I am finally done organizing all of the photos that I took.  I've attached some below that I thought were interesting of life in Nangi, the people, etc.  If you want to look at more, you can go to Flickr, where I posted all of the pictures that I have so far: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51734689@N03/   .  There are two sets at this Flickr site - one set are the pictures that I took and one set are the pictures that the 10th grade students took.  I like a lot of their photos because they show what they think is interesting and important.  Warning...  there are lots of photos - sorry about that.  Hopefully, you can find a way just to look through them quickly.  My mom might be the only person who will feel like looking at them all, and she'll probably get tired of them, too, before the end ...

Hemkumari cooking us dinner on our first night in Nangi.  This is the kitchen in our house.

The students are doing morning exercises in the school yard.  School starts at 10 am and ends at 4 pm.  The kids go to school from Sunday through until lunchtime on Friday.  The school is in the background of the photo.

View of Dhaulagiri from the village.

The jars are exhibits in the "museum" in the campground.  I'm not sure how old they are.  They look like they are made out of pottery, but they are all made out of wood.  Some women from Nangi were cleaning them up while we were there.

This is the tool that does everything.  Everyone owns one and carries it with them all the time.  It's amazing all of the things that they can do with this tool...

These baskets are used for all kinds of things in Nepal.  They carry the baskets using the strap and putting it over their forehead.  They us them to carry everything from grass for cows to potatoes to fabric, and then they flip them over and the baskets serve as cages for their chickens.

A typical house made out of stacked stones covered with mud.

Typical kitchen...  They cook over a wood-burning stove and sit on the mats to eat.  This is the kitchen in Krishna's house.  He told me that when the walls get blackened from soot, his wife puts a new layer of mud on the walls so that they stay clean.

I think that this man told me he is 92 years old.  He is separating goat hair, which they use in mattresses and pillows (among other things).

One weekend while we were there, they caught the fish in their fishpond.  The pond belongs to the school.  The money that they raise from selling the fish to the villagers goes to the school.  It was a very social event - the whole village was out watching what was going on, so we went to check it out, too.

Loading up rocks for the foundation of the solar water heater footers.  It is amazing how much weight they can carry in baskets with straps over their forehead!

Picking plums at Moti's house.

The 10th graders that we did the photography classes with gathered around Jessica to see the pictures that they all took.  This picture was taken in the house that we stayed in.

Jessica teaching the 10th graders how to use Photoshop.

This is how they carry those baskets...

A classroom at the school in Nangi.

The front door of Moti's house.

This is how they cut wooden planks for houses and for signs.

This is where I washed our clothes.  It would be so cold to wash clothes here in the winter...

The view of the mountains just outside the village as we hiked down to Beni.

This shot shows the mountains in the background.  Nangi can be seen on the hill that is in the middle of the picture.

On the hike down...

Tomorrow I will try to post pictures that the 10th graders took.  I will also try to post pictures that Jessica took soon.  Hers are better than mine - she is so much more creative than I am!

Pictures from the solar water heater project

Here are pictures of the solar water heater project...

This is the old solar heater on the roof of the shower room at the campground.  It was damaged by hail, and it was not made to withstand the winter temperatures in Nangi.

Removing the old solar heater water tank.

Opening the box with the new solar water heater.

Getting the poly tank on top of the tower.  It wasn't that heavy, but it was very awkward to get up there.

This part made me really nervous.  Toya is up pretty high and not secured at all while he is connecting the piping to the tank.

Setting up the frame to hold the solar tubes.

This is the tool that they use to connect piping - no, they don't use a wrench...  They build a fire wherever they are, and they put this disk into the fire.  When it is hot, they stick the ends of the plastic tubing on it to melt the ends, and then they join the two ends together.

Putting the solar frame onto the roof of the shower room.  This part was frustrating for me.  The frame is made to be on a flat surface.  Since the roof is sloped, we had to figure out a way to either lower the back end or raise the front end.  I thought that cutting the frame to lower the back end would be better, but I was told that doing that would void the warranty, which we didn't want to do.  So instead everyone insisted on building concrete posts and setting the front end on the those posts.  This makes me nervous, but I gave in to what everyone thought was best...

Chitra pouring water on the concrete pillars.

This shows that open pipe that was recommended to us as a safety relief device.  Uuuummmm...  no...

We took hot showers and are clean!!!  Just a few small things to do still in the campground, but basically it is finished - hooray!

Now for the solar heater for the volunteer house...  There was no real existing structure to put the solar heater on, so we had to build one.  We need to get the solar heater up high enough so that it can gravity-feed into the shower.

They have filled two footers with concrete and rebar and are working on the other two footers.

Mixing up the concrete for the footers.

The bottom legs of the platform are done...

This was as far as they had gotten when we left.  Once the concrete has had time to fully set, the poly tank will go up on the top section and the solar heater will got on the lower part of the platform.

Tomorrow I am going to post pictures of the scenery and sights in Nangi...

Pictures!

I just got back to Singapore after taking Jess to Shark Bay in Australia (north of Perth).  She is going to volunteer there for 2 1/2 weeks with a marine biologist grad student.  She thinks that she might want to be a marine biologist, and this ought to give her some idea of what they do day in and day out.  The researchers haven't been out on the boat for over a week because it has been too windy there, but the forecast is for the weather to settle down today or tomorrow.  Their plan is to do "shark tagging" on Tuesday.  I am pretty sure that the sharks that they are tagging are tiger sharks - yikes!!  I am a little nervous, but she seems like she is in good hands.  They dive with a huka (spelling?) - where the diver gets air from a hose straight from an air compressor on the boat - instead of with tanks.  This will be new for Jess.  Last night she went with the research group to an Aboriginal festival, where she had a chance to try dugong (she didn't like it) and kangaroo (liked it, but said it was tough).  Today they were playing some fun sports games against another research group to celebrate 4th of July.  She is living in a trailer and will eat all of her meals, etc with the group.  She was really nervous because they are all older than she is, but I think that she will have a great experience.  I was sad to leave her, though - I'll miss her for the next 2 weeks!

Anyway, here are some pictures of our favorite people in Nangi...

Kami and Talmuna

Ganga - teaches high school English

Krishna - teaches 9th and 10th grade math

Toya - he is the village "jack of all trades".  He is good at everything!

Hemkumari - teaches all kinds of things at school.  She cooked us some dinners.

Tek - one of my buddies.  He does all of the piping in the village.

Moti - our favorite!!  A retired Gurkha...

Kami talking Moti's ear off!

Jagat - he does the woodwork.  He made signs for the kids, and they visited him all the time.

Lila - she teaches at the school and is a nurse and midwife in the village.

Kisoj (pronounced Key suze) - he is Krishna's son.  Our kids loved to play with him.

Rhupal - Jessica and I met him while we were teaching photography.  He's in 10th grade, and he would bring us plums and show us around.

Chitra and his daughter.  Chitra is the person that I worked the most with on this project.

I'm going to upload more pictures tomorrow...