The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

We have had all three this week. Let me start with the good.

tantra online hack cheats bot

Kody and Luke seem to be loving our new life in Nepal. Kody has a best friend at school named Kento who is from Japan. This has made Kody love school and not want to leave in the afternoons when it is time to come home. He has also developed a friendship with the two boys who live next door to us. When Kody gets home they play outside until it gets dark. Life here is much like a community. You are practically married to your neighbors because you live so close and it is great when you have good neighbors, as we do.

Luke also has a close friend. She is a Nepali woman named Saanu. Saanu is a close friend of Shawna and she loves Luke. She often will take him onto the roof and give him a massage. No I am not kidding. The kid thinks he is the king. He is so spoiled.

Our taste buds are changing which is helping also. No, we havn't developed a taste for stuffed mutton lung, but we are not as bothered everytime we ride by the butcher shop and see them killing our dinner. We even make our own yogurt with buffalo milk that we set out all night. It tastes like sour cream at first, but you learn to like it and it is good for our stomach.

Language training good is. My guru pleasant is. My country America is. My health good isn't. My wife name Shawna is. You get the picture about how language training is going.

This weekend some friends and I went to a neighboring village and attempted to take some backwoods trails and find our way back. Needless to say we got lost. The only way to find our way back was to talk to people using the limited Nepali that we have. We met dozens of nice people, many of whom wanted us to spend the night with them. They would insist on giving us some tea for our journey before they would let us go and it turned into a great time. Most were fascinated in a digital camera that we brought that would allow us to show them the picture we just took. We ended up finding our way back and it turned into one of the best days of language training I have ever had.

Now for the bad................. The pollution in the valley is the worst it will be all year. Something about the cold makes the pollution get worse and there is a health warning out about breathing the air. Like we really have a choice in the matter. "Oh look Shawna we shouldn't breath this week, the air quality is too toxic."

The air has made both Shawna and I sick. We both have sore throats and she seems to be coming down with bronchitus. It just takes a little getting used to and we have not been here long enough. Our immune systems are at their limit and we are all getting sick now.

You can see the pollution in this picture I took looking down into the valley.

Then there is the cold. If you want to experience what it is like here in the winter you can turn your furnace off and go outside and take a shower by standing in a bucket by the faucet near your garage. Needless to say we have decided that we don't need as many showers as we thought we did.

The winter is also a time of water shortages. This provides another incentive to forget the shower. It hasn't rained once in the last six weeks since we have been here. Not even a little bit. Everyone tells me that it will be late April or May before it rains again and then it starts the monsoon. Its either all or nothing here. With the water shortage it is not uncommon to turn the faucet on and nothing come out. You remedy this by pumping water out of your well onto your roof so it can get some pressure. The problem is that we are running out. It is just a inconvenience more than anything but it is likely to get worse before it gets better. The colder temperatures mean there is less glacier runoff and less water in the ground and rivers.

Now for the Ugly. Kody apparently got into some water when he was playing outside with the neighbors. Now his stomach is terribly upset. Luke also has terrible stomach problems and this is making life pretty difficult for them. Add that to us being sick and it makes for an interesting holiday season.

Overall, we are adjusting very well and most of these problems are just problems everyone goes through. We have made many new friends and are learning how to live again. We have become involved in a local church and this has also helped.