Minor Points (Nepal Part 3)

I had some much needed American-style meals during my stay at some wonderful North Americans’ houses. The meat in Nepal isn’t very good and is very fatty and bone-filled so I just didn’t eat it unless it was at a restaurant in town.

There were 5-6 small children that were always running around making noise with their squeaky high voices. Quiet time was hard to come by. One of those small children was the girl who lived next door and would start screaming just about every morning at 6AM! But somehow we got used to it. Since I usually went to bed at 10PM it wasn’t as big a problem. It became quite comical to see when she’d start in the morning and how fake her “crying” would sound.

Some afternoons were filled with a few nice games of volleyball before the sun went down. I enjoyed being the tallest guy playing! Other times we’d put four small tables together to form a ping-pong table. There would be a huge crease down the middle though that made for some interesting bounces and reactions.

The cheapest meal was 15 rupee/21 cent momos at a restaurant near the YWAM base. We were afterwards told not to eat there since it didn’t even pass Nepali sanitation standards.

I think I lost about 15 pounds while in Nepal! All my pants are too big now.

So Nepali’s have a different way they worship. Prayer times start with everyone praying, somewhat loudly, at the same time. They didn’t seem to sing a large variety of songs. Rather they tended to sing a few VERY enthusiastically.

Women dress very conservatively in Nepal. Well, accept the odd occurrence of the sari. It was winter in Nepal at the time so that might have influenced things as well. Anyway, most women wore colorful loose fitting pants with a long knee-length shirt overtop. Usually a scarf around the neck accompanied any outfit. The sari however usually showed part of the women’s midriff which doesn’t seem to fit their conservative culture. Normally you’d only see women wearing saris.

The base was quite dirty by our standards. The dishes were washed in pans with cold water and left to dry outside. I was told that occasionally the two nasty street dogs they kept as pets would lick some of the plates, but I tried not to think of that while I was easting!

My bed was only 6 feet long. It was built for the shorter Nepali people.

I only got to take 2-3 warm showers the entire time I was there. Often times I’d just wash my hair in the sink with freezing cold water. Talk about a brain freeze.

The rooms where not heated so at night (40-45F) everything got to be pretty cold.

I hand-washed all my clothes. Because of that I only did laundry twice. Towards the end I’d wear a shirt for 5-6 days straight. I guess that is pretty normal there. When in Rome!

I won’t even start in on the nasty street dogs they kept on base. They each had babies during the time I was there too. I have no idea why they kept those things around. I think about half the Nepali’s there didn’t want them either.

Nepali women make very little eye contact.