Daily life

Everyone has been asking about the daily life here. NepalI's sleep with the sun.  They awake at daybreak and go to bed when the sun goes down.  I have had no problem adjusting to this schedule. Breakfast consists of anything from rice to toast and tea.
     The people of Nepal are actually very conservation oriented.  They use everything and throw very little away.  Every bit of food is used.  Rotten fruit is used in baked goods...and I can assure you that it is good. Any food scraps that absolutely cannot be eaten are thrown out in the fields for the water buffalo to eat.  The milk here comes from water buffalo and it is not processed/ homogenized/or pasteurized.  It is kept in a milk pot and heated gently when ready to be used.  I like the taste of it in my tea.  Utensils in the kitchen are very simple.  A large rock is used as a garlic press.  Handmade wooden rolling pins and rolling boards are used to make roti, a nepali bread. Gas is used to fuel the hot plates that are used for cooking. It is rare to consume meat.  Everyone has vegetables growing in pots on their roofs or anywhere in the ground that is available. Dishes are washed, then rerinsed in purified water.  This is because the water here carries horrible diseases such as Guardia, hepatitis, and dysentery.  They collect rainwater during monsoon season from their roofs and store it in huge cistern.  They use this water for drinking purposes only after it goes through a filter system.  Toilets are generally a hole in the floor, unless you're rich and can afford to install a Western toilet.   Most of Nepal is not rich.  Because of the lack of continuous electricity, there is no hot water unless it is heated up on the gas hot plates.  Any trash is burned, although it is rare to have any trash at all.  Every house has a solar panel on top.  The panels power a solar battery which operates lights in the house.  the catch...only one light may be used at a time.  There isn't a lot of sunlight during monsoon season for the panels to collect.
     Electricity is a challenge here.  Nepal relies on hydroelectric dams for their source of electricity.  This works well during monsoon season but not so much the rest of the year.  This year, two dams were damaged by mudslides, so electricity has been scarce.  To conserve what electricity there is, Nepal uses load-shedding.  This means they cut off electricity to different parts of the cities at different times of the day.  Last week, we were scheduled for 60 hours of load shedding, 2 five hour segments at a time every day.  This did not go as planned.  We were without electricity for 30 hours straight.  Luckily, the only thing we use electricity for is to charge our tablets and to run the washing machine.
     Washing clothes during monsoon season requires a conscientious plan of attack.  You must make sure that load shed isn't scheduled for the time of your wash cycle.  Ask any nepali and they can tell you to the minute how long it takes to wash a load of clothes.  Next, you must know that there will be at least 30 minutes of sun to start the drying process.  Finally, you must watch for rains after you hang up the wash.  If you miscalculate any of the above steps, you will end up with smelly, musty, wet clothes that never fully dry.  I hate wearing damp clothes, always have.  I wear everything as long as I can to make it through to a sunny day, when hopefully there will be electricity.
     The main meal here in dhal bhat, which is rice and lentils with vegetables.  Most nepalis eat it twice a day for lunch and dinner. Like the nepalis, I could live off this dish without complaints.
     We live two houses from a Hindu temple.  Hindus ring tinny bells at odd hours of the night.  They also play instrumental flute music at 530 am every morning.  Yesterday, the morning flute music was actually a Christian song.  We just sang along and laughed.  At night, there are frequent "parades" as the Hindus march to their temple either playing drums or ringing the soft, tinny bells.  The music is beautiful and I don't mind it at all.
     Generally, the people here are very happy.  They sing all the time.  They also break out into dance quite randomly.  When the baggage carousel at the airport was slow and finally stopped altogether, instead of getting upset, some men broke out into a dance until the belt restarted.  The same thing happened on the airplane while we were waiting to disembark.  they are always smiling and they dot seem to know what stress is.  It's a great ay to live and I have adjusted completely.