One month in Nepal

The saying ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ doesn’t apply to Peace Corps. I’ve been having some of the best moments of my life, yet I feel as though time is crawling. I’ve been here for one month now, and it feels like four, at least.

Language class is, well like any other class, a pain at times but really helpful since my success in PC depends on integrating (i.e. communication is crucial) into my community. I would be floundering without my awesome LCF (Language/ Cultural Facilitator), Saraswati. She is from Kathmandu, Nepal and is not only a wonderful person, but also a deep thinker. Her name fits her perfectly; Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of wisdom.

 My closest friend in my village is my Dai’s niece (bhatiji), Rupa. I think I mentioned in my last blog post that people refer to one another by their kinship, which gets confusing because names of kinship differ on maternal and paternal sides. She usually comes over and we jump-rope (Dhori) or dance (naachnu) until I’m exhausted. She is amazing too because she can single jump jump-rope for like 10 min straight after carrying baskets full of corn up and down the mountain. The first picture is me trying to teach my bhaini how to jump rope. The second is Rupa and I posing, and the last is the older of my two brothers (thulo bai) showing off his fighting skills…later his shirt came off to flex his muscles…men are all the same! Ha!

Above is my Didi spreading (lipnu) the sacred cow dung.

 This is a panorama of 'prayer flag' mountain.

 This is a picture of a few friends (sathiharu)

 This is buddha dog chillin' in a bed of prayer flags.

Glad to see some advocacy for wild life!

My ama, bahini, and I are taking corn off the cob to dry. They grind the dried corn and feed the goats or sell some of the corn to the pasal (store).

One of my favorite memories from this first month was a hike to a Buddhist monastery pictures shown above, mostly of prayers flags :)), Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Temple, NE of my village. Saraswati and Daulat (our training program manager) were kind enough to lead a group of about 15 PC trainees on an awesome 3-4ish hours hike (one way) to the monastery. We left pretty early in the morning so it was foggy, misty, and slippery. Nepalis have a saying ‘raato maato, chiplo baato’ which means red mud, slippery road. It’s so true, with all the rain we’ve been getting the hike was super slippery, but so worth it. (See pictures for evidence ;)) Daulat wasn’t totally sure the correct directions to the monastery, so he would stop and ask every, and I mean every single person we met along the way. For good reason, we frequently were told conflicting directions, but we made it.

At the top of the mountain we walked through a Narwari village (so beautiful and waaay nicer than Bhekundebesi btw) and finally arrived at the monastery. It was the first time since I arrived in Nepal that I saw another Caucasian, which was quite shocking after being surrounding by all Nepalis. She must have been there for a while because her Nepali was pretty outstanding.  The monastery reminded me of my study abroad stint in Thailand. I’m pretty fascinated in Buddism, although not sure I would ever practice myself.  

Gautam Buddah was born in Nepal and traveled to India where he reached enlightenment. The start of his spiritual growth began in Nepal. He lived a wealthy life and didn’t know suffering until he left his home. He realized not everyone had an easy life like him, so he dedicated his life to search for the source of suffering. We learned in one of our cross-cultural training sessions that he discovered the way to end suffering via the 8-fold path. Anywho, all interesting stuff, and I want to learn more about it.

The best part of the whole day was walking over to ‘prayer flag mountain’ (I made that name up) and discovering Buddah dog.  He definitely did something right in his previous life because this dog had it made. We were pretty sure he had just ate a huge bowl of chicken pizza flavored noodles and was sleeping off his food coma in a cozy bed of prayer flags.

After we stuffed ourselves of chowmien, Thak paa, and cold COCA COLA (SOOOO YUMMY!!) We headed back down the mountain. We were told to take a short cut, which led to a four+ hour hike back home (note, remember, it only took us 3.5 to hike up the slippery mountain ha!) It was an epic day, and I’m so glad I decided to drag myself out of bed at 5:30am (for those of you that don’t know my too well, I’m not a morning person…at all). J