Living in a house without a relevant door

Hi!  We have been in the beautiful village of Nangi for three days now.  We spent half a day in Kathmandu, but we were all so tired from the end of the school year that we napped through most of it.  We then spent about a day and a half in Pokhara.  We loved it there.  The kids found their second favorite pizza place in the world there, and we had a chance to do some shopping for some gear for Jessica's Australia trip.  They have lots of stores with great outdoor gear.

Our trip to Nangi from Pokhara was a full day event.  We drove for 3 hours from Pokhara to Beni.  While we were in Beni, we made lots of stops to buy tiles and other building supplies for the project.  The kids were getting so anxious to get going to the village.  We then took the jeep part of the way to the village - some of the road was a little frightening, but Jessica was a very calming influence on me when I started to freak out :-).  We walked the last part of the way.  It is a beautiful walk and we were surrounded by BEAUTIFULLLL mountains the entire time, and we could see the beautiful village across the beautiful valley from where we were (my obnoxious teenager added that part - she thinks that I say that the mountains are "so beautiful" too often).  When we first arrived, there was a huge welcoming committee.  Women gave us flower necklaces, and they made a big meal for us.  LOTS of people from the village stopped in to say hello.  In addition to our family, Mahabir (the man who started this whole volunteer program) and two men from Thailand had also just arrived.  Those men have a computer software venture, in which they design software for remote areas of the world for communication with larger city hospitals about medical issues. The food that they made was really good - chicken, potatoes, cabbage, spices, rice.  Even the kids liked it (somewhat) and ate a lot (whew!).

The next day we got started on the project.  The kids were disappointed that they didn't get to do more, but the work consisted of removing the old solar water heater that was on the roof of the shower room.  Definitely a little too dangerous.  We also had fun just playing around in the village.  The kids are enjoying all of the open space.

Yesterday, a lot got done on the project.  Again, a lot of the work is difficult for the kids to do, so they were a little frustrated.  I found it interesting just to watch how the villagers got things done.  One thing that they did was put a large plastic tank (1000L)  up onto a 5 m stone tower using a "ladder" made of two poles with some wood cross pieces nailed to it.  One guy started up on the tower and then had to move to a tree to make way for the tank.  Another guy had to get up in a tree and precariously hold on while he hooked up the inlet tubing.  We have pictures that I'll post in a day or two when I get them downloaded.  We also were in awe of how they can just fashion a tool out of what is around them.  If they need to plug up a tube while they work on it, they just cut a tree branch that is about the right size using a sickle (which they all carry), trim it down and then plug up the tube with it. They can make anything with one of those sickles.  They also tiled one wall in the shower room.  This village is definitely in need of a level - they seem to confuse the concept of things being on a straight line with things being level...  In the US or Singapore, we connect piping using fittings.  Here, the piping is plastic, and they connect it by heating up a metal plate, melting both ends of the piping, and then sticking the melted ends together.  A little easier than what we do...

Jessica and I brought up about 15 donated cameras with the idea that we would teach some kids in Nangi how to take pictures and then let them take pictures of whatever they wanted.  We thought it would be neat to see what was important and interesting to them.  Yesterday was day one of that project.  We met with about 13 10th grade girls and showed them how to work the camera that they were using.  Then we walked with them to a little stream that Krishna, one of the teachers, sent us to.  It was a long walk!  Instead to taking pictures of interesting Nepali things, they only seemed to want to take pictures of Jessica and me :-).  We have a million of those now - not exactly what we envisioned!  We are uploading their pictures to our computer, and then we are going to teach them a little bit about composition, etc.  Then we'll head back out again to take more pictures.  I am hoping that at the end, we can send their cameras home with them overnight and tell them to take pictures of what is really important to them - those should be interesting.  Although the pictures that we got initially were not exactly what we had been envisioning, we had a GREAT time with the girls.  They taught us a lot of Nepali phrases and questions.  They are tough task-masters -- they made us repeat them over and over and then they quizzed us constantly.  They also gave Jessica and I Nepali names, and now they only call us by those names.  Jessica is now known as Charna, and I am called Barsa.  Here are some Nepalese things that we have learned...
"What is your name?"  is  "Ta pie co nam keh ho?"  (I don't know how they really spell it - I'm writing it the way it sounds)
"My name is Charna" is  "Merdo nam Charna ho"
"Hello" is  "Na ma stay"  (spelled Namaste)
"I am from Singapore" is  "Ma Singapore dikhi aiko huh"  (that last huh is very grunty sounding)
The girls also made us remember all of their names and quizzed us on that.  They fed us plums that grow all over here.  We watched one of the girls catch a frog in the stream, and we all squealed when he got away and hopped toward us - squealing is apparently a reaction that spans all cultures.

We have gotten the hang of cooking meals over a single propane burner.  Lots of carbs - pancakes, pasta, biscuits, etc.  One thing that we are finding interesting is that there seems to be no time of the day before which it is inappropriate for people to come into our house.  This morning we had multiple visitors before 7 am.  People are in and out of here constantly.  They just come in whenever they want - and are always curious about what we are doing and what everything is that we have out on the tables in the house.  When the students are on their lunch break, they love to walk around the house and look in the windows at us.  The kids say they feel like they are in a zoo (funny, with my kids I have always felt like I lived in a zoo!).  I am trying to explain that we are such a novelty to the villagers and that they are just curious about us but it is still slightly strange.

P.S. Want to guess our favorite adjective? It has been used by Barsa to describe just about EVERYTHING. :-P