Warning: Pictures of dead animals in this post!

My little bookcase/family shrine.

Hub day!

My room.

My new family-a friend and her son, my Didi, my Bahini and my Bhai.

View from my house-not too shabby.

Chautara break time!

Chautara time!

The kitchen at my new house.

Little brother (Bhai)

The giant swing (ping) that is erected for Dahain 

Little sister (Bahini) on the far right.

Goat sacrifice.

My old Didi-Hira.

The homemade somosas, goat meat, coke and beans that my Didi made for me.

The improved cookstove that we made.

Family time!

Didi and Bhai.

My hajur ama (grandma)

My Didi, her son and Husband

Whole family 

Tullughaun ping!

My Didi and her friend on the ping!

THE CUTEST BABY GOATS EVER!! GAAAHHHHH!!!

My new house.

The tika(blessing) that I received for Dahain

My traditional outfit.

16/10/13

Things have improved, and also gotten more stressful since my last post.  I am feeling better, no thanks to the funky food that I’ve had to eat.  However, we have a big mock Language Proficiency Exam coming up, which is stressing me out.  We have to achieve “Intermediate Mid” by the final test, which is a month from now, so I am trying for “Intermediate Low” for the mock test.  It will be 20-30 minutes of someone talking to us and asking us questions about our life, in Nepali.  It’s difficult because our teachers only know some of the things that MIGHT be on the test, and not all of it, plus, no one has told me what level I’m at now, so it has been hard to judge how much and what I have to study.  We will be having that test in the next week, after which we leave for two weeks to a conference and to visit our permanent sties. 

Speaking of, I found out that my permanent site, where I will work and stay with a host family for the next 24 months, is in Dang province, in the municipality of Pachkule, in the town of Kaushilapur.  Dang is the southern most part of Nepal, right along the Indian border.  It is flat and abounds with poisonous snakes, tigers and malaria.  It will be a totally different environment than the mountainous one, which I have been living in.  I will be with a Tharu family, an ethnic minority whose native tongue is not Nepali (!!!!).  There are some suggested agriculture projects in the region, but I, to some extent, get to decide what I will work on.  I am interested in aquaculture; mushroom farming, spice crop farming, women’s empowerment and education group formation and possibly working with sex workers-they abound along the Indian border.  I am feeling apprehensive and excited. 

Dashain has been happening for the last week.  It is the biggest Nepali festival, kind of like Xmas.  People come home from all over the country and world to be with their families; kids get new clothes; many, many castrated goats are slaughtered and eatern; friends’ and families’ houses are visited.  Since we are in school for some much of the day, and week, we only really experienced two days of Dashain, but they were interesting…  I missed the goats actually being slaughtered, but did see the buthchering process.  Eating the meat was a challenge for a couple of reasons: First, they do not clean the meat to the extent to which I am accustomed, Second: the meat is offered to you until it runs out, which can take up to a week.  At this point, I am offered meat, which has not been re-heated, from a bowl in a cupboard-it gets pretty funky.  Bizarrely, I have not gotten sick from it *knock on wood*.  I ate some funky meat, tripe soaked in blood and blood cooked down to the consistency of ground beef-both of the later were actually far more pleasant than the more traditional forms of meat. 

In addition to the meat, which is a huge part of the celebration, all of the women get dolled up, so it was an opportunity for me to wear my new traditional outfit, as well as some makeup, which was weird.  I visited my other family, which was lovely-my Didi fed me homemade samosas and walked me all around the village, plus, we took lots of family pictures, which I will try to post, if internet speed allows. 

Every village erects a ping, or swing-either from the branch of a very large tree, or, more traditionally, from two large bamboo poles.  One or two people, who squat, and can go twenty or thirty feet in the air, ride these swings. 

The kids are off of school for two weeks, and everyone just seems to take it easy, visit and eat all of the time-it’s been interesting to watch, but I still feel like an outsider and don’t get a ton of enjoyment out of it. 

Monday the 20^th we leave for a conference to meet our counterpart-this is the person who will be in the office in our district.  They will help get us established and partner with us on projects.  Unfortunately for me, my office is 17 k from my site, so it will be less of a partnership and more of a resource that I will use once a month.  This will mean that I will have an even harder time establishing contacts and projects in the community, but, as my Dad says, I guess this means that the PC has a lot of faith in me-faith, which, at this time, I feel, is misplaced…

After the conference, we will travel to our permanent site to meet our new families, which in a crazy prospect.  I hope to bond more with this family than with my family during PST.  It seems bizarre to me how close people have gotten to their host families here in Pipal Dana.  I guess I just don’t think of people as actual “family” has quickly.  But two years seems like more than enough time to get close to people.   On a lighter note, I will only be about an hour bike ride (yay, I get to ride a bike!!!!) from my nearest volunteer, which was closer than I anticipated.  Strangely, he is the same volunteer who was my direct neighbor at my first house-he just can’t escape me!

Well, off to have dinner-same thing every day! (Please send food!!!)

Xoxo,

Zoop

Family Dinners and Diarrhea

8/10/13-10/10/13

I am sitting in my room with my new little brother and sister, they are writing me messages in English and arguing.

I am trying to spend more time with them, since I have very limited time at home and feel like I get very little time with them, I would honestly rather spend the time by myself, but they are usually entertained looking at my old magazines, so it’s fine.

It’s been a crazy week-we have done three technical trainings in the past three days-each one at least 3 hours (which is on top of one or two language classes/day), and some as long at 6 or 7 hours.  I am exhausted.  We have one day of normal classes-with four hours of language classes (ughhh) and then we have a hub day the next day-when we find out where our permanent sites will be.  I am very nervous, although the fact that there are no places that I absolutely do not want to be makes me feel a little calmer.  There are some people who have pretty specific expectations and I feel like that’s a recipe for disaster. 

Other than that, things are pretty much the same every day.  Language class is getting a little better, but there is just so much material every day and I still feel like the worst person in my class, which, with the exception of math classes, I am not used to. 

I went back to my old family’s house for the first time, last night.  They were very happy to see me.  My hajur ama just kept patting my face and hair and saying things, of which I could understand nothing, because of her accent.  I had dinner with them, although I was the only one who had lentils and vegetables.  I wondered if they could no longer afford better food, since the PC was no longer paying them for me to stay there-a very sad thought. 

Then, the next day, we went back to install and improved cook stove, as our last technical training during PST.  The stoves are made of mud and handmade bricks.  It costs a family about 400 rupees and takes an afternoon-and can change their lives.  It improves the indoor air pollution from smoke, cooks faster and with less wood.  I was glad to be able to do that for my family, although PC didn’t tell them that were not going to be able to use if for nearly 3 weeks.  For families with more money, this would not be a problem, but I highly doubt that my family could afford to cook on gas for 3 weeks-I will be talking to PC about this, tomorrow, when we have hub day.

Today was a rough day-I came down with my first gastro-intestinal issue of my stay here-all day in bed, and in and out to the bathroom-it was not great.  By 5:30 I managed to drag myself out of bed in order to choke down some plain rice, which, if I could keep down, would be very good for my poor stomach.  OF COURSE, on the one day that I wanted rice, my family made roti (like naan), beans and meat-I choked down what I could and await my body’s decision about whether or not it’s going to stay with us.  I’ve gotta make it into Chautara, as tomorrow we find out where are permanent sites will be-plus, I am hoping that my first package from home will be waiting for me!

Xoxo,

Zoop

Pictures! Finally!

Training Center-Kathmandu

Our First Birthdays-Marvin and Bora

Tea Break

Lakhsmi, the lovely dog at our training center

On the road to Chautara

My first host brother, Nabin-he was kind of a terror, as 13 year old boys tend to be.

View from my neighborhood.

A hike to a school, temple, river and water mill.

A sacred pipal rook, or ficus tree.  You can often see them towering above other trees on distant horizons.

Gate of the local school.

Rice paddies.

Temple of Kaali 

Group shot!  Ben W., Owen, Priya, Hannah, Alex.

A view of the valley and river.

Walking the tiny path between the river cliff and the canal to the water mill.

Taking a break with a refreshing mango juice box.

Even the taillights are beautiful, here.

Goats near our school.

The football field near our house.

29/9/13

Tonight is my first night in my new home.  I feel like a failure, like a shallow, materialistic American.  My new family is obviously better off than my old family, and my comfort level has gone up, considerably.

I had a very stressful, exhausting day of starting classes with a new teacher and class-horrible and humiliating, packing my room and saying goodbye to my family, and moving into my new room.  My hajur ama (grandmother) sobbed when I left, and held my face in her hands, saying that they would do whatever it took to let me stay.  A horrible, heart-wrenching moment.  I will visit at lease once a week, but I’m feeling very guilty, at the moment.  I keep telling myself that the PC made the decision, and I had to think of my own health, in the situation.

I had a nice dinner with my new family (how weird to say that), watched some TV with the children, who seem darling, and retired to my room early to read and go to bed early, which is, coincidentally, what I’ll be doing now.

Xoxo

Zoop

2/10/13

Third night in my new house-it’s lovely.  It was nice to be able to un-pack and settle in, as I am very much someone that needs to be able to nest.  I put up all of my pictures of family (pariwar), friends (sati) and Montana (mero ghar)-looking at all your lovely faces made me smile.  It’s nice imagining that, while I’m here studying or eating my 50^th plate of rice, that, hopefully, someone is thinking about me, on the other side of the world.

After dinner tonight, I brought out a “National Geographic” and I explained the globe to my family, tomorrow I think we’ll hang the map up in the kitchen.

While my home life has improved exponentially, school has taken a turn for the worst.  As I moved houses, and thus, villages, I am now working with a new teacher and group of students.  All of the students are very nice, but my new teacher is a terror.  He is frustrated with my lack of reading and writing (in Nepali) ability and humiliates and belittles me in class-it’s been pretty difficult.  The problem lies in the fact that starting us on reading and writing so early has slowed down our learning rate, something which the other teachers understand and so have limited the amount of reading and writing that we’ve been doing.  However, this teacher is pushing that, at the detriment of speaking skills and cultural understanding-I hate this.  School is now a 4-6 hour/day nightmare. Ughhhhh