Hey everybody,
I am so sorry that I have posted anything/emailed anything/phoned anyone in what feels like a million years. SOSORRYYY!!!! We left for Simigaau, a small Sherpa and Tamang village near the Himalayas, about a month ago for a two week homestay. It was quite simply amazing there. The village is composed of probably fifty small stone houses clinging to the mountainside, surrounded by fields of wheat, corn, and millet and beyond that bordered by forests filled with things like tigers and edible ferns. I stayed with Daphure's family - Daphure is the eldest member of our kitchen staff, and father of Tendy, currently our head kitchen staff. I slept outside on a cot in one corner of the house's porch, and in the mornings, I would wake up to the crisp morning air and look down at the clouds blanketing the houses below me (yes the clouds were below me). Then my Sherpa aamaa (mom) would call me into the house for tea and khaajaa (snack), which was usually a small bowl of flour ground from roasted wheat and soybeans called saatu; we would mix the tea and flour together to get a strange Nepali version of oatmeal. It may not sound that appealing, but it was freakin good. Haha, I would give anything to have some right now.
Aroud 10 o'clock, we had class at Tendy's house, a ten minute walk up the hill. Haha, I think the teachers/ program designers must have gotten lazy or something, because we didn't do much in class. Maybe two hours of class, reviewing what we had learned for the finals we took during the last couple of days in Simigaau. After that we could have lunch, prepared by our awesome kitchen staff daai's (older brothers), and then we would study/go home and chill with our families. Compared to O'Leary's organic chemistry finals, our language finals were a breeze, and studying was hardly anything to worry about.
Yeah, I basically fell in love with Simigaau. It reminded me a lot of life in Totoro, the idyllic Japanese film of my childhood - Totoro basically encapsulated the childhood of my dreams, so you can see how Simigaau quickly won over my heart. The village, forest, and mountains were beautiful, but I really just loved hanging out with the people there. Nearly everyone in Simigaau is somehow related to Daphure, my Sherpa baa
(dad). It's amazing how wonderful it is to have your extended family living all around you, where you can lean out your window and yell out to your cousin, telling her to come and drink tea over at your house. While I was staying there, the people of Simigaau were plowing the old wheat fields, preparing to plant millet. Every morning, one family would call over their neighbors/relatives, and altogether we would dig up their fields, talk and joke, and then go over to their house to drink tea and eat boiled potatoes. Potatoes were a big thing over there, hahaha. They would eat them with ground up chili's or sisnu, delicious ferns from the surrounding jungle. Ohhh, so good (I am writing this before breakfast - can you tell I'm a little hungry?). My didi, older sister, was great too. She was really easy to understand, and would explain so many things to me - about Sherpa weddings, about her childhood growing up in Kathmandu, about the state of education in the village. Her two year old son, Laakpaa Sange, was kind of a brat, but incredibly smart and irresistibly lovable. My aamaa was also an incredibly interesting person. She's traveled more of Nepal and America than probably 90% of Nepalis, but she's still a very traditional Sherpa/Tamang woman (she was born Tamang, but because she married a Sherpa man, she became Sherpa). Everyday she works in the fields, herds goats, or cooks food/makes raksi or chaang (local alcohol) for the myriad visitors that come to her house everyday. She has given birth 9 times, but only two of her children have lived to adulthood. At first, she was really intimidating, but later I found out she was quite laid back, and liked to joke about women's private parts (hahaha, don't ask me why....).
Bah, so much has happened. It's impossible for me to write everything that happened in the last month before my stomach eats me alive and I go back home to eat daal bhaat (I am currently staying with my Kathmandu family, though in a few days I will be staying with a different family in Kathmandu to finish gathering research for my independent project). Although my language abilities have increased significantly, I still feel awkward speaking with Nepali people. Of course this is expected - I've only been here for 4 months - but the language barrier always makes me feel very self conscious, reminding me that I am a foreigner here, not a Nepali. This too is something I have to accept; I will never be a Nepali, no matter how hard I try. The thing I have to remember is that I can be a tall, funny looking white person with limited language abilities, and still be able to make meaningful relationships with Nepalis here. Yup. Just gotta remember that.
Alright, have to go everyone. I'll see you soon (no joke - I only have a few more weeks left here!)!
Kori
I am so sorry that I have posted anything/emailed anything/phoned anyone in what feels like a million years. SOSORRYYY!!!! We left for Simigaau, a small Sherpa and Tamang village near the Himalayas, about a month ago for a two week homestay. It was quite simply amazing there. The village is composed of probably fifty small stone houses clinging to the mountainside, surrounded by fields of wheat, corn, and millet and beyond that bordered by forests filled with things like tigers and edible ferns. I stayed with Daphure's family - Daphure is the eldest member of our kitchen staff, and father of Tendy, currently our head kitchen staff. I slept outside on a cot in one corner of the house's porch, and in the mornings, I would wake up to the crisp morning air and look down at the clouds blanketing the houses below me (yes the clouds were below me). Then my Sherpa aamaa (mom) would call me into the house for tea and khaajaa (snack), which was usually a small bowl of flour ground from roasted wheat and soybeans called saatu; we would mix the tea and flour together to get a strange Nepali version of oatmeal. It may not sound that appealing, but it was freakin good. Haha, I would give anything to have some right now.
Aroud 10 o'clock, we had class at Tendy's house, a ten minute walk up the hill. Haha, I think the teachers/ program designers must have gotten lazy or something, because we didn't do much in class. Maybe two hours of class, reviewing what we had learned for the finals we took during the last couple of days in Simigaau. After that we could have lunch, prepared by our awesome kitchen staff daai's (older brothers), and then we would study/go home and chill with our families. Compared to O'Leary's organic chemistry finals, our language finals were a breeze, and studying was hardly anything to worry about.
Yeah, I basically fell in love with Simigaau. It reminded me a lot of life in Totoro, the idyllic Japanese film of my childhood - Totoro basically encapsulated the childhood of my dreams, so you can see how Simigaau quickly won over my heart. The village, forest, and mountains were beautiful, but I really just loved hanging out with the people there. Nearly everyone in Simigaau is somehow related to Daphure, my Sherpa baa
(dad). It's amazing how wonderful it is to have your extended family living all around you, where you can lean out your window and yell out to your cousin, telling her to come and drink tea over at your house. While I was staying there, the people of Simigaau were plowing the old wheat fields, preparing to plant millet. Every morning, one family would call over their neighbors/relatives, and altogether we would dig up their fields, talk and joke, and then go over to their house to drink tea and eat boiled potatoes. Potatoes were a big thing over there, hahaha. They would eat them with ground up chili's or sisnu, delicious ferns from the surrounding jungle. Ohhh, so good (I am writing this before breakfast - can you tell I'm a little hungry?). My didi, older sister, was great too. She was really easy to understand, and would explain so many things to me - about Sherpa weddings, about her childhood growing up in Kathmandu, about the state of education in the village. Her two year old son, Laakpaa Sange, was kind of a brat, but incredibly smart and irresistibly lovable. My aamaa was also an incredibly interesting person. She's traveled more of Nepal and America than probably 90% of Nepalis, but she's still a very traditional Sherpa/Tamang woman (she was born Tamang, but because she married a Sherpa man, she became Sherpa). Everyday she works in the fields, herds goats, or cooks food/makes raksi or chaang (local alcohol) for the myriad visitors that come to her house everyday. She has given birth 9 times, but only two of her children have lived to adulthood. At first, she was really intimidating, but later I found out she was quite laid back, and liked to joke about women's private parts (hahaha, don't ask me why....).
Bah, so much has happened. It's impossible for me to write everything that happened in the last month before my stomach eats me alive and I go back home to eat daal bhaat (I am currently staying with my Kathmandu family, though in a few days I will be staying with a different family in Kathmandu to finish gathering research for my independent project). Although my language abilities have increased significantly, I still feel awkward speaking with Nepali people. Of course this is expected - I've only been here for 4 months - but the language barrier always makes me feel very self conscious, reminding me that I am a foreigner here, not a Nepali. This too is something I have to accept; I will never be a Nepali, no matter how hard I try. The thing I have to remember is that I can be a tall, funny looking white person with limited language abilities, and still be able to make meaningful relationships with Nepalis here. Yup. Just gotta remember that.
Alright, have to go everyone. I'll see you soon (no joke - I only have a few more weeks left here!)!
Kori
I am your loyal blog reader.
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