Offerings.

I knew that it would only be a matter of time.

I mean, I did move to a Hindu country and I do live in a house with a Hindu family, so I knew that it wouldn't take long. It didn't. Yesterday it happened.

I was served food offered to idols.

I am preeeety sure it happened last week during Tihar as well. As I was up on the roof washing my laundry, my landlord, Krishna, called to me to go down and open the front door.

Miniature fruits and rice bread.

Krishna and his wife gave me a plate of fruit and rice bread. They have terrible English and I have terrible Nepali, so we weren't able to talk too much about their gift, but I know that the rice bread is a Tihar thing (think Christmas cookies). Maybe it was offered to idols. Maybe not. I still don't know.

But yesterday was different. I was siting downstairs with the mom of our housemates (still working on everyone's names) and Pratibha. We were working on some Nepali vocabulary and in walked Krishna's wife with a plate of goodies. The two older ladies talked for a minute, and then the mom took the goodies into the kitchen.

After a few minutes, she came back into the living room with a plate of yogurty stuff and some round flat bread.

Pratibha then told me that Krishna's wife had just done her puja and that she had just offered this food to the god.


I'm not going to tell you what I did, whether or not I ate it.  That's another story for another day. All I can say is that 1 Corinthians rushed through my brain like a blur and I was forced to make a decision... eat or don't eat.

But I am curious... what would you have done?

Locks of love.

Our landlord made us get a zillion locks for all over our house, so now we have a zillion keys.... and they all look the same.

So we color coded our keys with nail polish. 

And now we have locks of love.

 

Aaaaand I am pretty stoked on life right now because our downstairs housemates just came back from the Terai, and oh. my. gosh... I am giddy.

There were fireworks. 

And I did a happy dance. 

And today we are going to raid the guava tree outside.

And, um, stay tuned for more. 

Tihar Eve

Twas the night before Tihar, and all through the town

not a creature was stirring, not even cow brown. 

The lights were all hung on the buildings with care

In hopes that relatives soon would be there...

Tomorrow is another festival! The festival called Tihar. 

Family members are scrambling to the nearest supermarket to pick up tasty treats and each corner is guarded by a man selling candles, garland, and colossal grapefruits. The air is getting cooler and, other than the grapefruits, it feels strangely similar to the final rush before Christmas. 

Cynthia and I decided to try the giant citrus fruit, 

but before we sliced her open, I had a photo shoot. 

It only seems like Christmas sometimes. Tihar has its own little personality. For instance, fireworks. Constant fireworks.

Today, there were about seven little boys lighting fireworks in the wall outside my house! They would stick the little firecracker in a crack, light it, and throw large rocks at it until it blew up! 

I used my best Nepali to say, "That is not good! Enough! Enough!"

Haha, I think that my feeble attempt at speaking Nepali gave them more entertainment than blowing up our wall, so they relented and laughed for a few minutes at each other repeating my words with such a funny accent. 

In the meantime, C and I are heading out of town for a few days for some more cultural immersion... see you soon!

Confessions of a packaholic.

If there is one thing in life that I am not, it is a hipster. 

I'm going to tell it like it is: my glasses are way out of style, my pants are about as baggy as they come, I have zero tattoos, and I have never ever posted a picture of my coffee on the internet.

I am totally not a hipster. 

But there is one thing that I am.

My name is Bethany and I am a packaholic.

Tomorrow is moving day. My suitcases have been packed for exactly four days now in anticipation for the big move. 

For me, it’s not the act of packing that makes me shriek with joy and whistle to myself as I sort things into different pieces of luggage. Let’s be honest; packing in and of itself is not really that cool. It’s not like I get bored and start packing things just for fun. That would be weird. 

The part of packing that makes it such an exuberant experience is that as soon as I finally pull that zipper down and give my bag a few good pats, an adventure is about to begin!  

Such is the case tonight. 

We have been staying in a guesthouse for fifty days. It has been pretty swag. Yet as nice as it has been, I am ready to make the plunge into bucket showers and candlelit electricity. 

You see, packaholism always affects relationships. The constant motion, the distance between myself and loved ones, and the sheer exhaustion of it all has left me somewhat isolated. Skype and e-mails only do so much. My packing levels are high, but my relation levels are low. 

Yet, ironically, I am excited to be packing once more. I am excited because for the first time in a log time, I get to pack for an adventure that I get to keep living. 

 I am excited to live in the same place for more than a few months at a time. I am excited to hang out with my nepali housemates. I am excited to get to know my landlord. I am excited to stay at the little shop across the street for way too long just because I like the little lady that works there. I am excited to have real-life relationships again.

Because I want more than instagrams of coffee, big glasses, and tattoos with like, three meanings. 

I want to love God and love people.

That's why I packed four days ago. That is I why I am a packaholic. 

Sarupani

Here are a few photos I took while in the village. Enjoy!

Cynthia taking a photo of the mountains.

Beautiful.

Haha. This lady asked me to go get my camera so we could have a photo together. 

Sneaking a photo of this shy girl. 

Pure joy. 

This kid was full of personality.

Frisbee!

The mermaid and the marble.

When we got here, we were a big homeless mess. 

Now, after six weeks, I can gladly say that we are no longer homeless. Holla!

However, we are still a big mess. We are technically not homeless, but can't move in until we have some means of survival put into place.  Pretty much we need some form of something other than cement to to sleep on (and a blanket would be nice) and a way to feed and water ourselves. 

But don't worry. Because now we have a mermaid. 

Yah, we bought a turquoise refrigerator. It was marked down because nobody wanted such an outlandish color, so guess who scored a little-mermaid colored block of wonderfulness to keep her lunch meat cold? This girl. 

(And that's a joke... there is no lunch meat in this country). 

And that, my friends, is how we came to have a mermaid in our kitchen. 

Now about the marble. I didn't really want to tell you guys because I was afraid you might judge me, like, because of my job and everything. But um, well, we have a marble staircase. But wait! Stop! Remember how you are supposed to suspend your judgement?!

Marble is like, totally cheaper and more available than wood here. It is even used on the outside steps of old shops. So no worries, folks. Besides... we don't even have hot water in our showers

 or light sockets 

or closets

or a washing machine 

or an oven 

or flooring (other than the marble on the stairs) 

so give me a little grace. 

10 Tips for Village Visits

I have put together 10 essential tips for you... you know, for the next time you go visit a village.

1. Walk to your destination.

Waiting for our bus to get fixed for the third time. 

I don't care how far away or how many meters above sea level your destination is. Walk there. I guarantee that it will be faster, more enjoyable, and your chances of survival will be exponentially higher than if you were to ride a bus.

On the way to our destination, the bus broke down three times. On the way back to Kathmandu,  it took us ten hours to go 100 miles. That's 10 miles per hour, folks.

Did I mention that we were traveling during the biggest holiday of the year? The holiday where you are practically required to go back to your village and visit your family? Did I mention that there were about 100 people inside our bus and nearly as many riding on the roof? Oh, and did I tell you about the grandma who was sitting in the aisle next to me who was gripping my knee with her toes? Or the guy standing behind me who kept falling asleep on my head? Or the countless elbows who made their home in each of the crevices of my ribcage?

I probably forgot to mention that because I am so thankful to be alive. There were literally times when we could look down out of the window and see a 500 foot drop off below... which is probably why grandma had a death grip on me with her toes.


2. If you refuse to walk, at least have a return bus ticket.

You should probably purchase a return bus ticket before you decide to ride a bus to the end of the road in the middle of nowhere. But you were probably already planning on doing that, right?

We had this crazy idea in our minds that we would leave to go home on Saturday. Nope. No bus tickets till at least Tuesday.... remember that whole holiday thing?

Tuesday we walked the two hours down the mountain to get to the bus stop. Only it didn't take two hours. We were practically sprinting and it took four hours. And we missed the bus. So since the next bus was not leaving until the next day, we spent the night at a tea house and tried to buy a ticket on Wednesday morning.

The view from the tea house window. 

Wednesday morning rolled around and we were up before our alarms... only to find out that there were no seats left on the bus!

But wait. There were still some tickets available for us to stand in the aisle. Score.

Here's the thing though. Nepali people are way too generous and way too kind. We accidentally sat in some peoples' seats before the bus got full, and since they saw that we were foreigners, and that we clearly had no idea what was happening, they made sure that we stayed in those seats for the whole ten hours.

It was pretty stinkin' humbling.

3. When you are asked to dance at a PTA meeting on the side of a mountain, don't hold back. Give it all you've got. 

This one is pretty self explanatory. Just dance like a crazy person. You won't regret it. 

4. Bring earplugs. 

It is very likely that there will be several friendly mice running around inside your bamboo cottage during the night. I have found that earplugs make it much easier to pretend that the mice are not really there. 

5. Do not refuse food. 

Actually, I think that it will be impossible for you to refuse hospitality from anyone. Your host will probably give you sad puppy dog eyes and sweetly convince you that it is the best thing for you to take what she has just offered you.

Even if she offers you ten heaps of rice. Or warm buffalo milk. Or baby bumble bee larvae. 

Buffalo curds. Mmmm, tasty!

I'm not even kidding you. I freaked out so bad when I ate those baby bumble bees. I screamed and spit it out so fast that nobody was even offended because we were all laughing so hard. Except me. I was not laughing so hard. I was making sure there were no baby bumble bees stuck in my teeth. 

6. Suspend your judgement.

If you want to cross the bridge to understanding a foreign culture, realize that you know nothing about why these people do the things that they do. Don't judge. Just watch and learn. You will have plenty of time to form conclusions later, I promise.

A bridge we crossed on our way up the mountain.

I would have saved myself a lot of heartache if I had suspended judgement. For instance, I got really frustrated that our hosts were making a little girl carry a heavy basket up a mountain while they didn't carry anything. Then I learned that the little girl isn't really as young as she looks.  I learned that she works to pay for her own school tuition because her dad is a drunk. I also learned that our hostess only has one foot. And then that same hostess took Cynthia's backpack so that her guest could walk up the mountain more easily. And then I felt really, really, really stupid for judging such amazing people for being so awesome because I was too culture-blind to see what was really going on.

7. Try to speak Nepali.

Practicing your language skills is the quickest way to make friends. You will get laughed at, told that you are saying your words incorrectly, and will accidentally tell the buffalo to get married.

It's ok, just keep at it.

8. Let your heart be broken.

It's gonna hurt. When you see the brokenness around you, and you recognize your inability to do anything to change it, don't fight the feelings. Let your heart break. Because that is what is going to lead you to number 9. And number 9 is what is going to make a difference in people's lives.

9. Pray.

Psalm 19 

Pray a lot.

Listen to God.

Pray with the brothers and sisters for people to get healed and then rejoice with one another when God does it (yes He did... four times).

Praise God for the glory that He displays all around you.

Pray for the ones whom you have come to love so much who still do not know Him.


10. Don't resist the refining process. 

The lack of cleanliness, the missed busses, the constant stares, the mice, and the bumble bees are going to send you into a place that you have never been before. You will drift way beyond the end of your rope.

Don't be afraid to fall.

God will catch you.

And you will love what that feels like when He does.