Happy Birthday Mom!

Today, April 2^nd, is my Mom’s birthday. She is the big “double nickel”.

Mom might hate that I posted her age, that is if you can figure out what double nickel means, but I don’t think she should mind.

When Mom came to visit me in Nepal everyone ewed and awed over how young she looks. Seriously…they were all very impressed, as am I. If you have ever met a Fredrickson woman you would understand this phenomenon but let me just say that my Mom, Grandma, and Aunts all look great…I can only hope to have inherited this gene.

My Mom’s hobby is people. She does not invest her time in scrap booking or anything that involves yeast rising but rather she spends her free time with people. Family is priority and my nephews, her grandsons, are currently reaping the benefits.

Some of things I adore about my Mom are…

Her laugh…especially when she is really tickled and can’t stop laughing

She writes me every week to tell me how she and the rest of the family are

Her willingness to step out of comfort and follow Christ’s leading

Her intuition and ability to read people. (don’t lie to my Mom she will see right through you)

The way she grounds me. When I was a kid she “grounded” me ALL  the time. These days it is an emotional grounding. When my emotions are high and my thoughts are muddled I know Mom will be a voice of reason.

How blessed am I for Elizabeth Gail Van Wyk to be my mother!

I love you Mom. Happy Birthday!

just a few things

I have obviously been behind on blogging. A large part of this is due to the wacky power schedule here in Nepal. It seems that when I actually receive power in the evening there is no Internet. So today (Good Friday) I am trying to get a little caught up.
Here are a few things that are on my mind

I went to the American Embassy the other day. I must say that the trip was a little disappointing.

1. I did not talk to one single American. For some reason I had it in my head that it would be a little bit like a homecoming. That I would see my fellow Americans and we would smile at each other and talk about hot dogs and Lucky Charms.

2. The waiting room was sterile and boring. There were a bunch of very quite Nepalese sitting in chairs watching a video on how to fill out the proper forms. If I were in charge I would have a big western mural (much like the Toppenish, WA murals) painted on the walls and patriotic songs piping through the room. http://www.toppenish.net/toppenish/home.aspx

My friend Andrea recently introduced me to a new web site called The Pioneer Woman (http://thepioneerwoman.com/)

Some of my favorite things about this website are…

Her blog is great. She is funny and real, two things I admire in any blog

Her recipes are AMAZING and they have lots of pictures

Her pictures. She shares me affinity for cows.

These days my current reading material is Europe On A Shoestring.

You see, on April 24 I will be boarding a ship for a Mediterranean cruise. This has always been a dream of my cousins and I…and now our dreams are coming true. Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt will be our stops.

Summer has come to Nepal. It is soooo warm. I love the warm weather but I am quickly remembering things I don’t like. With summer comes flies, ants, and sweaty helmet hair. However with summer comes swimming, volunteers from America, and mangos.

I feel like I am lacking in Easter traditions. Growing up I always had a new dress for Easter Sunday my Mom and Dad always had baskets for my sister and, lots of food was consumed. Now that I live overseas and Mom is not around to surprise me with an Easter basket I feel a little out of touch. So, to rectify this situation I am going to attempt to make a carrot cake for Sunday. If it turns out good then I will be making one every year and someday someone somewhere will blog about how much they love Aunt Jess and her Easter Sunday Carrot cake.

 

These are just a few things on my mind…

small goals

When you live on this side of the world you tend to get into the habit of setting small goals for yourself. For example, the other day my goal was to have passport photos made and then drop off an application for a new passport at the American Embassy.

In the states this goal would take no more than an hour. 15 minutes would be spent at Kinko’s getting the picture taken and printed, 5 minutes spent addressing the envelope and dropping the application in the mail and then 30 more minutes at Subway eating a turkey sandwich on honey oat bread. (Turkey sandwiches are on my mind today)

Back to the passport photo…

That morning I got up and ready and met some friends for breakfast. By ten I was headed with a friend to the place to get the passport photo. My friend and I noticed that there was an unusually large amount of traffic…and not just car traffic but pedestrian traffic.

The photo place is just a few stores down from the Stupa gate and the closer we got to the Stupa the amount of people increased.

the Stupa on a normal day

a lot more people than usual 

After taking my picture I was given a ticket to return in 2hrs to pick up my pictures (that was when the power would be on again and they could print the picture).

To get home I had to walk through the Stupa and as I entered the gate I immediately knew that there was some sort of holiday going on. There were sooo many people around. I kept looking at the people trying to decided which group they belong to. I knew for sure that they were not Sherpa or Tibetan.

the nose rings on these ladies are pure Thamong

When trying to figure out a people I look at the women. They are the ones who often give away their heritage with their dress and jewelry.

After looking at a few hundred of these women I was pretty sure that they were Thamong.  On my way home I stopped in at my friends teashop and there she confirmed that it was indeed a Thomong holiday.

where there are a lot of people there is an ice cream guy

A few hours later I made my way through the hoards of people again to pick up my picture. 

What usually takes just a few minutes to walk through took me much longer. So the passport photo process that started at 10am was not completed until 1:30pm.

free water...just don't let the water bottle touch your mouth

This day only proved once again why I set small obtainable goals for myself. One never knows when there is going to be some random holiday, road blockade, or any other random hickup that delays the common task. 

Losar 2167

While you were celebrating Valentines Day Tibetan Buddhist were starting celebrations for Losar. Losar is the Tibetan word for New Years. Although it may fall on the same day (depending on the moon) as Chinese New Years it is not Chinese. It is a 15-day celebration observed by Tibetans, Yolmo, Bhutan, and Sherpa.

Since the majority of my friends in Nepal are Sherpa I had the opportunity to join in on some of the celebrations.

Sherpa make a special soup two days before Losar. My friend Tshering invited myself and some other “foreigners” to her place for the special soup. I love this soup and look forward to eating every year.

A few mornings later Tshering invited me to take breakfast with her family…another tradition.

A few days after that we all got dressed up in our traditional dresses, made our way to the Sherpa Gumpa and celebrated Losar with all the other Sherpas in town. This was an all day event full of salt tea, traditional dancing, and sitting in the sun.

Some of the highlights of this day were…

The entrance of the tiger…since it is the year of the tiger

Traditional dances by the Monks

A helicopter flying by and dropping tons of flowers on the crowd

About 10 days into Losar I went with my friend to one more party. This party was made up of friends and family from my friend’s village and some surrounding villages. This party started at 11am and lasted until midnight. People spent the day catching up with old friends, eating, gambling and as always dancing.

Tshering has become a good friend and treats me as family thus the invite to her family parties. I feel honored to be accepted into the Sherpa fold. Although half the time I have no idea what is being said or laughed about I feel at home. 

For all of you out there who celebrate Losar 

"Happy 2167!"

Valentines Day 2010

For a while now it has been a Valentines Day tradition for me to go out with my single friends. We enjoy good friends, good food, and good conversation thus reminding ourselves that being single can be great.

This year I am left without this particular tradition. There are two other single girls in town but they are with their landlords family celebrating the year 2167 (Tibetan New Year) So, you may be asking how “how did you celebrate Valentines Day?”

First I baked Valentines cookies all day yesterday and then made little Valentines Day gift bags for my single friends. I am a firm believer that singles should receive a little something special on this day.

Second I rented some good movies. Nepal’s gift to me on this day is power all night....sort of (it has been going on and off as I write this)

And last but not least I sent a few e-mails to some of my best friends letting them know how much I love them. I am not very good at telling people how much I appreciate them so I like to advantage of this day and do just that.

Over the past 24 hours there has been a song that keeps running through my head. My friend Andrea introduced me to a new artist named John Mark Mcmillan.

I love his CD and would highly recommend you checking him out. I will leave you with just a few words from his song “How He Loves Us” for I think it’s appropriate on this Valentines Day.

He is jealous for me,

Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,

Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.

When all of a sudden,

I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,

And I realize just how beautiful You are,

And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,

Oh how He loves us,

How He loves us all

a slow decline

The other day I recently received an e-mail from a very good friend who is VERRY good at telling me the truth…this is probably why we are such good friends.

In said e-mail she told me 

“your Nepali-English is crazy these days....I see a slow decline in your spelling! ha!  It happens to everyone at some point. I remember when my mom finally said something! ha!”

You see, the problem stems from the fact that every day I am dummying down my English. For example rather than saying something like

“I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday so I decided to stay home,” I would say

“Yesterday, my stomach was paining, so I sleep.”

As my friend also pointed out my spelling is in a general decline as well…not that it was all that good to begin with. Nepalese spell everything phonetically. Surprisingly enough this tends to rub off on a person.

I tell you all of this because if you are reading my blogg this is most likely not your first time and I just wanted to tell you “than you”….thank you for sticking with me in times of extreme grammatical errors, poor spelling, and all around bazaar phrasing. 

fish spa

While in America I received an e-mail from my supervisor. Basically it said before you go back to Nepal you need to go to training in Thailand for a week….I know, hard life right!

While in Thailand I was actually pretty busy from 8-5. After training it was our goal to take advantage of the fact that we were in beautiful Thailand. This meant eating at great restaurants, going to big malls, night safaris, and spas.

Over the past couple of years fish spas have become more and more popular with the tourist. My friend Tammy decided that it was something that she wanted to try. I very rarely will pass up the chance to try something new so thus began the great fish spa debacle of 2010.

We should have known it was not the best idea when just talking about it made us squeamish. With that said once we decide to do something we were pretty determined to follow through on our commitment to try this new experience.

One night we walked around the Chaing Mai night market and found a place that looked clean and was in fact just a few months old.

When we walked in we washed our feet and then headed over to the tanks to put our feet in.

There were two very difficult parts to this fish spa process

1. the act of actually putting our feet in
2. the act of keeping our feet inside the tank

Once, we finally got our feet in we squealed like little girls…and every time we thought about the fish sucking on our feet we would squeal again.

In all our feet were in the tanks for 30 minutes. I promise you this was one of the longest 30 minutes of my life. At the end my feet were surprisingly/freakishly smooth.

On the positive side of this story I am glad that Tammy talked me into trying something new and squealing always brings about a stronger bond between friends.

The negative side of the story was that it was just plane weird and my upper leg muscles hurt the next day because they were so tense for the 30 minutes.

To all those that are thinking about trying the fish spa I would say “try it.” If anything it will give you something to blogg about.