Home to my appliances... aahhhh....

We are safely back from our trip to Nepal. We hiked down from Nangi to Beni last Monday. It took us about six hours, and our legs were sore for days afterwards. I loved the hike, though, because it winds through many small villages and gave us a lot of chances to see what other villages were like. We definitely got a lot of stares, though - I’m not sure if they have ever seen red-headed and blond kids before... After we got to Beni, we drove three hours to Pokhara. Since the monsoon season has started, the road was pretty bad in some places. For the first 10 km outside of Beni, the road is not paved, so it is really bumpy and rutted, and the rain only makes that worse. The rest of the road is “paved”. Originally, the road was two lanes wide, but over time, the outer edge of the road on both sides has eroded away, and now the pavement is only about 1 ¼ lanes wide. So every time a vehicle comes from the other direction, we had to slow down and pull over so that one set of tires was riding on the dirt on the side of the road. There were also a few places where there were steep drop-offs on one side of the road, but it wasn’t too bad (definitely not anything like the drive in the mountains of northern India where I was certain that we would all die).


After two weeks in Nangi, the first thing we all wanted when we got to Pokhara (after a shower) were cold drinks and pizza. We found a great pizza restaurant (the boys thought that it was their second or third favorite pizza place in the world after Pepperoni’s here in Singapore and Paese Mio in Allentown) that had a big screen to project the world cup games. So every night while we were in Pokhara, we ate pizza and watched the world cup. We spent two more days in Pokhara just putzing around the town and relaxing, and Bruce was able to meet back up with us there. It is definitely one of our favorite places – good food, nice people, beautiful views, interesting shops, small amount of traffic and noise.

Then we flew to Kathmandu and spent two and a half days there. It is much bigger, dirtier, and more unruly than Pokhara. We visited some interesting temples while we were there. There were a couple of Buddhist temples – the ones in Kathmandu have the “eyes” painted on them. The kids thought the eyes were creepy. We also went to a Hindu temple where they do the cremations. If someone dies during the night, they must be cremated before sunrise, and if they die during the day, they must be cremated before sunset. The bodies are cremated on concrete piers beside a river. We were only allowed on the far side of the river, but we could see some of what was going on. Thamel, the tourist district, was crazy – no sidewalks and cars, motorcycles, bikes all rushing by. It was a little nerve-wracking with the kids. The hotel that we stayed in was beautiful – a nice oasis in the craziness.

As we think back on our time in Nangi, many other things come to mind that we want to write about. I will never again take dishwashers, refrigerators, or washing machines for granted! I really missed cold drinks!!! We had to boil all of our water, so that seemed like a never-ending job and it seemed like we were always having to drink warmish water because it never cooled all the way before we were thirsty. By the time I cooked breakfast for all of us and then got all of the dishes washed, it seemed like it was already time for lunch. It made me realize how much of their time is spent doing things that are necessary for living – it doesn’t leave much time for relaxation. Washing clothes was not that big of a deal, but it also took a long time. The villagers all wash their clothes under a spigot – some have spigots right outside their house and others have to go to a more common area. The students who live at the school all use a spigot in a common outdoor area. I couldn’t figure out a way to wash clothes without getting my legs soaking wet from the thighs down. It wasn’t so bad in the summer, but I can’t imagine how cold it must be to do laundry outside in the winter. The air temperature would be cold, and the water comes from a spring up in the mountains, so the water must be nearly freezing, too. Also, their bathrooms are outside their houses – must be cold in the winter.

It was interesting talking to the students and learning more about their lives. They live so much differently than teenagers in Singapore or the US. Some of the students in the high school are from the village, but many of them are from villages that are farther away, so those students live at the school. Two students live in huts that are about 8 ft by about 12 ft. The huts have beds and a cooking area (basically a woodburning stove-type-thing that they cook over). They have to cook their own food, wash their own dishes outside their hut, wash their own clothes, etc. When I asked them what they do during their summer vacation, they all answered that they help harvest potatoes, plant millet, pick corn, take care of their cows and goats, cut grass for the cows, and help their families take care of younger family members. For them, the work that they do at home gathering food is necessary so that they have something to eat during the winter. There is not easy access to food from anywhere except their own gardens, so they depend on that food to live. It’s hard for me to picture any 9th grader that I know being able to take care of themselves like this or helping this much at home. Despite how demanding their lives are, the kids always seem to be laughing and smiling.

Their houses are made out of wood, stone, and mud. Some of the more wealthy people in the village use bricks instead of stones. Basically, though, wood is used as a frame and the stones are stacked with mud used as mortar between them. Then the stones are covered in a layer of mud. One teacher told me that every week or so when their kitchen walls become covered with soot from the cooking fires, his wife puts a new layer of mud on the walls. She must go out and dig up some mud and then spread it around on the walls. Most roofs are made of overlapping slates, but some are metal. Some houses just have a sleeping room and then space for storage and animals. Some have the cooking area attached, and others have the cooking area separate from the house.

One of the women in the village who has some medical experience and works in the clinic told me about how the women all have their babies at home. She comes to their home to help and to be the midwife. She said that she is trained to know when the pregnancy is high risk, and then she sends the woman down to Beni to have the baby with better medical care. Now there is a “road” between Beni and Nangi. It is unpaved, it takes three hours for the jeep to drive it, and it is a little scary (some big drop-offs on the sides). I can’t imagine being driven down that road at the end of a high-risk pregnancy. Before the road, though, they had to walk or be carried down the mountain. If there are complications during birth, there is not much that can be done.

I am almost done sorting and fixing up my pictures. I am leaving tomorrow to take Jessica to Australia for her volunteer work with the marine biologist grad student. I am going to stay there for a few days to make sure that she is situated and has everything that she needs, and then I’ll come back to Singapore. I am hoping to finish all of the pictures and then post some and upload the rest to Flickr so that anyone who is interested can see them. I’m sure that I will also think of other interesting things about life in the village to write.

It is thundering (which means the end of my connection) and I can't think of a creative title under this pressure...

Hi! We’ve been without power for almost two days, so we haven’t been able to get on the internet. It’s been killing the kids! I have also found it challenging to cook dinner and wash dishes in the almost dark.  I think that I have the dishes all clean and find out the next morning (in the light) that I wasn't even close...
Here’s what we’ve been up to…

The solar water heater in the campground is up and running – hooray!! That means hot showers. There are a few things that still need to get done to complete it, but it is working. If you don’t care about engineering details, then skip the rest of this paragraph … One thing that needs to get installed is a pressure relief device on the tank. As the water heats up in the tubes, it can get really hot, evaporate, and create a high pressure in the tank. If the pressure gets too high, then the tank will burst, which is bad… So it is important to relieve the pressure if it gets too high. The solar heaters that we looked at in Singapore all came equipped with a pressure relief valve. The ones that we bought in Nepal don’t have that. The people in Nangi were not going to put any relief devices on the tank - they were just going to put an open pipe on the top of the tank so that the water vapor could escape. The problem is that their feed tank is about 10 ft about the solar water heater tank, so I tried to explain to them that if they left the valve open between the feed tank and the solar heater tank, then the water would just drain out of the open pipe until the feed tank was empty. I said that we really needed to put a pressure relief valve on the tank. When we called the store that we bought it from, the guy told us that they did not recommend that - if it failed and the tank burst, we would be responsible. He said we had to just put on a really tall open pipe . So then I explained that in the winter the water would freeze in that pipe and then it wouldn't provide a means of pressure relief anymore. The guy from the store just said “Oh, well that’s how we do it.” I am definitely working against the "this is how we always do it" mentality. So we have agreed on a pressure relief valve on one port and a rupture/burst disc on the other port (set at a higher pressure than the valve) as a backup. The sales shop was OK with that. So now when I can get on the internet, I am trying to find burst discs and pressure relief valves that will work.

A few days ago we hiked to a village called Salizaar to see how the women there make blankets and other things out of nettle. Nettle is a stinging plant (I touched one by accident, and it really does sting a lot!) – it is amazing that they can make something nice out of the plant. They do it all by hand in their village. The hike was tough – up and over a ridge to get there, and then back up and over the ridge to get home. We were tired!! Our guide on the trip was this older man named Moti. He was a Ghorka in the British army, and he had been stationed in Singapore. He is so nice – one of our favorite people in Nangi. He doesn’t seem fierce enough to have been a Ghorka.

On our hike, Jessica got bit by a leech. It had already fallen off by the time she realized it had been there. The spots where they bite bleed like crazy. Then when we got home, I had one on my foot. It didn’t hurt, and at first it didn’t bother me. According to Jeff Corwin , you should not remove a leech. I was prepared to follow this advice, but then the kids kept giving me a running commentary on what it was doing. After awhile I couldn’t stand it anymore – it was creeping me out. So we touched it with a hot ember from the fire and that made it leave go. I’m not listening to Jeff Corwin anymore!  Those things are gross.

Here are some new phrases that we have learned…

How are you? “Ta pie lie ka stosa?”

I am fine. “Ma lie sun sigh tsu”

How old are you? “Ta pie koti barsa hunu bio?”

How old are your kids? “Ta pie ko batsa koti barsa bio?”

I need to find out how to say “I am 29, again”…

The headmaster of the school has taken to quizzing me with Nepalese questions every morning, so I am really trying to learn it.

One of our favorite pastimes is going down to Moti’s house to pick plums. They are awesome! He has tons of them, so we can pick as many as we want. Moti is also in charge of the nursery (the plant kind of nursery) here in Nangi. They grow all kinds of plants, but especially trees, that they sell to people to raise money for the school.

The kids have befriended another nice man named Jagat. He does wood carving. He makes all of the signs that are posted around the village and on the local trails. He is making signs for Brad, Ty, and Kami with their names on them – they are thrilled and visit him multiple times a day to check on the progress. He may be regretting making those signs .

Last night, a female teacher named Hemkumari made us a Nepalese dinner. She made a type of French fries that the kids loved, and she also made rice pudding that I loved, but no one else really did. It was so nice of her to come up and cook for us. She brought her niece, Tamuna, with her. Kami and Tamuna played together all night and part of today. It was cute how well they got along.

Our cooking skills are getting better. Jessica has become a pro at making bread. It’s great, and we can either eat it as-is or turn it into French Toast. Brad is trying to perfect the art of making cookies without butter. He’s doing a pretty good job of that. We are now waiting for batch number two to finish cooking.

I have not looked in a mirror for 2 weeks now – maybe that is for the best! There are no mirrors up here in our house, so I have no idea how crazy my hair looks.

Bruce left a week ago to go to work in Mumbai. He was supposed to come back to Nangi today to spend the last few days with us, but we just got an email saying that he has to go to London for an emergency meeting. What a bummer!  Oh, well - we will catch up with him in Pokhara or Kathmandu (hopefully).

I will post pictures when I have a more reliable internet connection.  It is all I can do to get a post done before the power goes out again, and I lose the connection...

Reading Kindles to pass the time.

From before: Getting the old tank down.

THREE WORDS: WE ARE CLEAN!!! :D

The night's sky.

Taken by: Jessica Schult (aka the blurry thing on the right)

We'd really appreciate if the power stayed on long enough for us to do something.

It rained for three days in a row and we didn't have internet for any of that time which has meant that we haven't been able to blog. So here's an overview of the past few days:

Thursday afternoon, my mom and I went with the 10th grade boys up to the Sacred Forest, which no one is allowed to take anything out of, and we showed them how to take pictures. They seemed to be much more creative than the girls (who took hundreds of pictures of us but very few of the surroundings). The Sacred Forest had some really neat temples but it was a long walk to get up there!

Saturday morning, at 5:45 am we were woken up by a girl. What did she want at 5:45 am you might wonder? Well, she wanted a volleyball. That’s right; we were woken up at 5:45am just so they could play volleyball. If this doesn’t scream culture difference to you then I don’t know what would.

Other than that, life here in Nangi has been going really well. The kids didn't have school on Saturday so some of the boys went down to the fish pond to catch fish to sell. The money that is raised from selling the fish goes directly to the school. It was neat to watch them catch the fish with nets and their bare hands and then throw them into baskets at the side of the pond. After watching the fish catching spectacle we went down to Amuti’s house (also known as grandfather of the nursery) and we picked tons of plums. The plums that are grown here are SO good! Bradley even likes them.

I (Jess) have learned to make bread and we've found a way to bake it using embers from the fires that we've been building ourselves. We made French toast this morning using some of the bread. Other than that nothing super eventful has been going on lately. They are almost done installing the water heater at the camp ground. The heater is up on the roof, all ready to use but the piping is not quite finished. Also, there was a minor setback due to the hail protection cover but that problem was soon fixed. That means HOT SHOWERS SOON! We desperately need the grubbiness of 7 days washed off us and you should see Tyler's feet. We'll put some pictures up soon.

About an hour ago we were showing the 10th grade students all of the pictures that they'd taken on the computer and it was great to see how interested they all were. We had close to 15 students in our tiny little house before Krishna, the math and computer teacher, offered to set up the projector in his classroom. I'd say that the photography has been a success. (: