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. 

Sherpa wedding

Weddings are a whole different ball game on this side of the world.

They are steeped in age-old traditions and take time. In the villages a traditional wedding would take 3 days. Here in the city they cram it all into one day…thus making it normal to be at a wedding party for at least 8 hours.

After my Sherpa friend fixed my Sherpa dress we headed to the party house. The afternoon started out with snacks. At first I thought it would be fun to keep track of all the snacks and drink offered…

Butter tea

Cookies

French fries

Cheese balls

Chicken wings

Coke

Fanta

…but then I quickly lost count. Every time I finished one thing there was something else set in front of me. I did however become very skilled at politely refusing the home made liquor. Even if I did consume alcohol the fried eggs floating around in it would have put me off.

Around 4pm the bride and groom finally come out. They sit under umbrellas while a Buhddist monk marries them.  You know when they are “officially” married when the chanting and cymbol banging stop.

5 o clock the servers come around with mushroom soup.

At 6pm dinner is served. The best thing about Sherpa wedding dinners (and funerals) is that it is buffet style. This means YOU get to chose what and how much goes on your plate.

7pm dessert and tea and then…dancing!

After dancing you take an envelope with money and give it to the bride and groom.

8pm the bride and groom start the ceremony of saying their goodbyes. This is a long and involved process and I opted to leave around this time.

I will leave you with a few quotes from the night

You are the biggest person here

They are not truly married until we eat dinner

OMG! You are such a good dancer (Nepali referring to my mad skills)

“bored lagio” are you feeling bored?

Go up to the stage and make a movie…nobody cares because you are a foreigner

Happy Birthday Dad!

I can’t remember the last time I was home for your birthday…sad.

I want you to know that I am thinking about you and praying that you have a great day.

I have felt extremely blessed this past year because I have gotten to spend some quality time with you while you were here in Nepal and while I was home at Christmas.

This may come as a surprise to you but you are not the only one celebrating you birthday today…

My friend Andrea shares this day with you AND her dad’s birthday was yesterday.

My friend Michelle is currently at the hospital having her first child.

And in 1965 DJ Jazzy Jeff was borne…famous for his song “Parents Just Don’t Understand”

(sorry, I was hoping for someone more famous but Jazzy Jeff will have do to)

LOVE YOU DAD!

favorite things

My favorite past time is to spend time with friends. Ideally it would be in a coffee shop or restaurant with our only agenda being to sit and talk. My trip home granted me this pleasure in abundance.  I can’t even begin to explain how this sort of thing fills me up and encourages me.

My friends and family have all gone through so many changes over the past year and a half. Being in Nepal often makes me not feel only physically far away but “spiritually” far away …I just feel a little disconnected. Thanks to my little vacation I was able to reconnect.

I was granted in abundance time and conversation with friends. I ate plenty, laughed heartily, and basked in the warm comforting sun that is friendship.

Thank you friends and family for the time you spent with me

Thank you to those friends who drove a long way to come and hang out with me

Thank you church for paying for me to come home.

My three weeks in America were AMAZING! When I came to the states I was feeling tired and a little worn out. I left the states feeling rejuvenated and ready to take on the second half of my time here in Nepal.

Here are a few of the highlights ....

Spending time with my Portland family.

Bunco at Beth's

Quality time with my FAMILY

Catching up with old college friends

Karaoke in Portland