Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are SO grateful for how wonderful you have made ours. My brother Pete is here and brought us a box full of cards, letters, and pictures from friends and family back home who helped make his trip possible. It meant so much to read about your lives and know that we are loved and cared for. We've been a little lonely lately, so the encouragement was very timely :-) He explained he was your ambassador of Christmas cheer--he has certainly been that and we thank you for your part in sending him.
We're having a great time with Pete and some friends that came down from Tibet and are planning to leave tomorrow for a week long trekking trip. We were actually supposed to go today and showed up at the bus stop at 7am (which meant we left our house at 5:15am) only to find out the roads were closed half way between Kathmandu and Pokhara. Thankfully the driver told us then so we could have the day around here and not spend half the day and the whole night sitting on a bus. Anyway, it has been a fun day around town here and we're looking forward to a great bus ride tomorrow. Sorry there are no pictures in this post--we seem to have a hard time getting text and pictures up at the same time :-) We'll catch up on the pics when we get back. Again, thank you for your love!!!

I am finally getting down to putting a few captions with our pictures. We have internet now, which we are really thankful for as it makes communication a bit easier. The catch with the internet is that we need to sit on our roof to get it, but the stars are great around here and the air fresh.
The top picture is Colleen and myself in a buckwheat field. Colleen and our neighbour got together to get dressed up and take pictures and the husbands were needed for a few shots.

This is the piece of land where I help out with a day or two a week. My friend has a similar vision to mine of having a place where people (believers and non believers) can recieve skill training in ag related businesses. In my freind's case he will be doing integrated fish farming and vegetable production with some other things on the side like bees, small scale livestock, methane production for cooking, straw bale construction etc. The land is still being developed but things are coming along. We have a few vegetables in the ground and in Feb we should have our first Tilapia fish.

This is a small house on my friend's land where the chowkidar (guard) lives. The bricks were made from dirt on site. The soil is unfortunately better for brick making than vegetable production but we are starting to figure out what the soil needs.

Our neighbours inlaws. I like the picture, especially of Grandma in the stroller. When I talk to Grandma she always thinks that I am lying to her and scolds me furiously in hard-to-understand Nepali.

Colleen and our neighbour Durga. It is Durga's inlaws in the shot above. Durga was great for language for Colleen but now that we live about 10 km away it is harder to get together.

Villages just before rice harvest. This year the harvest were weak at best although beans did ok. Rain fed fields more or less failed to produce much of anything and that will affect a lot of people this winter.

Some fellow travellers when we were walking in nw nepal when our aunt Joy was here. They were honoured to have their picture taken.

Kids taking a bath in a mountain stream.

Early morning in between Mugu and Jumla in NW Nepal. We walked several days through passess and valleys to get to our destination Rara Lake. This valley is about one quite full day walk north of the town we will be living in a few months from now.

Checking the bees on the rooftop with friends at our new place in Godavari (about 10 km outside Kathmandu). Getting out of the pollution of Kathmandu and into a more village setting has been great. We are the only westerners in the neighbourhood and so we only speak Nepali out here.
One day I was talking to a store owner about bees and he mentioned that he had some in his mother's bedroom and that if I wanted I could have them. He explained that the colony of bees were in her cupboard and had been living there for three months and would sting his mother periodically or kill themselves bouncing into her bedroom light. Naturally I was confused and was sure that my Nepali language was failing me, but... when I got to his house it was exactly like he had told me. A colony of bees lived in her cupboard and flew across her room and out her window to gather nectar and pollen everday. She slept about five feet from the large mass of bees and didn't think it was all that strange. Colleen and I removed and boxed the colony thinking that we had been part of a bizarre and unrepeatable scene. As we walked home another guy approached us and told he had some bees in his cupboard too! So went over there and sure enough about two feet from his bed was at least 3 pounds of bees hanging off of combs from the inside of his cupboard. They had been there 4 months making comb and honey. We removed that one as well.
I am not sure what to make of all of this but we are at least getting to meet a lot of people and getting chances to spend significant time in their bedrooms and cupboards.

My turn. . .

Andrew's been doing these last postings and updating you on our visa and saying wonderfully sweet things about our first year of marriage. It really has been a pleasure to be Andrew's wife for the last year--his strength, thoughtfulness and goofiness make the journey together pretty special :-)
Our rabbits. . . it's a little hard to appreciate the bunnies' cuteness with their odd poses and lack of red-eye reduction, but we wanted to update you all on their growth. We think baby bunnies may be on the way!

Festival season kicked off a couple weekends ago with Teej--a festival for women to do "puja" (worship) asking for long life for their husbands and purifying themselves for the year to come. We were in Pokhara for the start of the event--carnival games, giant swings called "pings" and lots of music and dancing by the lake. We learned that a Teej "tune" exists and every year women from the villages make up lyrics on the spot about the events of the past year. At this festival, all who wish get to sing a song for the crowd. I was told city women have lost the art, but the village ladies are quite adept and clever. Dancing is a HUGE part of this festival and our landlady took over the courtyard for her dance party one night. Cultural dance here is an art all the ladies know--our grandma landlord still has the moves! I left the house to cut grass for our rabbits and was pulled into the dance party. For those of you who know me and dancing. . .it's not good. Anyway, one girl taught me a few handtwists and foot stomps. I gave it a good try, but pretty sure I never got it. It was neat to see how important their dance is to them and how proud they are of it. I have a video that was loading when our power shut off and we lost our internet connection. I'll try again so you can get an idea of what this looks like.

It is rare that I encounter a plant or insect which Andrew has not already discovered. This little fly may be my first. We were sipping tea and studying Nepali while we were in Pokhara and this little guy (girl???) joined us. It cooperated very well for one of Andrew's fantastic close-ups.

A year ago..

A year ago yesterday we were married! Hard to believe how fast it went. A lot of people told us how difficult our first year of marriage would be but it has been great. Colleen is a wonderful godly woman with a servant heart and that has made this first year anything but difficult. At this point, I couldn't imagine being here without her.

Getting a visa in Nepal...

Getting a visa in Nepal can be a bit tricky. Our tourist visas run out pretty soon and we have been looking into other options. The picture above is our latest option and the one that we are running with. I have applied for a research visa as a non degree student at a university here. The pseudoscorpion above is hopefully the ticket to that visa. Little is known about this type of pseudoscorpions and the role they have with the local bees here (they only live in bee hives). Some people say they eat unwanted arthropods in the hives, including the harmful mites, which might mean they could have a huge importance in beekeeping. We'll see. The visa process is just getting under way. Please pray that it moves through the hoops quickly.

Here is a shot of the ladies who are obligingly helping with the research visa.

A parting shot.

Bamboo

My brother use to have "phases" (and still does) which are something like a hobby. When we were younger (he was probably 11 and me 8) he had a bamboo phase. He learned everything he could about bamboo and told a few bamboo facts to his little brother. I have remembered a few of those facts about how it can be used in construction and how its strength can rival steel, how it grows incredibly fast etc etc. Now that I live in Nepal I have come to appreciate bamboo like my brother once did (and probably still does). It really is used for so many things here. We eat it, have baskets made out of it, use it for scaffolding, make mushroom huts out of it etc etc. Splitting bamboo is a formidable task until a Nepali shows you how. I have been working with a friend and his Nepali employees on a training centre where believers learn about small businesses like fish farming, bees, mushrooms, vegetable production. The training centre probably won't be operational for about a year but we are working hard in the meantime to get it up and running. The short video above is us splitting bamboo Nepali style.

Our little family. . . and a new friend

We do have some fun here. . .language is hard work, but we are finding ways to enjoy ourselves and relax.

Andrew's language teacher parents 26 children in an orphanage. One of his little girls has not been able to get into school yet, so she's home most of the day by herself. We took her to the zoo to see the elephant.

Andrew giving Nisa a lift to the zoo. . .

This is our little family. . . two guinea pigs and two rabbits. The rabbits we acquired intentionally as wonderful little pets for me (Andrew always threatens to eat them, but I think he secretly likes them as much as I do). Their names are Thompson (the black one) and Stella (the white one). We named them in faith that their sexes would match their names and we just found out this week that we do indeed have a boy and a girl. That works out great for the names, but we're a little worried about their procreative powers. We might be youtubing "how to neuter your rabbit at home."

When we first bought the rabbits we didn't have a cage for them, so we kept them in a box. Our friends offered us their cage (and resident guinea pigs) so they are all living together on our porch. We were afraid the 2 pound guinea pigs were going to beat up on the bunnies when we added these two new housemates, but instead the 100 gram bunnies seemed to rule the roost. The rabbits are growing quickly, so another cage is in the works and we may send the pigs back to their original home. They aren't as endearing as the rabbits, and it is hard to spend time with this many animals amidst our language study schedule and other activities. I never wanted guinea pigs (and Andrew thinks they are ugly), but it has been fun having them for a while.

These are our darling little bunnies when we first got them. We purchased them from Indian pet venders who fill wire cages with rabbits and birds and try to sell them at exorbant prices. We were first told we had to pay 850 rupees for one rabbit--we ended up with both for 500 rupees (about $7). They were starved, probably taken from their mother too early, but fluffy and adorable. Here they are in their first home--a cardboard box.

Rato Machendra

Just before the monsoons get going a god/idol by the name of Rato Machendra makes the rounds in K-du (he is considered responsible for bringing rains). He is housed in a chariot/cart and there is a giant tower (about 5 stories high) of sticks and branches built above him. Devotees pull him in the giant cart and also worship him. Every once in awhile the tower falls over which is considered a really bad omen (it happened a year ago as well the year before the king's family was murdered). I have heard, and this may not be true, but if you are killed by the tower of sticks when it falls on you it isn't such a bad way to die.

In one of our emails we mentioned a tooth-ache god/shrine. Here it is. Those are little bits of metal and coins that are nailed to it.

Spectators of Rato Machendra and a Colleen and Andrew fan. Can you spot him?

The streets were pretty busy with the festivities of worshipping Rato Machendra and on this auspicious day, a vest with lots of jewels is shown to the crowd. This is a vest that plays a central role in a story pertaining to Rato Machendra's life.

The cart. An old man is in the process of climbing to the top of it to do something (retrieve the vest?). Why such an old gentleman was the climber of this five story topply tower we didn't discover, but everyone seemed excited by his efforts and his eventual achievement.

The cart/tower from a distance. Ropes are to keep it more or less upright.

A quick video of the streets of K-du during this festival.

Some camera shy girls at a place we stayed in near Jumla. We went out west to connect with the clinic and look at land out there. We are plugging away at language study these days and are thankful that we managed to get out west for a bit before we started.

A beekeeper with his traditional log hives in Jumla. This guy had about 38 homemade hives.

The clinic where Colleen plans on working.

I am always amazed at how remote some villages are. This one is perched up on a bit of flat space on the side of a mountain. What the they do there for food, especially in the drought is hard to know.

We camped out one night to get away from the fleas and bedbugs in villagers' homes. Our shelter was pretty rickety but it held up and it was a good break from the bugs.

Some herder girls.

While we waited for a plane in a little town in the mountains we passed the time by befriending tailors (several) and buying some unwestern and more appropriate clothes for Colleen to wear.