| winter and reality, setting in |
[18 Dec 2009|01:24am] |
So, finally, Nepal feels like the dream and America feels like the reality again. It took a while. I remember those first days, going back to work, feeling as if the very scent and air of Nepal was still draped around me like a cloak. It's worn off now. I work a lot. And when I don't work, I sleep. The first month of work, I absolutely HATED it. I hated my co-workers, who talk about NOTHING but marriages, babies, and buying houses and things for their houses. I hated our management, who have turned into police-type figures trying to keep us from sitting or checking our email or watching tv in between running our asses off. And I hated our patients, whiny self-absorbed unappreciative dirty people who have to be cajoled and pleaded with just to make them bathe, walk, and take their medicine.
Now it's getting better. The more it feels like I live there, the more I just accept all of these things as commonplace. What gets me through the day is coffee, Izzy soft drinks, and more coffee. I look forward to report, driving an hour to get home, and trying to sleep. I say trying to sleep because even when I'm totally exhausted, I can't fall asleep. (Which is why I'm writing this entry at 1:14am.) Even with taking a xanax, minimum 1-2 hours to sleep. Worse on a lot of nights. After the first hour of lying in the dark, I turn on Nepali radio. I listen to talk radio from Kathmandu where people call in and chat about the weather and what they're doing. Hours go by and sometimes the program turns into Newari language, which I know none of, or really irritating high-pitched Nepali music from maybe the 40s or 50s. If I get annoyed enough, I turn it off and try lying in silence again.
If Nepali radio doesn't work, I try reading. I read a lot of peace corps blogs, learn a lot about what it's like to be a volunteer in African countries like Benin or Burkina Faso. The food there sounds really terrible and the heat sounds even worse. Nepal has its own drawbacks but it doesn't sound as hot or dusty (or bug-filled) as Africa does.
I've been cooking more lately, mostly making a lot of pasta without recipes, just throwing in this or that. I've had some success here. Today I went out for a great dinner with my favorite (and only) older cousin Wendy, and her 5 year old daughter. Always good times, and it's been a while since I frequented Mongolian BBQ and Crazy Wisdom. Lexi says the darndest things, and I just have a great time whenever I hang out with Wendy. I sprinkled fairy dust on Lexi's nose and got some on myself. We were very sparkly.
I'd like to say I've been doing more, like studying Nepali, playing piano, working on karate. But it's just taken so much out of me to adjust coming back to the states, like it always does. I keep up on my Nepali by talking with my new best buddy Shera, online or on the phone. I've missed a lot of karate because of my work schedule, hopefully my attendance will drastically improve after christmas. I had a great workout last night and just felt really good about it, and hate that I've missed so much class.
I enjoyed christmas shopping for everyone, too, and my little tree and stockings and lights down at the cottage. After Christmas, we're in for a long and dreary winter, I'm afraid. I'm already tired of no sun, freezing wind, grey skies. I do, however, love snowfall, and I love sliding around on ice. If I get to my car and there's an ice puddle next to it, I have to pause and take a moment to slide all over it. I like to go out on the lake when it's frozen, too, because it's so beautiful and drastically different than it was in the summer.
Well I guess I will go back to my regularly scheduled bout of insomnia again. I have one more day off tomorrow, of three days off, and it feels like I'm having a little mini vacation. Three whole days without work, wow!
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| living on the border |
[18 Nov 2009|12:35am] |
After reading 'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert, I have so many thoughts in my head right now I'm having a hard time translating them into words. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's about a woman who has everything she's "supposed" to want (a nice husband, house, career, etc) but is desperately miserable. She gets a divorce, falls in love with another guy who breaks her heart, hits rock bottom and decides to spend a year divided equally among three places: Italy, India, and Indonesia, with their respective lessons: pleasure, prayer/devotion, and balance.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the kind of life that would make ME happy, and why I'm not a happier person. Afterall, I've traveled a lot, several times to a place I've loved. I have awards and accomplishments in music and martial arts. I have a degree and a respectable career. I'm healthy. My family members are healthy and for the most part happy. So... what? Why am I not just a bubble of happiness? Why do I hate my job, hate waking up in the morning, crave shopping and starbucks as if they are the only thing that can fix my problems? Always hate my hair and spend too much money changing it? etc etc...
Elizabeth Gilbert's whole theory is that happiness is within. God is within. God is love. God is contentment. But it's all within. And it's not easy to access, even though it's in there somewhere.
I feel as though I could just sob and sob right now. So much is eating at me from inside, so much I thought I'd already moved past. And strangely enough, it's all coming out as fear and anger over my job. I don't want to stay, because I know I'm stagnating. I know that the only joy I get out of my job is that it's 'comfortable'. I don't want to go, either, even though deep down I know my potential is elsewhere. I don't know how to say goodbyes, to whole entire times in my life. Goodbye to working on 4BC. Goodbye to being in Nepal, on the trek. Goodbye to anything that helped form me and change who I am. I want to reach back and grasp it again, re-live it. I am always looking back.
Something I love about Elizabeth Gilbert is her absolute adoration for the Italian language. The way it transforms her, the way she is in love with it like a lover. She learns it just to learn it. She speaks and reads it just for sheer joy of speaking and reading it. She loves Italy, Italian food and wine and men and culture, because she loves Italian. And she just reminds me so much of myself in Nepal. Just for the sheer and absolute joy of sitting over a cup of Nepali tea, speaking my beloved Nepali. Just to overhear it on a bus. The high of recognizing a word, contribute to a conversation, answer a question, even make a joke! My love affair with Nepali is something no one has ever come close to understanding, until now, when Elizabeth Gilbert spends the first third of her book talking about Italian in exactly that way.
I love that she is everything and not completely anything all at once. She finally realizes that she is someone meant to 'live on the border' forever. I have found 'my people'. I also live on the border. Samjhana is a person I am, and a person I am not. Samjhana is a part of me so completely different from Edith, and yet closely intertwined with me and a part of me. Samjhana is who I AM, and so is Edith, and yet I exist in the border between them. They are my two personas and who I really am is the narrator, the one who sees things from both sides. Elizabeth lived in an Ashram in India and learned to love the GuruGit. Elizabeth gained a ton of weight gourging on tasty Italian gelato and pasta while reading Italian newspaper just for the fun of it. Elizabeth fell in love with a Brazilian man in Bali while helping to raise funds for a homeless woman and her three daughters. When asked by her lover (and soon to be second husband) if she'd consider living a life divided between Bali, Australia, America, and Brazil, as crazy as that sounds, it sounded PERFECT to her.
I see myself in this way, too. I am a nurse who takes absolute pride in what I do for my patients and the knowledge I've acquired in the medical field. I am a Nepali girl who gives tikkaa to my brother during Tihar, loves motorcycle rides through Kathmandu at dusk, and dances with Sherpas on a mountainside. I am a black belt in karate that can (accidently) tear your ACL in one quick movement, a tough woman who will give back better than I got. I am a musician who feels my fingers ache with the need to play upon the keys, or pull the bow along the strings. I am a poet who needs poetry in my life to breathe. I am a wanderer, curious about every culture and language and country and monument in this world, and I love my home and my lake more than any of all those places put together. I am a girl as comfortable in a kurtaa with bangles as I am in a t-shirt and tivas. I want to take care of the elderly, I want to become part of a health clinic in a Sherpa in Nepal, I want to do health camps all over the world. I want to live on the BORDER.
I don't want to live within anyone's set margins or boundaries. No, I CAN'T live there. I can't live totally in one world, because I belong in so many worlds. I belong in all of them, and I need to stop tormenting myself for that, expecting people to be angry at me for that, feeling shame and confusion for not belonging totally somewhere, for not 'fitting in'. I am not lost. I belong here, and I belong there too. I am all of these things, and not totally any of them. I am Samjhana and I am Edith, I am granddaughter and I am bahini. God grant me the will and the way to be all that I am. God help me find my way around the stumbling blocks of this commercial world, where money and PTO and fear and shame hold me back.
They say once you find a way to appeal to the universe, a way opens up and that which you really need rushes in to fill the void. I don't know if everyone believes this, but it's always been true for me. It seems to be true for Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm grateful for the eloquence with which she took me along with her on her journey. I know I have many journeys to make myself.
And finally, she had one last thing to say to HERSELF:
I love you, I will always be here for you, and I will always take care of you.
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| Return to the States, and reality |
[31 Oct 2009|06:21pm] |
I've only been back in the states for 3 days, but it feels like so much longer! It's impossible for me to believe that one week ago I was in Nagarkot with sister, staring at the tallest mountains in the world. Time is so weird, how fast and slow it can go and yet it measures out the same. I have been back at work for two days now, and the hours just drag by. I wonder how I ever enjoyed this job.
My flights were uneventful except for an 11 hour layover in LA that I didn't plan on. I was sleepless pretty much the whole time, but so far my jet lag isn't out of control. I made new friends on the ride and talked to a lot of interesting people. My homecoming was awesome, and the first day home I was actually enjoying myself a lot. The second day was great too, but yesterday and today, not so much. I am getting the post-vacation blues, as I usually do. But it's hard to come back to bills, work, and stress. It all just seems so pointless.
I'm looking for a job in home health care now, I think it would really help break up the routine.
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| Nooo Problem- life goes on in Nepal |
[23 Oct 2009|09:22pm] |
Hi everyone,
I thought I should do an update as less than a week remains of my time here in my adopted country. I'm not sure where I left off in the last note. The girls and I all went to Chitwan. We rode elephants, saw rhinos, showered every night, and didn't see a single leech. We suffered through two long and hot bus rides. After that my social life in Nepal really picked up. I've been staying at Biju-didi's but making lots of visits to various relatives homes, because the festival of Tihar was going on. But after all of that adventure with my American friends, I have been exhausted!
It's been really fun getting to know my niece again. Jyopsi is not yet three, but she speaks in full sentences and sounds just like an adult. She sings, dances, bosses us around, insists on having her own seat on the bus, and loves candy. She calls me "nurse aunty". I'm going to visit her school later today and see what it's like. Janak has left for five days taking his Cornell students to the field, but he made me a dinner of pasta before he left. My favorite! The best news is that my family will be back in the states next July for a year! Sarah is also coming with her fiance.
I've been doing a lot of shopping the past few days. I also washed my own clothes by hand... this is no joke, it takes freakin' forever and you have to stare at all the dirt and dust and grossness coming off of your clothes, too. It's an experience I'm glad I had and one I'd happily pay not to have again! The cyber place across from Biju's house is getting a ton of business from me, I bet they're hoping I stay here a long time.
We are going to go to Nagarkot tomorrow for the day in hopes of having a picnic with a view of the big mountains. I'm excited to do one last thing before I go! Then I will make another visit to Saba's family, and then I go to the airport on Monday morning! It seems so strange, like I already live here or something and my mind is confused... where are you going again??? I wish I could go home, get my cats and my BFF, and come back for a bit longer! Well, next time I will! (Minus the cats). Can't wait to come back someday and go back to the clinic and visit my beloved Sherpas.
Till then, I just enjoy the awesome shopping and my family and the beautiful sound of the Nepali language floating around me. Every time I come to this country I fall in love with it a little more, but it's definitely time to go home.
I'll update my facebook status from Singapore on Monday (Sunday night home time), and on Monday during the day at home, everyone can call me because I'll be back in the US and have my cell phone! OH my god text me please, I miss texting! And coffee! And bathrooms that aren't wet! (Although I'm way better with the bathrooms this time). Can't wait to see everyone I love who I've missed terribly for a month! Come with me next time!!!!
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| trekking to Patale- success! |
[14 Oct 2009|03:10pm] |
I spent the last 10 days trekking to and from the small, remote area of Patale in the Solukhumbu (Everest) region of Nepal. I hardly know where to start, but I will post a copy of my daily journal when I am back in the states. For now I will say that it was one of the most challenging experiences of my life. We spent the first two days climbing uphill and downhill. Not just a slope, mind you, but vertical inclines in some spots that almost required using all fours. Slippery mud, wet rocks, fragile bridges made of logs over rushing rivers, thick jungle full of leeches, rocky mountain tops thick with fog and cold rain... we encountered all of these elements and more. There were times when some of us cried from the pain of hours and hours of climbing. There were times when we were freezing and picking leeches off of each other. There were times we laughed so hard we almost peed. We peed in front of each other, off of cement slabs. We showered in portable shower bags filled with hot water.
So there were miserable times, but there were the Sherpa people and the beautiful landscape. Our trek leader wasn't a sherpa, but basically everyone else was distantly related and from the area of Patale. We had a lead Sherpa guide, and several young Sherpa girls helping us, plus the Sherpa porters, all young guys barely 20 years old. We loved their smiles and kind hands helping us up and down steep and slippery slopes. On our last night they showered us with flowers and scarves, performed traditional song and dance, and then danced with us late into the night. That was certainly a night I'll never forget.
Then there was the clinic and the patients. At first I was quite nervous. There was a line waiting for us on the first day. I hardly knew what I was doing, but after a while we got into the hang of problem-solving as a team. We diagnosed, treated, and wrote prescriptions. We also taught the three clinic workers who live there everything we were doing and why. We saw lots of wounds, skin problems, dehydrated adults and children, aches and pains, and gastritis. There were only two people that we recommended to a Kathmandu hospital, but we need donations in order for them to afford to go.
After we left the clinic, an even harder trek awaited us. For three days we panted, sweated, and grunted uphill and then slid, tumbled, and clambered downhill. We slept one night on a field on a hillside in the freezing rain, eating our dinner under a tarp. We had a Sherpa cook making amazing food and we had no idea how, he found everything locally and no one got sick from his food. We drank boiled water that tasted like charcoal. We laughed and joked and played with our three Sherpa "bahinis" (little sisters), our leader Deha, our Sherpa guide Shera, and our Sherpa porters. Leeches attacked us from all sides. But somehow we arrived at the town from where we would take a bus to KTM. We danced and hung out with our Sherpa friends and Deha late into the night, and then caught the bus in the morning. The bus got stuck and it took many Nepali guys to pull it out of the mud. The bus ride was 10 hours of nauseating swerves and bumps, and no one felt well. But we got to our new hotel, showered, ate pizza, and felt like new people!
We lost one member on our trek because of illness. We miss her!!! Next we're off to the jungle to ride some elephants, and then I'll be staying with my sister for my last week.
Here is the direct link to our daily dispatches from Patale and the trek: http://www.summitclimb.com/new/default.asp?linktype=r&nid=119
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| delays |
[04 Oct 2009|06:11pm] |
Today the weather wasn't good for flying so we didn't leave for the trek. Instead, I went to a Western travel clinic with one of the girls who got really dehydrated and needed some fluids. She's resting today, hopefully she'll be on track for the trek tomorrow. I had a lot of fun taking pics of her in the hospital though!
I spent the afternoon shopping in the tourist district, Thamel, near our hotel. Got a few things but didn't go too crazy. My Nepali came in handy, I got lots of discounts, they claimed, because my Nepali is good. I enjoy the shocked look on people's faces when I open my mouth, but sometimes I pretend not to know Nepali, too.
We're about to go out, do a little night shopping. I'm tired of packing and unpacking. It will be good to get this show on the road! I've been waking up around 6-6:30am for whatever reason, and not feeling tired or like I need a nap all day. I actually haven't eaten much daal bhaat at all yet. I'm sure there's plenty to come. I've also had a very heavy period that makes things uncomfortable. Lucky for me the bathroom in the hotel is great. I guess I get to take another hot shower tonight- bonus!
I get depressed getting on the internet, but here I find myself, each morning and evening, making sure the little cyber cafe across the street stays in business.
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| at home in Kathmandu |
[03 Oct 2009|09:03am] |
It's amazing, we had no glitches on any flights on the way here. Miracles do happen. And our organization picked us up and got us straight to the hotel, which is a Chinese hotel and doesn't even serve Nepali tea! That's ok, I have located tea places on the street. Also an internet and internet phone place. Very important for internet addicts like me. We went out for a welcome dinner last night, some of the girls stayed out later but I went back to bed. I was exhausted. We are about to go do some sight-seeing and we leave for our trek in the morning.
Everyone is doing great, no problems yet. It's nice to see Nepal through new eyes. And I will be seeing Biju and the fam again tonight, and I couldn't be more excited about that. Going more than a year without seeing my family is SOOO hard. It makes me realize how much I miss them every day, even though I don't realize it at home. Jyopsi talked to me on the phone and asked me to bring her lollipops (which I did).
I hope everyone at home is happy and healthy and getting ready to root for their team tonight (MI-MI state game). I will be wearing my state shirt in honor of Erin but I really just hope everyone has a great time.
More later!
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| hi from Singapore! |
[02 Oct 2009|03:24am] |
Instead of updating at the travel blog, I'm just posting here, it's easier. I have made it to Singapore, on a plane full of trekkers headed to Nepal. I slept for about 12 hour total on flights to Tokyo and Singapore, so I feel quite awake. I think it's 3:30pm at home on Thursday, and 3:30am Friday here. So we totally skipped Thursday. This airport is off the hook, and makes our airports look like we live in a 3rd world country. Here they have swimming pools, video games, free movie theaters, indoor and outdoor gardens, free internet stations everywhere. The girls and I enjoyed some Starbucks and now we're just hanging out, taking walks, elevating our swollen feet.
Just one more flight and we will be in Kathmandu. I miss everyone so much, and I'm such a softie, can't help crying a little.
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| bookmark this |
[19 Sep 2009|11:07am] |
Hey folks... I leave in 11 days for Nepal trip #4, and if you want to keep track of me while I'm gone, follow this link: <a href="http://blogs.bootsnall.com/edithinnepal/>http://blogs.bootsnall.com/edithinnepal/</a>
Other than that, not much to report. Had a splendid evening with a picnic on the lake, before the boat died and our neighbors on Hummingbird Trail had to come rescue us. I had the flu shot, and got sick, and missed karate. Only one more day now that I can actually go to karate, which is sad.
Basically I'm just going to be spending my days at work.
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| maybe I should be running |
[07 Sep 2009|07:21pm] |
Today is boring. I hate to say that because my old high school french teacher always said "only boring people are bored". And I agree. I could be studying Nepali, playing the fiddle or the piano... but today, all I've done is the laundry. It's gray and rainy outside, and I've had a headache much of the day. I complain when I'm busy, and I complain when I'm not. The bottom line is, I don't much like being home alone. I feel like I did the year that I was living alone and working as a tech, without any friends or anything going on, really. I sat with my laptop and watched lots of gymnastics and Survivor episodes. I'm watching the 2009 Visa Championships right now, gymnastics being the only sport I actually enjoy watching coverage on.
I often wonder what I'm doing with my life. Days like this I feel like a waste of oxygen usage. But I know that I've got a huge trip coming up, and plans for Mexico this winter and a shorter trip abroad in May. In the meantime I work, and work drives me nuts. It's not that bad, but sometimes I wish I could just shove catheters in everyone's bladders and sedate them all. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of things, but hey, it's a good job with good benefits and pretty great co-workers. I'm making enough money to pay my own bills and save for my traveling obsession.
One of the only friends I still have from high school, and my cousin, got married yesterday. I am not a big fan of marriage, but weddings can be fun. Or should I say, wedding receptions when you go with your best friends! Great food, dancing, and conversation. Even nice weather, which has been a tall order this summer. Then the rest of the day hanging out with Erin and the neighbors. Hard to top, but if today had been sunnier I would've felt better.
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