Tuesday Photos

An old temple.

This week in Nepali class, we learned about some bodily functions. 

I think that the pictures speak for themselves. 

You people know about my goat obsession by now. 

It isn't ending anytime soon. I saw this cutie along my morning route. 

Last weekend my roommates and I declared it "Western Food Weekend." We each took a day and made an American/Australian meal to share (which like, never happens). I found a can of corn at the supermarket and contrary to the instructions on the can, I used it to make a BBQ chicken salad (and yes, that is mango salsa! We are loving mango season!).

If you ever try corn on your ice-cream, let me know how that goes. Seriously. I'm expecting an e-mail.

And this is my desktop picture right now... because I just really, really miss her... 

Asmitmas.

This can't be real.

My housemates and I went out of town for a few days to rest and be with God. It seemed like a good idea to get away from normal life and to be alone with God. And it was. It was really good to spend some days not studying Nepali language and refocusing my brain on the Reason for all of this. However, when we came home, we came back to a different neighborhood.

When we arrived back on our street, I could tell that something was wrong. It was way too quiet.


I went outside to see who was around. I noticed that the old piece of tin roofing that usually blocks the entrance to the sleeping room was missing. The front right doors were open and a sheet was hanging in the open doorway.

When the wind caught the sheet I could see Sundesh's mom sitting inside the room. She waved me over.

As I pulled back the curtain, my heart sank. I hated what I saw.


"Eeeh, naya pashal ho?" I asked hopefully, but with doubt in my heart.




We chatted for a bit about her new shop. She told me that her other shop had closed and that she and her family weren't living in this room anymore. They moved to the back room and are now using the front room as a tea shop.


 My heart sank to my toes and my stomach came up to my throat.

"Oh Lord, please let my Nepali be really bad right now. Please let me be misunderstanding."

But it is true. She and her family took over the front room for their shop and are using the back room for living. The back room where the Asmitas used to live.

The Asmitas.

They are gone.

Gone.

And I didn't even get to say goodbye.

 My love bucket is running a little empty tonight.

Nepali wedding

I've been waiting nine and a half months for this. 

Yesterday we finally got to attend a Nepali wedding! Our landlord's brother's son got hitched, and as a part of Nepali culture, the groom must welcome the bride into his father's home. The women all hang out and dance and eat sweets while the men go and fetch the bride. Traditionally, the bride and groom would live together in the father's home, but in this case, our landlord and his son (the groom) live in Canada and we live in the father's house, so they welcomed the bride into our house! Since the party was at our house, they were obliged to invite us. 

I've had a case of gastro for the past few days so was totally not in the mood for a party, but once I heard the ladies downstairs singing, my feet couldn't help but to dance! We had so much fun singing and dancing all afternoon until the bride arrived.

This is my "I've had diarrhea for three days and I'm not in the mood for this" face. 

All the girls in our family. 

Me, Pratibha, and Rupam

Dancing with one of my favorite neighbor ladies, 

All of the women waiting for the men to bring the bride home.

Sundesh and me. 

Dancing and waiting and dancing and waiting.

Slowly some men started to show up.

Then the whole brigade came!

The newlyweds!

Tuesday photos

Please notice that Asmita and I have opposite faces in each picture. 

We were meant to be together.

We got invited to a wedding, so we we had to go saree shopping this week. Our friends took us down town and showed us how it's done. We would have been lost without them. Yay for friends! 

On the 6th of July we celebrated Independence Day! 

The "American Club" in Kathmandu is an exclusive club for fancy Americans. Normally, we are not cool enough to go inside, but on Independence Day weekend they let all of the Americans inside- including the uncool ones like us. Looks like America, no?

You may be wondering how they could tell if we were actuallyAmericans.

They simply checked our shoes. 

What hope?

I wrote this poem about my friend. Tragically, her story is not unique.


Once upon a time and once upon a place

there lived a very pretty girl with a very pretty face. 

She was the fairest in the village, obedient and wise

Hard working like her mother, the prize of one man's eyes. 

She always did the planting and took care of the cows

but on the day she turned fifteen, was forced to say her wedding vows.

That one man came and got her. He took her as his wife.

That's the way things work out here; girls have no choice in life. 

He gave her all the housework and she never had a say 

In return she gave him a child by her next birthday.  

Along came another, making them a family of four
But the next thing she knew, he was walking out the door.

"I'm heading off to Saudi to find better pay.
This village can't sustain us. We need a better way."

So then and there he left her to find a better life,
But when he got to Saudi, he found a better wife.

Daily she feels alone, ever haunted by her shame
with two little mouths to feed- but not a penny to her name.

She has been defiled. She has nowhere to return.
The girls in her village never had a chance to learn.

With no chance to re-marry and no real education
She moved her kids to the city to start a new vocation.

She only had one option. There was no other way.
She would go to the brothel where men would come and pay.

Tuesday Photos

Happy Tuesday, Y'all!

My neighbors got a new puppy. His name is Balto. 

He is named after the first Balto. 

Shout out to my sister who is training for the Olympics!

They are building this magnificent structure right outside of my language teacher's house.

I must say, I am pretty impressed.

This. Lady. 

Like I mentioned yesterday, the clouds right now are spectacular. I went outside last night to sit on a little hill that overlooks the rice fields. When I got there, this grandma was sitting there softly repeating in Nepali, "Thank you God. Thank you God for this beautiful scenery. It is so beautiful. So beautiful."

But wouldn't you say the same thing if you were staring at this?

5 things i learned in june

In honor of July, let's talk about June.

Awhile ago, someone posted a link to this article on facebook. It totally sling-shotted my brain into thinking about perfectionism ever since I read it, so I sometimes check back in with that blog to see if there are any other pearls of wisdom to glean.

Recently, the author put out a challenge for anyone else who has a blog to write about the things they learned in June. I just happen to have a blog, and I just happened to have a June, so I accepted the challenge.

Lesson 1: I need mornings. 

Kathmandu is crazy. hectic. dirty. loud. scary. different.


The mornings are peaceful. quiet. sane.

Mornings = Jesus + Me + not the rest of the Nepali world in my face.

I need mornings.

I knew that before, but this month I actually started to like hearing my alarm clock go off, so I am claiming this as knowledge from June.

Lesson 2: Rah-hey-cha.

In Nepali, there is a completely separate verb tense that is used to say that "I discovered that ___________ is________." It is called the "discovery tense" and it ends in "rah-hey-cha." If something normally is a certain way, but you just discovered that that thing that is that way is always that way, you use this tense. 

It goes like this, "In June, I discovered that the discovery tense is difficult to use.... rah-hey-cha."

Got it? 

If it sounds confusing, that's because it is.

Lesson 3: Sundesh is the King of photo-bombers.

 Of all of the photo-bombers in the history of all of the world, Sundesh is King.


For instance... In this photo I was trying to take a picture of the kids behind him and he just completely walked in front of the camera, oblivious to what he was doing.

This month, however, he has become more crafty. Remember this one? When he purposefully photo-bombed this precious moment?

Here's a new one of him jumping in front of the puppy-picture. I have deleted numberss of photos of Sundesh jumping in on someone else's memory. 

If photo-bombing were a country, he'd be the King, I tell you. 

Lesson 4: June has the best skies. 

See for yourself. 

Obviously you are still reading, which means that you did not faint, which means that this picture does not do the sky justice. Usually the sky looks two dimensional, but with June came all of these monsoon clouds. When they blow through, the sky has layers upon layers of depth. It's breathtaking.

Lesson 5: It's not about me. 

I had been mopey all month until yesterday.

I had not been heeding the good advice that I had been given to "take every thought captive to obedience to Christ." I had been dwelling in negative thinking and it was getting the best of me. I was even starting to feel sorry for myself.

But then last night God showed me that my life is really actually pretty stinkin' cool.... but even when it does not feel cool, I should be ok with that because this life is not about me. 

And that is so what I needed to hear.

The Holy God of all creation chose me to be His child. That should be enough. But then he let me move to Nepal, have amazing (really really amazing!) people back in the States who support me, kids outside of my house who love me and give me giant hugs every single day, food to eat, clothes to wear, freedom to not be working in a brothel and on and on and on...

So dude, nothing else matters. I have a God who loves me and even though some days are really hard, it is so worth the trouble because even though my life does not always feel legit, it totally is legit because this life is not about me. Anything good that happens- all of those little hugs and beautiful cloudy skies- are just a bonus.

This new "not about me" thinking has come just at the right time. And it just squeaked in right before the end of June.

*******

What about you? What did you learn in June?