Not much happening here in Chhap lately, just wrapping up PST and getting prepared to leave for Kathmandu in a couple days! I did spent the majority of my Saturday night with my head inside my shower bucket however, throwing up everything in my stomach. It was miserable. Thank god I even had a bucket cause there was no way in hell I was making it out of room and outside. Anyways, the next day my family thought I was literally dying because they brought a traditional healer to my room 3 different times. The first time I was dragged out of my room and onto a cushion on the freezing cold stone floor and was made to sit there for 15 minutes while I got smoke waved around my head and turmeric thrown all around me. After spending my night puking up everything in my system, having smoke waved around my head was not something I was ok with. Then the man tried to feed me water with turmeric and salt added. I refused. Then I almost started crying because the 5 women around me starting yelling saying it was good but I was not about to drink turmeric water as I guessed that there was a 500% chance it would come right back up. The next 2 times I straight up told my mom that I didnt need a healer. SO, I spent the rest of my day in bed with a fever watching Harry Potter. My sisters kept trying to feed me food (which I denied repeatedly) and would periodically come check on me and tuck my blankets in. It was actually really sweet. Although one time I woke up and my sister was outside on the 4 inch wide ledge outside my window peering in, because apparently I didnt hear the knock on my door. She had climbed out of her window and shimmied along the ledge until she reached mine. Even 2 days later I still dont have a huge appetite but I think my family has accepted that I am not in fact dying and are just excited that I am eating again. THey have a very interesting concept of what is good to eat when you are throwing up however. They kept telling me the bananas that I was eating were bad for my stomach and that daal bhhat was good. It just sucks that I had to be sick for 2 of my last couple days left in Chhap! It definitely seems like 3 months in is a time when a fair amount of volunteers get sick however, as I was not the only one this week using a bucket for purposes other than showering...
The day after my lovely little illnees, us volunteers in Chhap completed our community projects. I think I mentioned it in an earlier blog but we showed our community how to permagarden. It was actually really successful and I only hope they continue to maintain the garden so it produces visible results. I felt a bit useless for the whole training though; since I hadnt eaten anything the day before I mostly sat around and gave directions because I was so exhausted. We managed though. After permagardening my sister showed me how to make roti and then I took out my jar of peanut butter and some bananas and we spread it on the roti. They thought it was the most delicious thing, it was hilarious. Glad I can make roti now because peanut butter/banana sandwiches are one of my favorites at home.
So today is our last group training day and then tomorrow we have a Thanksgiving celebration in our villages! Well sort of. Seeing as we dont have a turkey or any of the associated items that one eats for Thanksgiving dinner, the volunteers in Chhap and I decided to put on a little "going away tea party" for our families instead. We're having our local tea shop "cater" the milk tea and samosas and were going to make roti with peanut butter and have apples and oranges as snacks. I bought my families a gift of ceramic tea cups in town today, so I think I'll give them my gift that night as well. I'm going to be an absolute wreck when we leave on Friday...I really dont want to leave Chhap. I feel like the past couple months have been "camp" and that now the "real" Peace Corps is starting. Ready or not, we're getting kicked out of the nest and being set loose in Nepal for the next 2 years. Only slightly terrifying. I'm really glad Christmas falls about 3 weeks after we start at permanent site, because it will be good to see other volunteers after we have spent a couple weeks all aloney and have had time to process our strange new surroundings.
So the expat/Returned Peace Corps Volunteer community in Kathmandu sent up a Thanksgiving feast for us today!!!!!! They sent up 3 pans of stuffing, 2 apple pies, cranberry sauce, rice krispie treats, corn casserole, and mashed potatoes. It was amazing...we all ate so much.
Bye for now, will blog from Kathmandu before I leave for permanent site!!
-Alex
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tihaar and a trip to Melamchi
I would like to start this blog off by saying that I got my eyebrows threaded here and they have never looked better. best part is it only cost me 25 cents and it included a nice eyebrow massage! I was a bit scared because my sister took me to the beauty parlor and I just lay down and let them do their thing, hoping I would still have an eyebrow left when they were done, but I was surprisingly pleased with the result.
I also received 3 boxes from home last week! Best day ever!! You guys are the best. Thank you to Beth/Morgan, Celeste, and Jenni for sending me wonderful American things. The glow bracelets were a huge hit in Chhap and I have been thoroughly enjoying the peanut butter, granola bars, and chocolate you all sent me!!!
I got back from Indiviudal experience days a couple days ago! Quite the adventure...basically half of my friends missed their bus so there ended up being 6 of us in one hostel room; thankfully we had our own beds, but our room was a bit on the moldy side and everything was just slightly damp. Not too enjoyable to wake up and realize my face was all snuggled up in the blanket. However, the hostel had tato paani (hot water!), which was fantastic. The town I went to was called Melamchi, and it basically seemed like every mentally ill person in Nepal lived there no joke..we watched these 2 men dance and hit sticks in the middle of the street for about 2 hours, almost getting run down by buses or cars every 5 seconds. It was the most bizarre thing. Melamchi didnt have a ton to offer that was different from Chautara, but it was situated right next to a big river, which was fun to explore. It's also situated along a trekking route, so we saw a lot of white people, which is actually strange to see after being here for 2 months and only seeing other volunteers. Our second day in Melamchi we decided to visit some other volunteers and ended up walking 20k, which resulted in my foot having about 5 blisters. Peace Corps really does eff up your feet. The day we left Melamchi we had great luck in getting a bus to Zero Kilo, which is the town where we switch buses and get on another to Chautara. To give you an idea of how slow these buses are/how bad the roads are, it took 2 full hours to go 23km, which is around 15 or so miles. Our bus wasnt crowded though so we all plugged in our ipods and just relaxed. We got off in zero kilo and got some snacks and waited for our bus to Chautara. After an hour of waiting our bus finally came but it was smashed full of people. There were already around 15 or so people on the roof of the bus, which gives you an idea of how much room there was inside (hint: none). Peace Corps doesnt allow us to ride on the tops of buses (not that I would enjoy sitting on the roof of a bus anyways) so we all squished inside with the 40 or so other people standing in the aisleway. For the next 3 hours we all stood in the aisles, hanging on to the luggage rack for dear life every time the bus went around a sharp turn, which was often. Then it started raining for some odd reason (monsoon season is over), so the 20 odd people on the top of the bus came inside and thats when my feet proceeded to go numb for the next hour, as I wasnt entirely sure they were on the floor, more like squished between 10 other people and their bags. Atleast no one vomited into the aisleway, which is what happened to other volunteers. Two hours into this wonderful ride we stop to help another bus and discover my friends Voranan and Nick sitting on the side of the rode, as their bus had blew a tire. We helped them and eventually made it back to Chataura, where we discovered it was now the arctic. Chhap has been freezing cold recently and compared to Melamchi (which was oddly warm), it was brutal. I'm typing this now with sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a United Airlines blanket wrapped around my head/neck like a strange turban.
Right now Nepal is in the middle of Tihaar. Tihaar is the second biggest festival in Nepal, and it is also called Dipaawali or Diwaali. Tihaar literally means "festival of lights," so most of Chhap is decorated with colorful sparkling lights on all the houses. It reminds me a lot of Christmas! Chautaura is super crowded and the shops have been devoting all their time to making various colored khajaa (snacks), so they are overflowing with various colored biscuits, cookies, and crackers. There are 5 days of Tihaar, and today was Laxmi pujaa, where cows are garlanded and worshipped. Cows are sacred animals in the Hindu religion, so all of my family's cows were given a garland of flowers to wear and had rice and red paint sprinkled all over them. See facebook for some photos. Also there has been a baby goat explosion in Chhap and its great because tiny baby goats are running around everywhere!
The fourth day of Tihaar is where you worship your own body. all of my extended family and I got together (about 25 people in total) and gave each other tikka and flower garlands. We all sat on the floor in a big square and in front of each person were a couple candles and twisted string soaked in oil, which we then lit on fire. THe whole room was aglow and it was a really cool to watch, not to mention the heat given off by the tiny fires was a nice reprieve from the freezing cold concrete I was sitting on. That night we also did this thing called a "Dausi" (i still dont know exactly how its pronounced or what it was, no matter how many times i asked). Basically the youth club in Chhap raises money by going door to door in Chhap and singing and dancing in front of the houses, and in return, the houses bring out platters of food and money and raksi and its all donated to the youth club. However, the youth club sings the SAME ONE VERSE over and over and over for like 3hours so after a while I went to bed because I couldnt dance in a circle for that long. It was also about 9:45 pm and my bedtime is normally 9 at the latest so i was struggling. My sister also decided to do my makeup that night for the dance and let me tell you, our version of what makeup is attractive in america is not the same as in Nepal. First, my lips were lined in black eyeliner pencil and then filled in with this brownish lipstick (i rubbed the lipliner off as soon as i could). Next my eyes were lined in jet black eyeliner. I wouldnt let her fill in my eyebrows, because the previous day she busted out the pencil and complely colored in my eyebrows in black and then I had to go to class like that. I looked like a clown. However all the women here thought it was amazing because I got a lot of "dherai raamros" which means "very good/beautiful." WRONG.
Today was the last day of Tihaar...its called Bhai Tikka, where sisters worship their brothers, and vice versa. Again, see facebook for photos, but basically all of the girls worshipped the boys first, which included dumping mass amounts of flowers on their heads along with putting colored paint on their forehead. We then gave them gifts, which mostly consisted of fruit, candy, flowers, and other nuts/snacks. I gave my brother this chocolate/nut snack pack that are very popular here for Tihaar and a pack of cards. Since my brother also has 2 other sisters, he received a lot of gifts. In a strange way, today reminded me a bit of christmas, exchanging gifts and whatnot. Afterwards the boys worshipped their sisters and my brother gave me material to make a new kurta surwhal with!! All of the girls also received money from all the male family members and we were given multiple flower garlands to wear around all day. My sisters also gave me a pashmina scarf and a hat!!! I think its because I'm always freezing my butt off here. Same sex siblings dont usually exchange gifts on Bhai Tikka, so I had nothing to give them in return...I'm going to need to get my family a really great gift before I leave Chhap next week :(
Ive been able to process permanent site placements over the past week and I am feeling a lot better about my situation. I was very overwhelmed at first at being so isolated and far away from everybody, but I think that the town I am placed in definitely has its perks. My village apparently built me my own office because they waned an agriculture volunteer so badly, and I get to learn about beekeeping! Apparently my town is fairly advanced in terms of agricultural methods, and use hydropower in order to water their potato fields, which they then sell to major markets in Pokhara. The village also has a very active women farmer's group, which my host mother participates in. I'm only a 45 minute walk away from Internet and a fairly large market, which is better than some other volunteers being 4 hours away. My town is also only 3km off a major paved road, which should make transportation to Pokhara for training/visiting other volunteers fairly easy. I'm getting excited to move there and settle down, but I'm also terrified of permanent site. I'm also getting really sad to leave Chhap!! My family has been fanastic and I dont think I could have asked for a better site for pre-service training.
Well, next week will be my last blog entry from Chhap! :( Then its off to Kathmandu for the week (just found out our hotel has hot water and wireless. hallelujiah) Thanks for following along so far!
-Alex
I also received 3 boxes from home last week! Best day ever!! You guys are the best. Thank you to Beth/Morgan, Celeste, and Jenni for sending me wonderful American things. The glow bracelets were a huge hit in Chhap and I have been thoroughly enjoying the peanut butter, granola bars, and chocolate you all sent me!!!
I got back from Indiviudal experience days a couple days ago! Quite the adventure...basically half of my friends missed their bus so there ended up being 6 of us in one hostel room; thankfully we had our own beds, but our room was a bit on the moldy side and everything was just slightly damp. Not too enjoyable to wake up and realize my face was all snuggled up in the blanket. However, the hostel had tato paani (hot water!), which was fantastic. The town I went to was called Melamchi, and it basically seemed like every mentally ill person in Nepal lived there no joke..we watched these 2 men dance and hit sticks in the middle of the street for about 2 hours, almost getting run down by buses or cars every 5 seconds. It was the most bizarre thing. Melamchi didnt have a ton to offer that was different from Chautara, but it was situated right next to a big river, which was fun to explore. It's also situated along a trekking route, so we saw a lot of white people, which is actually strange to see after being here for 2 months and only seeing other volunteers. Our second day in Melamchi we decided to visit some other volunteers and ended up walking 20k, which resulted in my foot having about 5 blisters. Peace Corps really does eff up your feet. The day we left Melamchi we had great luck in getting a bus to Zero Kilo, which is the town where we switch buses and get on another to Chautara. To give you an idea of how slow these buses are/how bad the roads are, it took 2 full hours to go 23km, which is around 15 or so miles. Our bus wasnt crowded though so we all plugged in our ipods and just relaxed. We got off in zero kilo and got some snacks and waited for our bus to Chautara. After an hour of waiting our bus finally came but it was smashed full of people. There were already around 15 or so people on the roof of the bus, which gives you an idea of how much room there was inside (hint: none). Peace Corps doesnt allow us to ride on the tops of buses (not that I would enjoy sitting on the roof of a bus anyways) so we all squished inside with the 40 or so other people standing in the aisleway. For the next 3 hours we all stood in the aisles, hanging on to the luggage rack for dear life every time the bus went around a sharp turn, which was often. Then it started raining for some odd reason (monsoon season is over), so the 20 odd people on the top of the bus came inside and thats when my feet proceeded to go numb for the next hour, as I wasnt entirely sure they were on the floor, more like squished between 10 other people and their bags. Atleast no one vomited into the aisleway, which is what happened to other volunteers. Two hours into this wonderful ride we stop to help another bus and discover my friends Voranan and Nick sitting on the side of the rode, as their bus had blew a tire. We helped them and eventually made it back to Chataura, where we discovered it was now the arctic. Chhap has been freezing cold recently and compared to Melamchi (which was oddly warm), it was brutal. I'm typing this now with sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a United Airlines blanket wrapped around my head/neck like a strange turban.
Right now Nepal is in the middle of Tihaar. Tihaar is the second biggest festival in Nepal, and it is also called Dipaawali or Diwaali. Tihaar literally means "festival of lights," so most of Chhap is decorated with colorful sparkling lights on all the houses. It reminds me a lot of Christmas! Chautaura is super crowded and the shops have been devoting all their time to making various colored khajaa (snacks), so they are overflowing with various colored biscuits, cookies, and crackers. There are 5 days of Tihaar, and today was Laxmi pujaa, where cows are garlanded and worshipped. Cows are sacred animals in the Hindu religion, so all of my family's cows were given a garland of flowers to wear and had rice and red paint sprinkled all over them. See facebook for some photos. Also there has been a baby goat explosion in Chhap and its great because tiny baby goats are running around everywhere!
The fourth day of Tihaar is where you worship your own body. all of my extended family and I got together (about 25 people in total) and gave each other tikka and flower garlands. We all sat on the floor in a big square and in front of each person were a couple candles and twisted string soaked in oil, which we then lit on fire. THe whole room was aglow and it was a really cool to watch, not to mention the heat given off by the tiny fires was a nice reprieve from the freezing cold concrete I was sitting on. That night we also did this thing called a "Dausi" (i still dont know exactly how its pronounced or what it was, no matter how many times i asked). Basically the youth club in Chhap raises money by going door to door in Chhap and singing and dancing in front of the houses, and in return, the houses bring out platters of food and money and raksi and its all donated to the youth club. However, the youth club sings the SAME ONE VERSE over and over and over for like 3hours so after a while I went to bed because I couldnt dance in a circle for that long. It was also about 9:45 pm and my bedtime is normally 9 at the latest so i was struggling. My sister also decided to do my makeup that night for the dance and let me tell you, our version of what makeup is attractive in america is not the same as in Nepal. First, my lips were lined in black eyeliner pencil and then filled in with this brownish lipstick (i rubbed the lipliner off as soon as i could). Next my eyes were lined in jet black eyeliner. I wouldnt let her fill in my eyebrows, because the previous day she busted out the pencil and complely colored in my eyebrows in black and then I had to go to class like that. I looked like a clown. However all the women here thought it was amazing because I got a lot of "dherai raamros" which means "very good/beautiful." WRONG.
Today was the last day of Tihaar...its called Bhai Tikka, where sisters worship their brothers, and vice versa. Again, see facebook for photos, but basically all of the girls worshipped the boys first, which included dumping mass amounts of flowers on their heads along with putting colored paint on their forehead. We then gave them gifts, which mostly consisted of fruit, candy, flowers, and other nuts/snacks. I gave my brother this chocolate/nut snack pack that are very popular here for Tihaar and a pack of cards. Since my brother also has 2 other sisters, he received a lot of gifts. In a strange way, today reminded me a bit of christmas, exchanging gifts and whatnot. Afterwards the boys worshipped their sisters and my brother gave me material to make a new kurta surwhal with!! All of the girls also received money from all the male family members and we were given multiple flower garlands to wear around all day. My sisters also gave me a pashmina scarf and a hat!!! I think its because I'm always freezing my butt off here. Same sex siblings dont usually exchange gifts on Bhai Tikka, so I had nothing to give them in return...I'm going to need to get my family a really great gift before I leave Chhap next week :(
Ive been able to process permanent site placements over the past week and I am feeling a lot better about my situation. I was very overwhelmed at first at being so isolated and far away from everybody, but I think that the town I am placed in definitely has its perks. My village apparently built me my own office because they waned an agriculture volunteer so badly, and I get to learn about beekeeping! Apparently my town is fairly advanced in terms of agricultural methods, and use hydropower in order to water their potato fields, which they then sell to major markets in Pokhara. The village also has a very active women farmer's group, which my host mother participates in. I'm only a 45 minute walk away from Internet and a fairly large market, which is better than some other volunteers being 4 hours away. My town is also only 3km off a major paved road, which should make transportation to Pokhara for training/visiting other volunteers fairly easy. I'm getting excited to move there and settle down, but I'm also terrified of permanent site. I'm also getting really sad to leave Chhap!! My family has been fanastic and I dont think I could have asked for a better site for pre-service training.
Well, next week will be my last blog entry from Chhap! :( Then its off to Kathmandu for the week (just found out our hotel has hot water and wireless. hallelujiah) Thanks for following along so far!
-Alex
Thursday, November 8, 2012
permanent site announcements!
I find myself craving the oddest things in Nepal. I may or may not have eaten an entire jar of peanut butter over the past 2 weeks using only my fingers to scoop it out. But at home, I never crave peanut butter. Hell I dont even eat beef at home but here I find myself wanting buffalo to eat with daal bhaat just so I can actually chew on some food instead of swallowing mouthfuls of rice that require no active jaw movements. The other day I actually got angry because I really wanted a pancake and yet I had no access to one. I dont even like pancakes that much! But sitting up on my roof after showering all I could thing about was a whopping plate of pancakes from Perkins with apricot jam (do I even have a Perkins at home? No). Nepal does weird things to you.
Things have been getting busier as we approach the end of our PST. This week we've had 3 group training days in town, presenting our "Each 1 Teach 1" projects. They were 1.5 hour long presentations done by each village on a different subject. Chhap presented on Family Poultry Farming and how to create a sustainable poultry farm for your village. Other subjects we learned about were breastfeeding, maternal/child health, creating a budget, and how to create a homestead family farm.
This Saturday we leave on our 3 day long "individual experience trips." We're paired up in boy-girl pairs, and I'm going with my friend Alejandro to a town called Melamchii. None of us have any idea what we'll find in our villages, but im excited to explore! Peace Corps is giving us daily stipends and we're responsible for figuring out our transporation and food and all of that.
We had a regular old party in my house tonight! Its rice cutting season, so my sister and brother are gone all day in the fields cutting rice with half of Chhap. I think it is custom that when your family's rice gets delivered by a big truck its customary to feed everyone who helped out that day. So we had 20 people over for dinner last night (you can imagine how much rice was cooked). My parents slaughtered a chicken and I was a little skeptical because all of was cooked and floating around in this stew with random parts but then my family pulled out some breast meat they had set aside for me! They had cooked it earlier because they knew I'm not a huge fan of random chicken parts. Its little things like these that makes me realize how much my family actually cares and want to make me happy.
I FOUND OUT WHERE I'LL BE LIVING FOR 2 YEARS! we had our site announcements today...all of us were SO nervous. I'll be placed in Tulsibhanjyang, Syangja district for the next 24 months!! Somehow I ended up being volunteer who is farthest away from everybody...PC staff put up a map of the 3 districts we are placed in with little pictures of our faces over our sites, and my head is wayyyyy at the bottom of the map. I'm about a 2 hour bus ride away from the nearest volunteer, Kerry. My job roles include seed production, beekeeping, and vegetable cultivation! We all got packets describing our job titles and who our counterparts/supervisors are. I can't go into too much detaills about my family for safety reasons, but they all look great and the pictures of my house look pretty nice!! I think i'll have electricity again and maybe running water. I'm actually really overwhelmed right now...its frankly a bit scary to be the volunteer who is the most isolated, but its also weird to know where i'l be living for 2 years...I feel as if lately that PST would never end!
Will update next week with pictures from my individual experience trip!
-Alex
Things have been getting busier as we approach the end of our PST. This week we've had 3 group training days in town, presenting our "Each 1 Teach 1" projects. They were 1.5 hour long presentations done by each village on a different subject. Chhap presented on Family Poultry Farming and how to create a sustainable poultry farm for your village. Other subjects we learned about were breastfeeding, maternal/child health, creating a budget, and how to create a homestead family farm.
This Saturday we leave on our 3 day long "individual experience trips." We're paired up in boy-girl pairs, and I'm going with my friend Alejandro to a town called Melamchii. None of us have any idea what we'll find in our villages, but im excited to explore! Peace Corps is giving us daily stipends and we're responsible for figuring out our transporation and food and all of that.
We had a regular old party in my house tonight! Its rice cutting season, so my sister and brother are gone all day in the fields cutting rice with half of Chhap. I think it is custom that when your family's rice gets delivered by a big truck its customary to feed everyone who helped out that day. So we had 20 people over for dinner last night (you can imagine how much rice was cooked). My parents slaughtered a chicken and I was a little skeptical because all of was cooked and floating around in this stew with random parts but then my family pulled out some breast meat they had set aside for me! They had cooked it earlier because they knew I'm not a huge fan of random chicken parts. Its little things like these that makes me realize how much my family actually cares and want to make me happy.
I FOUND OUT WHERE I'LL BE LIVING FOR 2 YEARS! we had our site announcements today...all of us were SO nervous. I'll be placed in Tulsibhanjyang, Syangja district for the next 24 months!! Somehow I ended up being volunteer who is farthest away from everybody...PC staff put up a map of the 3 districts we are placed in with little pictures of our faces over our sites, and my head is wayyyyy at the bottom of the map. I'm about a 2 hour bus ride away from the nearest volunteer, Kerry. My job roles include seed production, beekeeping, and vegetable cultivation! We all got packets describing our job titles and who our counterparts/supervisors are. I can't go into too much detaills about my family for safety reasons, but they all look great and the pictures of my house look pretty nice!! I think i'll have electricity again and maybe running water. I'm actually really overwhelmed right now...its frankly a bit scary to be the volunteer who is the most isolated, but its also weird to know where i'l be living for 2 years...I feel as if lately that PST would never end!
Will update next week with pictures from my individual experience trip!
-Alex
Thursday, November 1, 2012
daily life and LPI results...
So I've found that I've really discovered a rhythym in Chhap, and it makes me sad that all of this is once again going to change in about 4 weeks. I am very excited to come back in a year or two though and actually have full conversations with my family, so we can finally talk about real things. I also realize how important living in a small community is to me. I've grown up my entire life in small communities: Winthrop, Lewisburg, and now Chhap. I've never really lived in a place, that I can remember at least, where I dont see familar faces everyday. I'm not entirely sure I'm cut out for big cities. The other trainees and I have developed a schedule here: go to class each morning at 7, get some dudh chiyaa (milk tea) after class from the same chiyaa pasaal (tea shop), eat daal bhaat with our families and go to class in the afternoon. We usually return to the same tea shop for afternoon tea as well, and the family who owns it knows us by name (as do most residents of Chhap) and knows that we like a lot of sugar in our milk tea, but very little hot peppers in the fresh samosas they often make. I'm used to getting home from class each day and helping my younger sister cook dinner while listening to music and chatting about our days. In the mornings I'm greeted by chickens and cows the second I step out my door, and I'm used to Namaste-ing atleast 3 people in the morning on my way to the bathroom. Once I discovered a routine, the days started flying by. Then of course there are days like today that take me by suprise and are not routine at all, such as when my cousin Sunil (who is 9) decides to drink some water out of the toilet cup used to clean yourself after going to the bathroom. He's still alive I guess....
I feel like i've also gotten very good at just doing nothing. While another trainee was in a private language class with our teacher and I was waiting for my turn, I napped on a wooden bed I found on the balcony, listened to some music, and just looked out at the mountains for a good 2.5 hours. I think there is an art of doing nothing, and the Nepalis have it down. Not saying that they are lazy, but I think that when you spend your entire life working hard from dawn to dusk once you reach a certain age you enjoy not doing anything with your day. My grandma spends her days napping in the sun and waiting for her grandchildren to cook her food. At first I was like come on woman, you must be bored out of your mind. But then I realize that she probably married young, had kids young, and worked 50 years of her life taking care of her family and animals. So now she can finally enjoy not having anything to do. Plus I think shes probably highly entertained by my attempts at language and other American oddities. She's always trying to feed me more food and I'm actually scared when its just us two for morning daal bhaat because she feeds me half the pot of rice and I have to lay down for a solid hour afterwards. My grandma is probably only 4'8" on a good day but I'm scared of insulting her by not eating all the food she gives me!
Chhap is FRIGID in the mornings and evenings now. I've taken to sitting on my roof after eating morning daal bhaat as it is the only way I can get warm. Sorry for continuing to reiterate how cold showering is here but I actually want to cry when its time to shower. Its gotten to the point where other trainees will be like "oh, you look really nice today," and then another trainee will be like "yeah, I showered today." Basically sums up showering in Nepal in the winter months.
We had our mock Language Profiency Exam last Saturday and I scored as Intermediate Mid! We have to reach Int. Mid level of Nepali by the time we swear in as volunteers (Nov 30), so I was really happy with my results. I was really nervous before though...it was a half hour of one-on-one language with testers from Kathmandu and they voice record the whole thing so they can listen to it later with other testers and decide your score. I was asked about my Nepali and American families, to describe Nepali culture, what I do in my free time, what my degree was in, how my twin sister and I are different, how I felt the first time I rode a horse, and then there was also a mock situation I had to respond to. Mine was that I had bought a bunch of groceries and then realized I had no money. Its just nice to know how the final LPI will work now and since I already scored where Peace Corps wants us to be, I dont need to stress as much this last month.
And now, for a small Nepali lesson containing some of my favorite Nepali words, mostly because they sound so ridiculous when you say them:
raangichaangi- "colorful"
chijbij- "items" (prounced cheez-beez)
ukusmukus bhayo - "I'm full/satiated"
waripari- "walk around"
wokwok- "throw up/vomit" (one of my favorites; us trainees went around saying we were going to wok-wok about 50 times a day during Dashain due to the copious amounts of unidentifiable meat we ingested)
Also, not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier blog posting or not, but I've had a Nepali name since I got here! Its Neha (pronounced nay-ha). I either get called Neha or didi (older sister) here by everyone. Its weird that I've gotten so used to responding to such a foreign name, but only other PC trainees call me Alex. Its great when you dont know/cant pronounce peoples names though: everyone calls each other didi (older sister), bahini (younger sister), daai (older brother), or baai (younger brother). So i just go about my day calling everyone didi and daai and its great because i cant pronounce half their names anyways! Also every single persons last name in Chhap is Shrestha. I'm not joking...id say about 90% of the families in Chhap have Shrestha as their surname. Its because we are a Newari community (Newars are one caste in the Nepali caste system) and its one of the most popular last names. As you can imagine, this gets very confusing.
We have permanent site announcements next week! We just had our interviews this past week in order to get a feel for what sorts of things we would prefer to have at our permanent sites in order to be the most effective volunteers we can. Its crazy that in a week I'll know where I'll be living for the next 2 years...I guess my next blog post will reveal that all to you as well!
Hope everyone had a good Halloween!! I explained the holiday to my Nepali family and they were very confused (just tryin to accomplish Peace Corps Goal #3 here: sharing American culture with Nepalis!).
Dherai dhanyabad (many thanks),
Alex
I feel like i've also gotten very good at just doing nothing. While another trainee was in a private language class with our teacher and I was waiting for my turn, I napped on a wooden bed I found on the balcony, listened to some music, and just looked out at the mountains for a good 2.5 hours. I think there is an art of doing nothing, and the Nepalis have it down. Not saying that they are lazy, but I think that when you spend your entire life working hard from dawn to dusk once you reach a certain age you enjoy not doing anything with your day. My grandma spends her days napping in the sun and waiting for her grandchildren to cook her food. At first I was like come on woman, you must be bored out of your mind. But then I realize that she probably married young, had kids young, and worked 50 years of her life taking care of her family and animals. So now she can finally enjoy not having anything to do. Plus I think shes probably highly entertained by my attempts at language and other American oddities. She's always trying to feed me more food and I'm actually scared when its just us two for morning daal bhaat because she feeds me half the pot of rice and I have to lay down for a solid hour afterwards. My grandma is probably only 4'8" on a good day but I'm scared of insulting her by not eating all the food she gives me!
Chhap is FRIGID in the mornings and evenings now. I've taken to sitting on my roof after eating morning daal bhaat as it is the only way I can get warm. Sorry for continuing to reiterate how cold showering is here but I actually want to cry when its time to shower. Its gotten to the point where other trainees will be like "oh, you look really nice today," and then another trainee will be like "yeah, I showered today." Basically sums up showering in Nepal in the winter months.
We had our mock Language Profiency Exam last Saturday and I scored as Intermediate Mid! We have to reach Int. Mid level of Nepali by the time we swear in as volunteers (Nov 30), so I was really happy with my results. I was really nervous before though...it was a half hour of one-on-one language with testers from Kathmandu and they voice record the whole thing so they can listen to it later with other testers and decide your score. I was asked about my Nepali and American families, to describe Nepali culture, what I do in my free time, what my degree was in, how my twin sister and I are different, how I felt the first time I rode a horse, and then there was also a mock situation I had to respond to. Mine was that I had bought a bunch of groceries and then realized I had no money. Its just nice to know how the final LPI will work now and since I already scored where Peace Corps wants us to be, I dont need to stress as much this last month.
And now, for a small Nepali lesson containing some of my favorite Nepali words, mostly because they sound so ridiculous when you say them:
raangichaangi- "colorful"
chijbij- "items" (prounced cheez-beez)
ukusmukus bhayo - "I'm full/satiated"
waripari- "walk around"
wokwok- "throw up/vomit" (one of my favorites; us trainees went around saying we were going to wok-wok about 50 times a day during Dashain due to the copious amounts of unidentifiable meat we ingested)
Also, not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier blog posting or not, but I've had a Nepali name since I got here! Its Neha (pronounced nay-ha). I either get called Neha or didi (older sister) here by everyone. Its weird that I've gotten so used to responding to such a foreign name, but only other PC trainees call me Alex. Its great when you dont know/cant pronounce peoples names though: everyone calls each other didi (older sister), bahini (younger sister), daai (older brother), or baai (younger brother). So i just go about my day calling everyone didi and daai and its great because i cant pronounce half their names anyways! Also every single persons last name in Chhap is Shrestha. I'm not joking...id say about 90% of the families in Chhap have Shrestha as their surname. Its because we are a Newari community (Newars are one caste in the Nepali caste system) and its one of the most popular last names. As you can imagine, this gets very confusing.
We have permanent site announcements next week! We just had our interviews this past week in order to get a feel for what sorts of things we would prefer to have at our permanent sites in order to be the most effective volunteers we can. Its crazy that in a week I'll know where I'll be living for the next 2 years...I guess my next blog post will reveal that all to you as well!
Hope everyone had a good Halloween!! I explained the holiday to my Nepali family and they were very confused (just tryin to accomplish Peace Corps Goal #3 here: sharing American culture with Nepalis!).
Dherai dhanyabad (many thanks),
Alex
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