Making things happen

We all made it to our first major training as Peace Corps Volunteers-no one has dropped out yet since we have had our swearing ceremony!

Things that I have been keeping busy with: I have started making improved cook stoves. In Nepal many people cook indoors over an open fire so there is a ton of smoke women and children inhale on a daily basis so respiratory issues are a huge problem in this country along with cataracts. So these cook stoves we were trained on require red mud, cow shit, wheat husks, and water. You make 50 regular bricks for the stove portion and 20 chimney bricks and then you mud everything thing together (a little more detailed than that but its not necessary to bore you with the details), it reduces the amount of indoor smoke drastically and it requires less firewood and less time to cook so reduces the work load on women. I have made 4 so far and have many more people waiting for me to build at their houses next. Many offer money and I tell them no no I am a volunteer so I can’t accept money and then my ba (Nepali dad) is there and he tells them “Offer her meat! Chicken meat! No wait buffalo meat! She likes meat!” Then they are like ok sure yea and then my ba chimes in “Oh and give her beer too! Ask for beer chori (daughter)!” Haha it’s quite comical.

Also its planting season so been planting tomatoes, cucumber, eggplants, pumpkin, ect. I’ve become much busier lately so time is starting to fly by much faster.

Currently we are at training learning about plastic houses, drip irrigation, integrated pest management, collection centers, business management, solar driers, and of course more language training. It will be great to learn these skills and hopefully our communities will be able to adapt the new technologies if I am able to find funds to do trainings (these aren’t cheap things to build on a Nepali income standard).

So of course I have to insert a little bit of reality of the life of a Peace Corps volunteer and point of the things I really didn’t think I would be doing in my mid 20s.

-Who would have thought I would have my first hotel room hair cut with a pair of medical scissors at age 26? Also I gave a hair cut to a friend in the hotel room who is also 26.

-I buy street food and eat in my hotel room so I don’t have to spend $2.50 on a plate of food because that is “kasto mahango” aka how expensive!

-I do my laundry in a bucket of the hotel bathroom because 10-15Rupees is too much money to pay someone else to do my laundry for me, I could be spending that on something else! ($0.10-$0.15).

-First thing we do when we enter a liquor store is as what is the cheapest booze and then compare percentage of alcohol (also we ask if there is local/homemade booze available, they sell that in old water or pop bottles).

-Looking at a menu I look at prices before looking at what food options there are.

-I have never been so pressured in my life to get my nose pierced.

-We all laugh hysterically when we see someone in a towel or tank top because we all have the same ridiculous tan lines.

-Offering to buy someone deodorant when I go back to the states just brought our friendship to the next level.

-When we are told we can wear shorts for a training everyone cheers!

But what is even more exciting is I have my airplane ticket purchased for MSP arriving June 17^th at 7:25pm and will stay in Minneapolis till early June 20^th when I leave for North Dakota (celebrating friends wedding June 20^th) to stay with family and friends until June 26^th when I will head back to Minneapolis to celebrate Savannah and Jakes wedding on June 28^th and then I fly out Monday June 30^th at 11:25am. So its going to be a fast two weeks! I hope I am able to see most friends and family within this time frame! J