Happy New Year everyone! Today is not only January 1st,
but also marks the end of my first full month at permanent site. I survived! 1
down, 23 to go J Nepalis do not celebrate the New Year, as they
are on a completely different calendar than us (it’s the year 2069 here and the
15th of the month), so I watched some Lord of the Rings, ate a
little peanut butter, and passed out by 9:30. Such a party animal. Anyways,
looking forward to what’s in store in 2013! I have my first visitors coming to
Nepal in March from my hometown (hello Wathen family!) and am very excited to
see some familiar faces while they are on their spring break here.
Also, I now have internet!!!! Yes, the rat bedroom has
joined the 21st century. I bought a small internet USB stick that I
use to check email and facebook now. I load minutes onto the sim card just like
my cell phone here. Its both a blessing and a curse, mostly because I fail at
having any sort of self control while on the internet. Its also hard seeing
what people are up to and not being able to partake in any of those activities
back home, but its been great at keeping in better contact with people. I can
even Skype on it! So…send me some emails and I will respond to them!
I spent Christmas in Pokhara with the other volunteers and
like my internet stick, it was both awful and great. Awful because Christmas
day was really shitty. All of us were extremely homesick and I didn’t expect to
get that upset about not being at home. I skyped with my family and started
bawling when I saw my dog. Star and I were best friends earlier this summer
when none of my friends were home yet, so I got very sad when I saw her with
her cute Christmas collar on. For an animal lover like me, its hard not to have
a dog and a cat in your bedroom at all times like I did at home! However I’ve
come to realize I have essentially no control over my emotions lately, so I let
myself cry on the phone with my parents and then had a celebratory Christmas
dinner with the other volunteers (I ate enchiladas). We did a small white
elephant gift exchange at dinner and I ended up with 5 rolls of toilet paper.
Whats sad is that I stole that gift from someone else. Other gifts included a
tree branch (good job Chad), a “no-pooping” sticker, mint tea, a hat and some
kama sutra playing cards. Christmas eve
was fantastic though…I got to go horseback riding and have amazing views of the
Annapurna mountain range. Pokhara is beautiful…its Nepal’s tourist destination
and outdoor adventure hotspot. Its situated right on a lake so at the end of
the horseback ride, the nice Nepali man who took us let my friend and I canter
our ponies along the shore and it was so much fun. I could barely walk the next
day however. I was happy I was even able to go horseback riding though, as my
first day in Pokhara I was about 90% sure I had gotten giardia and spent my day
eating saltines and drinking oral rehydration salts and making 45 trips to the
bathroom (no shame about these things anymore). Nothing about 25 pepto couldn’t
fix though! Anyways, Pokhara was filled with lots of pizza and pasta eating,
beer drinking, and lots of quality time spent catching up with the other
volunteers. We also rented a boat on Christmas eve and rowed it across the lake
and hiked up to the World Peace Pagoda. It was an hour straight up of stone
steps but the view at the top was amazing. I put pictures up on facebook. Leaving
Pokhara was sad because we wouldn’t see each other again until April for our In-Service
Training, but each of our districts are still trying to get together every six
weeks or so.
Going back to site after a couple days of speaking pure
English was a bit rough but after about 2 days I settled back into the small
routine I have developed. My water buffalo had a baby while I was gone so we
have tons of fresh milk and I drink about 7 cups a day now. I’ve been busy
going to lots of farmer’s meetings and have started speaking a bit at each one
now that my Nepali has gotten slightly better. Each day I understand more, but
its still hard because people talk so fast. Highlights of the week include:
learning to carry about 30 lbs of firewood on my head! I had eaten shit down a
mountain trail the week before so while my sister and her friends carried about
50 lbs of firewood down the mountain, I wasn’t even allowed to carry the knife
because they thought I would kill myself if I fell again. And there they were
with 50lbs strapped to their back. But, after much persuasion they finally let
me carry a small load the other day and it made me feel very accomplished.
Not much else to report! The things that I once thought were
strange or unusual are getting more and more routine here. Its weird that its
January 1st. I’m sitting in a t-shirt. Its like living in the
friggin’ desert here. So cold in the mornings and at night but it gets to about
70 during the day. I want me some snow. Peace Corps is coming to my site in 10
days for a visit and I’m super pumped to get mail from the past month and get
specific language questions answered. Its weird because sometimes I get very
frustrated when I cant understand people here and I just want to yell at them
to speak English or I magically expect English to come out of their mouths, but
then I realize they cant and then I have to make myself really concentrate on
what they are saying. It takes up so much of my brainpower especially when I go
to Nepali programs where people are talking so fast. Its definitely getting
easier though .I also love my family so much. They are awesome..I feel that I
really lucked out. I stupidly realized the other day that my grandma actually
lives with us and wasn’t just visiting for the past month…it was very confusing
because my aunt has been here the past 2 weeks as well but she lives in the
district south of me so I thought that my grandma did too. Nope.
Happy Holidays! (which I guess are now over)
-Alex
