minuet delay because two cows were sitting in the middle of the road, and since it is a life sentence if you hurt a cow, someone had to nicely ask them to move.

Once I got to the hotel, within minutes I saw my first monkey swinging from the handrails of my neighbor's roof terrace. That night I met two people that will be with me the entire time, and we have been discovering Thamel together over the past few days. The streets are so unbelievably colorful, with Nepali clothing, store signs, incense, and loud noises. The streets are pretty densely packed together, and with all the winding roads I can't figure out if cars and tuk-tuks are constantly honking (honks by the way are made from old shampoo containers) as a courtesy to let you know they are coming around the bend, or take make sure you get out of their way.

So far I have seen Durbar Square, with about 13 temples and pagodas, and went about a 30 min drive out of the city to the river where they cremate bodies and then pour the ashes into the water. It is interesting to learn about all of these Hindu customs by seeing them in action. Though it ruined my appetite when I saw some feet on a burning block, it was nice to see the family waiting for the whole 2.5 hours it takes wearing all white and praying. This contrasted with the bright reds, purples and turquoise of the other Hindus visiting the nearby temple really made an impact on how close families are with each other and how customs are still strictly followed to this day. (Mourners are supposed to wear all white for one year.) Next to this area are also the hermit caves, where devotees locked themselves in rock caves by the water to pray and hope that others will bring them food and water. Also next to the cremation platforms is a house for the dying, so that you won't make your house impure and can easily be transported to the river.

My friend Adrienne and I also took a yoga class together. It was not in the best style for us, but I really felt like I was in the right place. The room was filled with sitting pillows and Hindu statues. The yoga instructor's voice was also completely soothing and I felt more relaxed than I think I ever have felt from yoga in the past.

Thamel really is a Westernized city. So far, in preparation for eating Nepali food for the next 6 months, I have been to great Italian and Thai restaurants. You can also buy anything imaginable when it comes to trekking gear, books, and Nepali-style skirts and shirts. The supermarkets have American cereal, chocolates and toiletries, if you don't mind having your shampoo's expiration dated for 2007. And most meals have cost me about $2 and I couldn't finish my plate.

Today was my first day of training. We had some language lessons (I think I might actually understand!!!) and our first dhal baat (lentils and rice). You get a huge mound of rice, a small cup of lentil soup and some curried vegetables and spinach, and with your hand you mix it together and there you go! I had to sit on my left hand to make sure I didn't use my "dirty hand" to feed myself. This is the meal I will be eating for breakfast and dinner every day for the next six months. Yummm. Adrienne and I are keeping a tally of how many times we can eat it before we get tired of it. She thinks 15, I'm shooting for 30. It's actually pretty tasty right now though.

I'm going to the training village on Thursday and find out which family I am living with sometime next week. In my training group there are 10 people mostly from the States, the UK and Australia. Only 4 of us will be here the whole time I am, but this includes one guy from New Zeland who will be on the construction site with me. (Others are working in orphanages or teaching English.) I believe there are 4 others already on the construction site. Several festivals are coming up that I look forward to experiencing, hopefully I will know enough Nepali to have someone explain to me why they are sacrificing goats that particular day, and chickens the other.

I should stop for today before the power goes out and I lose all of this. Hope all is well with everyone! Love and miss you all