Suuahara, a 15 mile trek, and peeing goats...

More excerpts from PST! Sorry for the novel. If you actually read all of this, props to you. Its too hard to write actual entries, hence the excerpts, because im writing this blog over the course of a week and then uploading when i have internet so i hope what I say makes sense!

Its my goal during my peace corps service to finish all of BBCs "100 Books to Read before you die" list. Ive finished 19/100 so far so i have a long way to go. However, in the short 2 weeks i have been here, i have already finished 4 books, so i feel that this will definitely be doable! A PCV in Ethiopia sent us her flashdrive with 1000 kindle books preloaded so all of PC Nepal was able to get a bunch of new books! I now have 150 books on my kindle which is fantastic. It was like christmas morning when I got to download them all.... Call me a nerd but im very excited to start reading all of them.

Had a very busy day today. First, I did all my laundry from the past 2 weeks. you definitely need a good 45 minutes to hand wash all of it. My sister helped me and i now understand why quick dry clothes are better to bring....anything made of cotton is not going to withstand more than 5 handwashings. its brutal! you wring out your clothes and scrub them so much I think my sleeping t-shirt might be an XL now. I also helped my Language and Cultural Facilitator teach English to my younger cousins today. It was hilarious to watch them do their English homework..not matter how many times I tried to get Sunil to say "YELLow", he kept saying "ELLow." i probably repeated it 45 times but he still didnt pronounce the Y. That will be my goal by the end of the week. I also got henna today!! its on my wrist and hand. My friend marvin's younger sister did it for all of the trainees in Chhap. Will try and upload pics to Facebook so you can see. It should stay for around 10 days.

We had 2 Hub-site days this week. Very early mornings because its a 45 minute walk from Chhap (my village) to Chautara where the PC hub-site is and we normally arrive around 7. The days are completely filled with all sorts of lectures, from talks about diversity, how we are perceived as Americans in Nepal, accomplishing Peace Corps goals, and important medical information. Us Trainees also enjoy these days because we get to each things other than rice, such as noodles or apples or these weird shrimp flavored chip things...at this point, i'll take what i can get. This week we had people from USAID (US Agency for International Development) and Suuahara come and talk to us. Suuahara is an organization funded by USAID that tries to improve and sustain the health and well-being of Nepali people. They specifically focus on women/childrens health in the first 1000 days of life, as this is an important window in order to prevent stunted growth. Stunted mothers give birth to stunted babies, so it is a vicious cycle Suuahara is trying to stop. As volunteers, we will be working with this organization at our various posts. As I am an Agriculture volunteer (10 of us are Ag, 10 are Nutrition), I probably wont work directly with Suuahara that often, but it will still be a very good resource for me to use, as agriculture/food security and nutrition are intertwined. We finished up our first hub day with a nice hour lecture on the various types of diarrhea you can get in Nepal. Our PCMO (PC medical officer) is this hilarious Russian man who tells us that although we might feel like we are dying of diarrhea sometimes, we aren't, it only feels that way. Thankfully 19/20 of us have not gotten sick yet. Only 1 unlucky one who had to be the first to get sick. For once it wasnt me! My digestive system has been adjusting nicely, and i've been taking my probiotics religiously. Im actually hungry all the time because I think the rice only fills me up for an hour or two. We're also all adjusting to eat 2 meals a day: one meal at 9am and another at 7pm. Because us americans cannot handle that large of a break, we go to the corner tea shop and get milk tea and biscuits to satisfy ourselves inbetween daal bhaat.

Today was...interesting. Every day here never ceases to amaze me. Since Saturday is holy day here in Nepal for Hindus, we have saturdays off and are free to spend our time as we choose. My village, Chhap, decided to walk ALL the way to Pipl Daadaa (where other trainees live), which is 5 miles away. It took about 2 hours and wasnt too bad because most of it was downhill. Once there, we then decided it would be a good idea to go to the river, which was another 2.5 miles away. This time we decided it would be a fantastic idea to take a shortcut down a rocky creekbed and trek through a mile of rice paddy. By the time we reached the river, all 16 of us had soaking wet muddy shoes and were sporting some nasty sunburns. The river was cool though, and a couple people went swimming. The way back to Pipl Daadaa and my village was brutal. Because the entire way there was downhill, the ENTIRE 7.5 miles back was uphill, over dirt paths, creekbeds, and roads covered in uneven stones. We ran out of water halfway back and most of us looked dead; we were covered in sweat and our faces were red. By the time I reached Chhaap, a nice 3 hours later, I was ready to collapse. We ended up walking FIFTEEN MILES. I have never walked 15 miles in my life! Especially not straight up a creekbed or through rice paddies. Then, when I got home, my cousins randomly took me down the road and into a dark room where I was fed some random plate of food and given a "tikka" on my forehead (the red paint that Hindus wear). Then this man placed some flowers on my head and gave me 10 rupees, which is about 9 cents. It was the most confusing thing ever and apparently they were blessing the new house they had just moved in to and wanted me to be a part of it. Most confusing of all was that many of the women were speaking Newari, a completely different language from Nepali. Well I didnt even know they were speaking a different language considering my Nepali is poor at best, so I just sat there the whole time thinking I just couldnt undersand any of their Nepali. Then I went home and they fed me more food and kept trying to sneakily tell me that the water buffalo I was eating was chicken, when it most definitely was not. And now, as im sitting in my room typing this, a lizard is running around on my ceiling (UPDATE: an hour after going to sleep i also discovered a ginormous frog running around my room), I have discovered a lovely rash all over my legs, the entire back of my neck and arms are a deep shade of red, and I have a massive blister on my toe from where my sandals rubbed.n Good thing our medical kits are stuffed with every medicine ever invented! I covered my blisters with some Neosporin and a bandaid, slathered myself in hydrocortisone cream, and popped a Benadryl. Still not sure what to do about the little reptile lurking on my ceiling though. Heres to hoping that the rash and lizard are gone by the morning...

(UPDATE: rash and lizard were gone by morning. hallelujiah)

Today I was in my room during a break in class and I had just gotten off the phone and all of a sudden a goat pops its head in the doorway. I wasn't too surprised, as this happens quite frequently because I live literally 10 feet away from the goat pen and my room opens up into the goat area. Normally a tiny black goat wanders around my room while i do homework or read and its a fairly normal occurence. However, this goat was one i hadnt seen before and before I could do anything it stepped into my doorway and popped a squat and peed all over my shoes and my rug. Not something that happens to me everyday, having a goat pee in my room. Then it just looked up at me questioningly while I sat there shellshocked because I had just watched this animal urinate all over my shoes. On a different note, I discovered momo's today. They are these delicious vegetable filled (or meat filled) dumplings, kind of like a potsticker which you dip in a spicy sauce. mito chaa! that means quite tasty in Nepali.

My shower is finally finished in my house, which means I get to stop showering at the neighbors. They also installed a sink!! This is great because i have been washing my face with my waterbottle until recently. Language is going well, I can finally speak some small paragraphs to my family about what Im doing/learning or where im going. Yesterday our country director Andrea came to one of our sessions and talked with us. Last time we saw her was in Washington DC so it was weird to actually see her in Nepal. We had millions of questions for her and it was nice to get them answered and hear a litle more about our permanent sites. Even though we're only going into our 3rd week of PST out of 12, all of us are antsy to get out there and start working.

Hope everyone is well at home! I've heard the valley has gotten fairly cold, and I miss fall back in Washington! I've also been reminiscing daily about vanilla lattes from Rocking Horse and a nice cold beer, since women here don't drink in public. A common topic among us PCVs is food and what foods we miss. We're all looking forward to spending our last week of PST in Kathmandu, because the tourist district Thamel offers all kinds of western foods and foods from all over the world. According to my guidebook, Thamel also has a Barnes and Nobles and a North Face store! You can get paninis, lattles, gelato, sushi, pasta and lots more in Thamel so we are all quite loooking foward to discovering mini-America. Today I also ate an entire packet of Ramen dry since that is a common practice here in Nepal, and the kids in my family are always offering it to me. They called it "chow-chow". I dont recommend doing this in any country as it is quite disgusting.

I miss everyone at home! If you feel inclined, send me snail mail! :) Its so fun to receive mail here, and I promise I'll write back!! Props to Paul for sending me my first letter!

Namaste,

Alex