Hoosiers in Nepal, Here Comes the Fall

Well it's been a quick minute, but I thought I'd get a blog up before our big 3 week break coming up for Dashain. It's the biggest holiday in Nepal, and we're headed to Jhapa on the Indian border to visit another St. Xavier's, go for a nice long trek, and spend a few days at a Bhutanese refugee camp. When we get back we'll jump into Term III and before we know it, it'll be cold enough to refridgerate anything left sitting out in the kitchen. Can't wait.

It's been a pretty busy couple of months, with 6-day work weeks, some bomb blasts in Kathmandu that had little to no follow-up (don't worry), and the arrival of Becca Polk in Nepal. It was great to see a familiar face and know that a best friend is just a country or two away (really need to work on my geography). We had a great time and I was thrilled to have someone see my everyday life here in Godavari. Another highlight of the past couple months was my 5B class assembly. Usually there's just a small skit (about bullying) and then a song that they've been singing since the 1970s. I decided to spice it up a bit, and taught my kids "All You Need Is Love." They performed a dramatic rendition in front of the whole school, and then finished it off with a skit about global warming. Becca was there to help, I was a nervous wreck, and it was a hit. Denise video-taped.

In mid-September we got to enjoy the Nepali holiday of TEEJ where women fast, wear red, pray for their husands, and dance all day long. After observing for 3 days I decided the whole thing is just a guise that allows them to ignore all the men and dance till they collapse, which I was fully on board with. Denise and I spent the majority of it with Sushma's family, and all the gals. My favorite aunt (Aunty) is in that picture making me laugh by teaching me dirty Nepali words. On the last night of Teej, we were woken up at 4:00 in the morning by Sushma's mom (cold water to the face) to go down to the river where all the women bathe and do puja (Hindu worship) in the dark. We stumbled down and watched as they all lined up on the river bank, threw water at each other, showered in the freezing water, and built a fire on the rocks. It was gorgeous, to say the least.

I'll close this already abnormally long blog with our most recent adventure (relatively speaking). While we were cooking on Wednesday night, the gas tank for our stove ran out mid-simmer. As luck would have it, we came to find out that Godavari is in the middle of a gas shortage. Long story short, we spent a week roughing it (and by that I mean eating mo mos and complaining till we were blue in the face), until this morning when we saw a beautiful sight out the window... a truck full of gas tanks barreling down the road. Denise and I threw on some pants and sprinted out the front door and down the hill to the shop, waving and screaming at all of our favorite Nepalis on the way, "Gas! Gas! Let's cook!!!" Usually we just pay the guy and they deliver it later that day. Naturally, they weren't providing that service today and we probably wouldn't have gotten the gas at all, had the shop not been owned by my student's uncle. He suggested we just lug it back ourselves. And so we did. Keep in mind the thing weighs about as much as an average-sized human, and we live at the top of a hill. We reached the kitchen panting, sweating, and extremely proud. We made a banana bread and a pot of tea immediately.
So that's the latest from Godavari. Things are good, and to top it all off.... we've got gas.