Unexpecting the Expected

We now have some chickens. Which means soon we will have fresh eggs! Lok’s father arrived the other day from Pyutan (one of the western districts of Nepal, about a 14 hr bus ride away) along with the two of them in a small enclosed basket. He had to apologize to Pratik who had wanted a buffalo, but was able to blame the bus driver for not allowing him to bring one along. I don't think Lok knew he was coming until he called an hour away from the city, but surprises like this are starting to feel very normal to me. The chickens are just tied by the foot to our sink on the roof for now, but I think we’re planning to build a coop soon. With them and the large rice-covered mats up there, I have to do some awfully careful stepping if I’m ever out for a midnight pee. I’d hate to tread on something that I’ll later be expected to eat. This has often been a concern as on a given day there could be any number of vegetables spread out in the sun, but usually they’re cooked up for supper and not left out in the dark.

The presence of all the rice came after the entire family spent a day harvesting at the 2nd sister’s house about 5 mins away. This week has been a flurry of harvesting everywhere around Kirtipur, meaning a rapid disappearance of all the beautiful fields full of the tall green blades. It’s too bad, but I can’t complain much about the scenery now that the himalayas have a much more constant presence on the horizon.

I’m having a lot of fun speaking Nepali with strangers (shopkeepers, waiters, taxi drivers etc.), most of whom are extremely shocked (and seem very happy) to find out that some foreigner would think it’s worth the effort to learn a language that nobody speaks outside of this one tiny and in their minds globally insignificant country. I’ve been picking up a lot of hints about how to put Nepali words together by the way some of the locals speak to me English. For example, when speaking English, many Nepalis tend to throw the word “also” in a lot more often than is necessary... or come to think of it perhaps it’s only my 7 yr old little brother that does this... Regardless, I’ve started inserting the Nepali word for “also” (pani) into random parts of my sentences whether it seems like it belongs there or not. It’s hit or miss whether someone will compliment me on how great my Nepali is or stare at me in confusion and then back away in apparent concern for my sanity.

Despite all the joys of the great festival, I find I’m happy to be back at the school teaching again. I don’t have a fixed schedule (aside from the one math class), which at first I had been hoping for, but (amazingly) there’s never been any problem having classes to teach each period just by filling in for teachers who happen to be absent for one reason or another. And I enjoy getting to work with the whole range of students and the different rapport I’ve built up with the various ages. Lots of times teachers will be gone for a week or more at a time and I’ll be able to teach the same class back to back, which allows me to build off of previous lessons. I really enjoyed stepping through guided story writing with class 9 the past 6 days and hearing them answer all kinds of questions by the end of the week that they responded to with only blank stares at the beginning. Another highlight was reading the Three Little Pigs with class 6, one pig per day, and having the one student who used to pretend he had no book to avoid getting involved in lessons suddenly become the most active participant in the room. He’s still rather rambunctious, feeling the need to climb up the bars of the window to demonstrate that he understands what the verb means and that sort of thing, but at least now it’s a productive energy rather than disruptive as it had originally been.

So, essentially I'm very happy with how well everything has been going. My days are filled in a very different sense of the word busy than I was used to at home. What I mean by that is that it feels like there's always lots to do, but because nothing's scheduled in advance it feels much less like being busy with commitments and more like busy with whatever I most want to do at any given time. It's been a very rewarding way to live, like yesterday afternoon when I went on a whim to go visit another volunteer at her orphanage so that we could cook dinner for the children and give them a break from the usual daal bhat. Or the many times I've left the house without knowing exactly where I'm headed (just invited "somewhere" by someone I know here), but ending up at a sort of talent show with various song and dance performances or eventually at a Nepali wedding of my head teacher's friend's younger sister. No day seems to end up anywhere close to how I imagine it, but I've become very accustomed now to stepping off into the unknown and avoiding building expectations about what things will be like.