Thanks for the Letters!!!

So first of all I need to thank Lauren, Alex, Sam, Ahni and Alicia for making me look like the cool kid on mail day. Four letters really brightened my day that, prior to that had been dominated by digestive problems… ☺

No real exciting news to relay…I have now developed perfect timing with three school buses on my way to school in the morning and have yet to make it to school yet without being pelted/soaked by water balloons. Luckily, though, the festival culminates on Tuesday with one final crazy water balloon, vermilion, rock, tomato, and potato throwing day. We don’t have class and my brothers have recommended that I “do not go outside on Holy.” Fair enough as I really don’t have enough clothes in Nepal to destroy any of them.

Monday I did the evening puja – or worship ceremony – at our house as my brothers were not home, my mom has her period and I’m older than my sister. It was pretty interesting and involved lighting various things on fire, lighting incense, scattering rice, making offers of fruits and then ringing the bell. It really made me feel like a part of the family, but at the same time was sort of uncomfortable because it is such a spiritual act.

Yesterday instead of Nepali language class we cooked Nepali food. My group was in charge of making roti – which are like thicker tortillas – and curried vegetables. Today we had to present our recipe in Nepali and somehow my group managed to say that we “cooked lots of people,” in our defense the words for people and vegetables are very similar. My sister also taught me to make ramen last night – clearly she was under the impression that I have never cooked in my life. I had to feign interest as she added ramen noodles to boiling water.

On a sad note, our academic director left yesterday to return to his SIT program in India and a new AD has stepped in. This is a transition year for the SIT Nepal program, so Azim was here for the first month settling us in and now a man named Bill from the US has replaced him. Azim was really great and provided us with a perfect introduction to south asian culture, and we are all so sad to see him go, however, at the same time Bill has a long history in Nepal working with the community forests and knows so much about resource conservation and management we are all excited for him to begin as well.

Load shedding here is up to 20 hours so we spend lots of time doing homework by candlelight and it’s pretty difficult to use the computer since it’s hard to charge them. We have a generator at the SIT house but it’s rarely run. Most stores here have generators so they are able to keep their shops open, or they use candles. The restaurant we ate at last night just had candlelight.

Ok, work time.