Got it made with lemonade in the shade!

Sort of!


This man is on a bicycle. Yes, it is hot here, but the people do not like to look "tanned" either, so they are always walking around with umbrellas--usually ladies though. This man "Jerry-rigged" this broken umbrella. Notice the top part of the umbrella has a soap bottle taped to it to help hold it up then it was taped to two section on his bicycle to hold it up. Pretty genius if you ask me! I love inventive people.

Rats!

Don't let these sweet faces fool you! These dogs are killers! Rat killers that is!

This dog's name is Izi!

This one's name is Raja.

These dogs aren't technically ours, they belong to the house and whoever stays here. It is important here to have a dog--a black dog at that to keep thieves out and also rats. 

I was very  happy when I got here--blissfully in ignorance I suppose. I had heard that there were rats everywhere, but I hadn't up until today actually seen one here. I just thought they didn't like us!

About 2 months ago we had some friends over and we were sitting in our kitchen after dark playing some games when they said, "Did you hear that? That was a rat squeak." I was really quite content never knowing what that sound really was.

It was at this point that our friends asked us if our dogs were rat dogs. What does that even mean? Aren't all dogs rat dogs? Turns out they are not, but I had no idea if ours were or not. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Every night at dusk and through the night along with all the dogs barking, which has become quite soothing--really! I also hear another sound, not so soothing. All over the place. Every time I hear the squeak I pray for God to protect our house from rats, cockroaches, and bedbugs--which seem to be the 3 big enemies around here.

It seems like whenever I hear a squeak outside, relatively near our house our dogs go nuts and start barking, so I had a pretty good idea that they were rat dogs.

Today I was reassured! This morning we woke up and found a half eaten rat near our gate outside! I know that sounds disgusting--however, alive--really bad, dead--good, half eaten--even better!

I know have a greater appreciation for our furry friends!!!

Are those flies?

This pasal (shop) is about a 3 minute walk from my house and where I buy most of my groceries. At first I only bought vegetables there. Then I realized they had rice, flour, sugar, cereal, soda, wai wai (our version of Raemen noodles), snacks, water, shampoo, toothpaste. Every time I go I look and find something else.

These people (husband and wife) are very nice too. They are always teaching me new things to say. They are patient with my slow Nepali speaking, and seem to love it when we come by. Instead of trying to buy everything in one trip, I almost go every day so I can practice more language learning.

They always give us a good price, so I don't even haggle here like I would do at other shops. Several times I have brought up a vegetable from down the road like a certain type of lettuce or asparagus or something and they will special order it for me and give me a great price on it. I'm excited about the day when I will be able to tell them about Jesus.




Across the street from the vegetable shop is this meat shop. Those black dots you see are flies.




I"m not positive because I didn't want to get any closer, but I'm pretty sure there were intestines in that white basket on the table next to the scale. Now my question is, if you could get past the disgusting mental part, and actually buy this meat, if you cooked this meat thoroughly or the chickens they also have would you kill all of the bacteria in it from being left out. My mind tells me "no" because of the health conditions, but the other part of me says, "Doesn't enough heat kill everything?"



This meat shop is where I shop. Can you see the difference?



They keep the meat in the freezer/refrigerator until you buy it and then take it out and cut it. Mentally, this place is better, but if enough heat does kill everything then the meats are the same.

Our all time favorite!! The Yak Opera

This one was hilarious. I pieced together several videos I had so you could get an idea of this. We were sitting on the front row on this side so when the yak was near us it was only 6 inches from our feet. I thought at first the kids, especially Abby would be scared, but they loved it.

There were two men in side the yak costume. At one point the people behind us were telling Paul it was real then at that exact moment everything everywhere got real quiet and Paul said, "No it's people," everyone started laughing at him. It was so funny. See if you can hear it in the video.

First there is a husband and wife, then enters crazy yak herder, then of course the yak. The video is right at 4 minutes, near the end the yak does something really funny, so keep watching--it's worth it.

A Cultural Dance for the Lhasa Tibetans

My boys really liked this one. Singing and dancing has to be difficult at the same time. Can you imagine playing an instrument and dancing? I don't remember the name of this instrument sort of like a guitar.

Tibetan Celebration part 2 (Amdo)

This is done in traditional Amdo clothing. It is a song of praise to the holy Llama of that region. The dance was very beautiful, but it made me sad. I prayed that the gospel would soon be translated into the Amdo Tibetan language so that these people would be saved, and then they could praise, sing, and dance for the one true God and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

A quote that was made a few years back that spurred us into going into missions was this, "You could walk for weeks and weeks among the Amdo Nomatic people and never meet one person who has even heard the name of Jesus."

How sad this is!

Please pray for these people. Pray for more labourers! We need more help.

Tibetan Celebration

This past weekend we were invited to a special event. We weren't sure what was going to happen. It was to celebrate some students that had come from America to learn of different cultures. They had finished their studies and would be heading home soon. Our whole family was invited so we went. I packed some coloring papers and different things for the kids to do just in case they wouldn't be interested in what was going on.

Boy was I wrong!!

They had a group of Tibetan dancers and singers. It was kind of like a play they put on for us. I took a bunch of videos of what was going on. Rather than show you all the videos at the same time I will post one every few days so that you won't get bored with it. But I can tell you being there live was awesome. Our whole family sat stunned for an hour and a half watching--even the kids. It was great.

Here is the first one.

They would do a dance and then stop and talk for a little bit like a musical skit or something. I just wish I knew what they were saying.

This is also the traditional festival clothing.

The men normally wear western type clothing. 

The ladies clothing is somewhat similar just less ornamental.

This is what you would see in every day wear for the Tibetan ladies.

A New Power Schedule--we have 14 extra hours of electricity each week.

I've already shared with you about our limited electricity in Nepal. A little through this blog, and quite a bit to several people who have asked questions.

We have a schedule for the electricity--when it is on, when it is off. We used to have 84 hours of electricity a week. Now we just received a new schedule and we now have 98 hours. We are moving up in the world!

Here is our schedule of when we do have power.

Sunday 9am-1pm

Comes on at 6pm stays till Monday morning at 11am---this is our longest length of electricity. My favorite day of the week. It used to turn off at 10am, so one hour longer now!

Monday--4pm-7:30pm

Tuesday 3pm-7pm

Wednesday 2pm-6pm

Thursday 1pm-4pm comes on again at 9pm.

Friday 11am-3pm comes on again at 7:30pm

Saturday 10am-2pm comes on again at 7:00pm



Many people have asked about my refrigerator.
Our refrigerator does not run on battery. Up until recently it was cool out so we didn't have any problems with things thawing out or going bad because it got too warm. Now that it is in the low 80's in our house in the middle of the day we need to be more careful with how many times it is opened. So far it hasn't been a problem. Especially, with meat I may need to start buying it as needed instead of a week at a time, that way it doesn't go bad on me. That would be my biggest concern.

We have been making ice when the power is on so that we can have cool drinks. The water is kind of Culligan style with the 5 gallon jug. So it is just room temperature. It's just now getting to the point where it's not fun to drink warm water. So we try to keep ice for our water around.

We have at least one light for each room that runs on battery so that we don't notice too much when the power is off. Recently we got an electrician to put one plug in each room on the battery so that we can charge our computers and run fans at night time. Now we only have one fan for our room, but as it gets warmer we plan to get two more fans for the kids room. Hopefully our battery will be able to hold 3 fans at night and one light. If not we may need to get one more battery....but time will tell.

It really isn't that hard, you get used to it and learn to work around it.

The most difficult is washing clothes--obviously you can only do that when the power is on. Now that it is getting warmer you don't really want to wash the clothes at night and let them sit in the washer for hours until day light because they start to smell. But that isn't too big of a problem yet, I just forsee it.

One of the stranger things of my life...

So being in Nepal means doing your hair in the kitchen with no mirror because it's the only plug that will work for my straightener. I could buy an adapter, but I never remember to when I am at the store!

Since it's not hard, that must mean I am a doer of the word and not a hearer only...see James 1:23, 24....hahaha

 And it also means doing it the night before you have to go somewhere because there is no electricity in the morning!

Never say never! Homemade Velveeta Cheese

At BBTI we learned from some veteran missionaries that when on the field when you ask for something specific many people will tell you "Oh, that isn't here, or that can't be done." But he said, "Keep looking around, and keep asking! When we were in Cambodia, many people said it couldn't be found and eventually we would find it!" Thanks Bro. Schnell!!

Well we have been wanting some really home made macaroni and cheese, but it's not the same without velveeta cheese added to your cheddar! The velveeta makes it creamy. So I finally found a recipe for it at www.copykat.com. Next on my list was to find paprika and gelatin--I wasn't sure they could be found here.

I started asking around and had several "No's." But then I found all the ingredients!!!

• 1 teaspoon gelatin

• 1 tablespoon water

• 12 ounces Colby cheese

• 2 ounces Parmesan cheese

• 1/4 teaspoon paprika

• 2 tablespoons dry milk powder

• 2/3 cup milk

Here are the instructions with pictures.

Step 1--make sure you have electricity!

Get a small loaf pan--or in my case oval pan and line with plastic wrap.

Next, dissolve 1 tsp. of unflavored gelatin in 1 tbsp of water---in my case, make sure you use drinking water since you aren't cooking it. Just let it sit and it will set.

I couldn't find colby cheese and haven't explored some of the other cheeses that are out there yet. I had one block of Kraft cheese left and this other bought here to make roughly 12oz of shredded cheese.

I didn't find parmesean cheese other than this...I used 1/2 c.

When reading about making velveeta from several websites I found that you can use whatever cheese you want, it just changes the taste slightly, but isn't a big deal.

Get your blender set up so it's ready to go. Add shredded cheese, parmesean cheese, paprika, and 2 Tbsp of powdered milk to your mixing bowl or blender. The powdered milk here comes in these huge boxes or bags that are very expensive because of the size. So I bought this whitener that I've used to make powdered milk before.

Then scald 2/3 cup of milk on the stove---this is the stage right before it boils.

Turn the heat off and add your gelatin/water mix. It should be firm like gelatin now. Scoop it in and whisk till dissolved--doesn't take long.

Quickly add your milk mixture into your cheese mixture and blend up. You don't want the gelatin to set too early, so the recipe's I've read said do it quickly.

I don't have a blender so my mixer has this attachment that I used. I may buy a blender in the future, I just haven't wanted to spend the money on it yet.

When it is mixed thoroughly pour into your lined loaf pan.

 

Cover with more plastic wrap and place in fridge for about 3 hours till it sets.

So that's where I'm at now....I'll let you know later if it works and tastes good.

My cost for this maybe $7 or NPR 700 

After I make mac & cheese I'll let you know if it was worth it. Maybe I'll make it for all my missionary friends here as a Christmas gift...haha.

Conclusion = Luke is hilarious!

So as you know we have been living here in Nepal for over 12 weeks!! We have been learning a lot of vocabulary. After we learn some new words we like to practice them on the national people to make sure we are saying them correctly. I am a little shy at this, but Luke is anything but! Here was our day...

We started out by the taxi stand and wanted to take a taxi. We found our friend "Kalam", which we met when we first arrived. You tell the taxi driver where you want to go and then he gives you a price. Luke was in a specially goofy mood today, so I'm not sure what he did with his face--some funny gesture, but the taxi man couldn't even keep a straight face when telling Luke he was going to charge us $5 for the ride to the Immigration office, which is an outrageous price. Luke just laughed at him and the men just waved for us to get in and we settled for $3.

On the way we practiced some of our Nepali words, I was at least trying to keep words in context. "What is your name?","What is this place name?", "How many languages do you speak?" Luke did too, but when we ran out of that....imagine sitting in silence enjoying the scenery and the person next to you breaks out in song! Yes, he was now singing in Nepali to practice of course! I was dying laughing--on the inside of course. Then he started reading some Nepali Bible verses to the man. I was getting a little nervous now, yes he needs to hear about Jesus, but I wasn't sure this was quite the right way to do it. Then the man started saying, "Oh, very good. You read well. Thank you." It was quite a fun ride.

On the way home we got another taxi ride. We had just left the Levine's who were on their bicycles and we were heading to the same place--basically racing, which biking and taking a taxi was about the same speed surprisingly!

We had just gotten into the taxi and Luke decided to practice his numbers this time. So Luke and our taxi driver started counting all the way up to 30. It was hilarious. The taxi driver kept laughing and helping Luke. It was great! A few minutes later we passed Justin and Sheryl on their bikes and Luke yelled out the window "Satiharu" which means friends. The taxi driver thought this was hilarious and kept laughing and laughing and saying, "Satiharu." It didn't help that we would pass them and then they would pass us and the taxi would start laughing all over again.

Then Luke decided to practice his colors and just started saying in Nepali, "pink, purple, green, yellow, black, white..." The taxi driver had had it and was in hysterics laughing and copying Luke. It was so funny!! With Luke, there is never a dull moment. He definitely helps me out of my little box and encourages me to talk more, and of course he helps with having fun too!

If you ever need cheering up, just give him a call!!

Electrical Fire

Electricity is a crazy thing here in Nepal. But then so our the power lines that go throughout the city.

















These are the lines that are outside of our friends house.



Recently they have been working on them.





If you can look closely in this next picture. The lines were actually on fire. That is smoke you see. But of course if they were on fire, I don't think I would stand under them.



Recently Luke was helping someone move. This is the packed truck.



Notice in this video what they have to do to the power lines as they are driving along. Keep an eye on the man in the red shirt. He has a stick in his hand.

You never know what you will find here when you look up.