Adventures in Wonderland

Friday, June 13, 2014

Tons and tons of photos.

Little Brother and Sister Photobooth time!

One room of the five total filled with our yearly potato harvest.

Danny!

Auntie, Nephew and Ama

Planting corn and gourds.

Danny helped.

See-sometimes I do work!

I thought this was going to be fresh squeezed lemonade. Instead, it turned out to be fresh squeezed sugar cane juice with a squeeze of lime-eww.

Danny's first real dog food.

Buba plowing our fields with our water buffalo.

Christine, Ben and I making my perma garden.

What happens when you spill ash on yourself.

Planting.

Finished!

Celebratory papaya!

Group shots from In Service Training.

Nik getting threaded.

Making Johl Mol with the family. (A natural insecticide using poop, water and leaves.)

Happy Holi!

Danny played at Holi, too!

Danny with his kitten friend, who later died.

I bought this toothbrush to use on Danny, but it just became his favorite new toy.

Getting so big!

Packing up the potato harvest.

On the bus.

Nepalgunj.

Me and Hannah.

YUP. What?

Yes, painted clocks-always useful.

No, that is not a tan-that's how dirty your feet get from walking around Nepalgunj.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

7/6/14

My computer is swelling-a sure sign that monsoon is on its way, and, perhaps, that I may not have a computer by the end of it…

Since I last wrote I went to that PC conference. It was a nightmare. Four days, eight hours each, sitting in a room full of Nepalis playing stupid games. The conference could have been two days shorter had PC treated us like adults and just TOLD us the information. The worst was the participation game where they gave us fake money for answering questions or commenting-no matter how inane the comment (and ohhh, were they inane!)-The Nepalis loved that shit; they were popping up and down to answerer questions, endlessly-horrible.

As my friend Matt pointed out, we will never remember what they teach us at these conferences, we’ll just remember the nights afterwards-hanging out with friends we haven’t seen in months. We discovered an amazing Indian tandoori place (we were only 15 minutes North of the border), had coke floats, and introduced people to “Wet, Hot American Summer.” Good times.

Unfortunately, along with the good times came some pretty raunchy stomach problems. We’re still not sure what did it-either the hotel food or some sort of stomach virus-nearly half of the volunteers were down. I avoided it until the last night, and am still, over a week later, suffering.

The original plan, after PDM Conference, was to go to KTM for a couple of days-celebrate Brittany’s Bday, meet with some NGOs, talk with some PC staff. But, with the political situation in Thailand getting worse, my med-evac to Thailand was cancelled. No KTM, no Thailand, just back on a bus to my village.

Getting my sick butt all the way home was easier said than done, however. After 45 minutes I realized that I should probably hunker down for the evening and hope for the best, the next morning. I splurged on a hotel room with a bathroom. However, I forgot that this is Nepal-all the extra 1000 rps (10 dollar) got me was three inches of hot water and a cold shower, afterwards-wonderful.

I finally got back to site and have spent the last week sickly lying on my bedroom floor (in between trips to the toilet), fanning myself. I did venture into town to buy a fan and some mustard (both game-changers). While the power is on, the fan makes things a lot better.

After five days, I found out that I’m going to Armenia (what?!) on June 12th. I’m not sure how long I’ll be there-probably about a week. I’m excited for three reasons: 1-I’ll finally be taking care of this wisdom tooth situation. 2-I get to get out of this damn country. 3-Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) looks really cool-good food, museums to see, etc. I’ll spend a day in KTM before I leave-I’m hoping to meet with and NGO, and also to meet with the PC tech person-hopefully he can help me figure out what’s going on with my computer…

So, it’s been a rough two weeks, but the future looks up. I’m hoping after a couple week break from site I’ll come back not hating it, anymore.

I’ll post pictures, soon!

Xoxox

Zoop