By car, elephant, and rickshaw

To be honest, I would have nixed the Lumbini part of the trip. We are facing down our last year in Nepal, and finally willing to overcome our “but Safaris in Africa are so much better” snobbery to go down to the big national park here and attempt to see some animals.

And of course, we can’t just hop on the 15 minute plane ride, see the park, and come home. We have to drive the 6-hour road, because the Subaru would have been sad if it didn't get to go. Despite the fact that the road was so bumpy it actually unscrewed the bolts in the rooftop rack.

Chitwan National Park was great. We stayed at Sapana Village Lodge and really enjoyed it. We have been told by other USAID-ers that they treat their elephants well. After being there, I am not sure this is true. However, we were already there and went on elephant-back safari. The only choice, actually, as the roads such as they are were far too muddy for vehicular transport.


Aside from the sore muscles obtained from making sure hot and wiggly toddler daughter didn’t wiggle right off my lap and fall to her death in a river or mud swamp, we had a nice time. And we didn’t see any of the big stuff (tigers or rhino), but we saw little stuff (monkeys, deer, wild chickens, peacocks), and it was fun.

Then we drove to Lumbini, the famed birthplace of Buddha (haven’t you heard of it?). One of Nepal’s treasures. However, our GPS map isn’t actually that great and didn’t actually have the spot searchable on the map. Sooo, we just kind of went and hoped for the best. Despite being worried (more than once) that we had crossed into India, we did make it, due to my spouse’s uncanny processing and memory of maps.

Toddlers in stupas

We found our hotel (pricey, not nearly as cool as Sapana), grabbed some dahl baht at a local restaurant (hot and sweaty, but friendly and yum yum), and made our way to the historic site. The site is a huge complex, several square miles, that contains a museum, visitor’s center, a Peace Pagoda, representative Buddhist temples/monasteries from many different countries (a la Disney World), an eternal flame of peace, several historic sites, and of course the site of Buddha’s birth. So despite not being extremely into Buddhism ourselves, it sounded interesting and fun.


We arrived, paid our tickets, got a map, and starting planning our visit. Shall we start at the visitor's center? Oh, that's the shell of a building out yonder still going up. How about that museum? Another pile of bricks beckons! So forget the informational stuff, let's just go see the global array of peace pagodas.


So we pile onto 2 bicycle rickshaws, because these lovely buildings are really quite spread out, and it's hot, and neither the 1-yr-old nor the 9-yr-old are acting too excited about this. We hop over to the international temples (and by "hop," I mean the two older men commanding our rickshaws tug and pull us over bumps and walkways for about 5 minutes). The setting was really quite nice, the temples surrounding a man-made lake or canal. We stopped at the Tibetan temple first. The thing about temples and monasteries is, you can't wear shoes. And the thing about concrete is, it's super hot at 2PM on a 90+ degree summer day. Luckily, the Tibetans provided us with a water pump right inside the courtyard, where we and others cooled their toes, heads, etc. The other thing about temples and monasteries is, we've seen a bunch. Especially Tibetan ones. It was nice and cool inside, but we soon ran our way over the burning-coal pavement and made our way to the next one, which looked a lot like the first one. So we decided to rickshaw-it over to the next cluster of monasteries, where we'd find the Australian and Korean monasteries. Those might be different, eh? Yes! They weren't even complete! In fact more than half of the monasteries were under construction.

So... we drag our super-excited kids on to Buddha's birthplace! We again divested ourselves of shoes (but enjoyed grass in the courtyard!); we went through a security check

Worshippers at Buddha's birthplace

and found a pleasant and green area filled with tourists and worshippers. Lucky us, we made this trip during Dashain, a very important Buddhist holiday. The kids enjoyed watching the fish in the sacred pond while the husband and I enjoyed dragging the kids away from the pond to see the very spot that Buddha was thought to have been born (foundations/ruins abound, I love that stuff), and we all listened to the prayers and music being offered up while steeling ourselves against the heebie-jeebies due to the assault of non-Christianity on our very Christian selves (that's another story, but this stuff is real, folks).

After a long hot day, a nice tip to our rickshaw drivers, and a night in the hotel with the air-con blasting, we loaded up in the car for the trip home. We would have stayed longer... but there really wasn't more to see.  We drove out of the historic area, through fields empty of workers and misty in the morning sun, observing folks decked out in their finest as they went on their way to Dashain celebrations by foot, bicycle, and truckload. We were just marveling at what a great time to drive this was, as we worked our way through the town with zero traffic and uncharacteristically calm streets, when the 1-yr-old blew her cookies (and morning porridge and mostly milk) All. Over. The. Car. Backseat, carseat, windows, dripping in regurgitated baby milk.

A moment of shocked silence ensued. Then a baby wail. Then Husband swerved the car to the side of the road (yay for no traffic!) and mama jumped into action, pulling baby out of the carseat, trying to control regurg-milk drip in the car, and immediately noticing the street-side water pump.

This may be one of the few times anyone has ever given thanks for the lack of central water.

The infamous water pump

Since it was a holiday, no one was at the pump. We did draw a few onlookers from the nearby shops and homes (hehe, hey there, how'ya doin'), but I stripped that baby down and cleaned her and her clothing in freezing cold street pump water. (That kid is a really good sport). Husband pulled out the carseat and did the same. As for the car itself, lets suffice it to say some previously worn clothing items were sacrificed, and we had to keep the windows down as much as possible on the way home.

Chitwan was neat to see. Lumbini was one of those not-really-successful trips that I would have said was too much trouble with the family, but thanks to my husband's unquenchable wanderlust will be fondly remembered with laughs, groans, and "remember whens" for a long time.

Home is where the tortillas are

As a participant in the Taking Route "Global Life" series, I mentioned our wonderful homemade tortillas (first appearing in this blog about 4 years ago). Due to requests from other sad Mexican-food lovers with a tortilla-shaped hole in their hearts, I am posting the recipe here. Buen provecho!

Ingredients:
2+ cups flour
1 Tbsp shortening*
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 cup water

* I use shortening (Crisco) as it is available here. You could instead use lard, or experiment with other fats.

Instructions:
1. Preheat griddle or metal pan at medium heat. A nice hot (preheated) pan makes a nicer tortilla.

2. Cut shortening into the flour. Add salt and baking powder and mix. Add water and mix well. I use a hand mixer with dough hooks (sounds fancy but it's not!). Once mixture comes together, mix with electric mixer for 3 more minutes, or by hand for ~6 min. Dough is sticky - if mixing by hand you may need to add flour (which is actually nice for the dough being less sticky, but makes it harder to roll thin later).

3. Let dough rest on a well-floured surface for a few minutes (there is always something else in the kitchen that needs doing, right?).

4. Break dough into Ping-Pong(ish) sized balls and set aside on the well-floured surface.

5. To shape the tortilla, flatten a dough ball and then roll it with a rolling pin or glass bottle. It is really essential to be generous with the flour dusting here!

6. Place tortilla on hot pan. Small and large bubbles will form within a minute or so. Flip tortilla to just brown the other side.

7. Remove tortilla from heat and place in a stack in a clean towel. If tortillas aren't eaten within a few hours, they store well in a bag (preferably in the fridge, if you have space and power and all that).

This happened today

There are many amazing things that happen in the international schools. Here is one.

Yep, that's my animal-crazy, environmentally-minded kid. And that is Jane Goodall.

I keep telling the kiddo that she's doing so much in her life that many people dream of doing (whether she wants to or not), but today she believed me.

On Doing Something

One of the occastional (or more often, if you allow) irritants of being a "trailing spouse" is the oft-heard question, "What do you do?"

Fellow trailing spouses tend to be fairly sensitive on this issue, as compared with the average person who is employed and/or single and/or not posted abroad in any capacity. Sometimes you can even judge their own level of frustration if they offer a different phrasing, "What did you do?" Because, clearly, whatever your market worth was before you started this whole expat thing, it is different now.

And, quite honestly, at least I have the kids/family thing I can fall back on.

One of the adorable little guys available at Beguiled
Child. Hand knit by a women's coop in Bangladesh.

Regardless, especially for those of us who face a consistent stream of changing countries, the inevitable process of having to define (or defend) yourself does take a toll. There is the "eh" phase, where you are busy with whatever personal issues, goals, or travel you may have, and the question doesn't bother you. There is the "formerly" phase, where you talk about things that have kept you busy, even if they aren't currently operational. There is the, um, "go away" phase, where you have been looking and looking for some kind of gainful employment and you do not get hired; one's answer during this phase tends to be said tritely with an entirely fake smile. Then there is the blessed "answer" phase, if you are so lucky, where you get to say that either you have a job doing xyz or you are waiting on your clearance for abc job at the embassy.

Personally, it's been a little on-and-off for me with the consulting and whatnot. This fall, as I was sorting through all the edifying, beautifully made, creatively inspiring toys I would love to put in my shopping cart for the kids for Christmas, I eventually came to the conclusion that I should start my own online shop. Turns out, this is entirely doable via an online shopping website platform partnered with a US-based fulfillment warehouse.

So, look for it - coming soon! Beguiled Child, Enchanting Toys. A place to find toys both constructive and cozy, no batteries, screens, or cords allowed.

Monkey business

Bringing baby home to Kathmandu is quite different than bringing (our first) baby home to suburban Virginia.

Once the little one is tucked up in bed, the exchange goes like this:

Me (exhausted): Is that the baby or is that a monkey?

Him (distracted): Just monkey.

Massive Change of Pace

Don’t get me wrong. I love being in the States – life is so convenient there.

But it’s nice to be back in Nepal, despite the pretty low post-earthquake morale here. After an extremely hectic home-leave, which was difficult in ways we are not ready to talk about in the packing and preparation of our house for the next tenants, we are back with our stuff, in the alternative life we live where I don’t have to do laundry or clean toilets, have minimal gainful occupation, and can stay home playing with the girls and the dog and watch the monsoon rain pool outside (and inside, but that’s another story).  

Now, if only I had some Trader Joe's in the freezer I could get started on making dinner...

On Shaky Ground

So, if you are going to get devastating news – for example, that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the rickety city where your husband is – a good way to get it is to be awakened by a phonecall where the first thing you hear is your husband saying, “I’m OK.”
He is definitely shaken. Major aftershocks continue, people are panicked and living outside, the airport is swamped, and the infrastructure that couldn’t keep up on a good day is damaged, destroyed, or completely overwhelmed.
But he’s OK.

Oh, Mama!

New Baby Year came at last! 

Pregnant mom and firstborn moved back to the US, we changed schools, and had a new baby overlayed with the foreign-service issue of technically living (and hubby physically residing) in a

How can my heart not burst?

place that is different than where we had the baby. In our case, we are extending this period by several months.

Here are some highlights:

• Reveled in living in a place that belongs to us – Home is where the House Is! - despite the lack of furniture and household goods, check (Nov 12)
• No. 1 daughter strong-armed into attending excellent local public school despite her fears, check (Nov 23)
• Thanksgiving with dear US-based friends but without hubby, check
• 40th birthday celebrated while being really, really pregnant, without hubby, check (Dec 5)
• Amazing baby girl born after 2 weeks of “pro-dromal” labor and one hour at the hospital, with hubby, check (Dec 30)
• Comings and goings of parents and hubby, most notably husband’s paternity being up and heading back to Nepal, ouch (Feb 22)
• A bunch of stuff I barely remember, such as getting up 3 to 5 times a night for one child or the other or both; feeding baby while watching it snow; cold bus stop waits with a screaming newborn; cold shopping trips with a precariously sleeping newborn; piano lessons with an amazingly good newborn; library visits while shushing the newborn; skyping to Nepal; cooking dinner with the baby in the sling and the girl sprawled on the kitchen floor doing homework; before school breakfasts with my girl at my own kitchen counter; laundry at 1am; and snuggles in sunbeams with both my girls. . .check
• A visit from a dear friend who folded the 3-load-tall mound of clothes in the borrowed papasan, alleluia and check (March 22)
• Mom arrives, and the house is picked up, eldest dear-one has company during feedings and baby bedtimes, dinner dishes are magically done, bathtubs are usably clean, la! Thanks Mom, glad you’ll be here a while. 

Back on the Airplane Again

After arriving back in Nepal, beginning our very sincere first two weeks at homeschooling, working nights, and getting over jet lag, I hopped on a plane to Singapore for the 5-month pregnancy scan. I was able to do the 3-month scan in Albuquerque since we were in the US anyway, but a foreign service pregnancy in many locales such as ours means a lot of extra scheduling, paperwork, and trips. Lucky for me, I like Singapore. Unlucky for me, Uncle Sam doesn’t pay for the family members to come.

Despite the doc creeping me out a bit, the news was all good! We have a healthy, normal baby girl on the way!

Never say "Never"

Two significant and vaguely inter-related events have taken life by the ankle shaken it all about. Both were pre-ordained by “I’ll never” statements I foolishly have made.

One: I’ll never homeschool my daughter. 
I actually really, really, like the idea of homeschooling. Molding the young mind, enticing her with topics and activities that she would love and wouldn’t be possible in a traditional school setting. But she and I working closely together on a daily basis? Ha! From our first homework assignment in Kindergarten (one of only two that year), where it took 30 minutes and many tears to count the number of Thursdays in February, I have had the strongest conviction that me teaching her is a Very Bad Idea. However, we have had a number of extremely frustrating educational experiences at the American school here, with the lack of actual education being so terrible and the parental scuttlebutt of next year’s teacher being so dour that we have actually discussed home schooling, for 3rd grade at least.

Two: I never want to be one of those moms with a tweenager and a baby.
Yep, I’m pregnant. After 6 years of trying to conceive and all the attendant misery, I get pregnant when I have a soon-to-be 8-year old and am staring my 40th birthday in the face. Despite the “never” statement, of course, we are absolutely thrilled. The future big sister was tearfully happy as well, and now that she has endured a number of pregnancy-related (mis)adventures (mostly, er, food-related) and had to put up with an exhausted mama, she is a little more wary. Still a good sport, however.

Currently we are on leave in the US. All the critical family members have now been told of the big news, and we are also getting a lot of practice explaining the coming school year thusly (God willing):

• Since we are, ahem, not too thrilled with the school anyway, we will start out the 3rd grade year homeschooling (aaah!). 
• Mid-November, daughter and I travel to the US, kicking our tenant out of OUR VERY OWN house. I will transfer to a midwife Ob-Gyn practice in Fairfax, have the baby there, and we will stay in the US until summer time. 
• Hopefully, the 3rd grader will attend our neighborhood school (if I can talk her into it, in a time of such major transition). We’ll stay till the end of the school year for her, and so that we can avoid a couple of trips back-and-forth to the US with the newborn (and the attendant springtime pollution that settles over Kathmandu). 
• Hubby will come to get us settled in November, come again for Christmas and baby’s birth (due first week of January), and come out a third time for US-based home leave in late May. 
• We all return to Nepal, baby in tow, in late June. 

A Hike in the Hills

What some of us may call “mountains” are mere “hills” in Nepal. A mountain is something that towers above the clouds. Recently we joined friends for a hair-raising drive to a lovely hilly getaway at Namobuddha, just on the rim outside the city. Supposedly, there is a view of actual mountains from the hilltop resort, but we did not see any evidence of this. In late April in Kathmandu, after a long dusty winter where fires abound for warmth and heat, and before the monsoons have started to knock down factory and vehicle exhaust, everything is hazy.

Partiers wave an enthusiastic goodbye,
the kids can't get out quick enough.

Regardless, we enjoyed a lovely locally grown lunch while the kids pecked at their food and played on the hillside, and then took a hike over to one of the ubiquitous hilltop monasteries. Remarkable notes on the walk included, 1) actual trees in what could rightly be termed a forest, 2) a number of Nepali picnic-parties along the way, rife with loud music, local beer, and revelry (with one of such a giddy mood that all of us – especially the reluctant kids – were pulled in to participate in dancing / clapping / cheering), and 3) a high vantage point over a hazy valley that made one really, really wish the air would clear because the view must surely be spectacular.

Here are the we hikers as we set out.

Here they are again, at our destination. 

Daily Rhythm at My Desk

Woof.

Woof.

Cockadoodle, cockadoodle;

Woof woof barking running mad pack:

Ding-a-ling temple bell.

Honk! Honk-honk-honk!

Ding-a-ling temple bell.

Cockadoodle, "Amaa!!" 

"Eh?"

Clink! Clink! Tumble glass!

Motorbike buzzz.

"Amaa!!"

Rumble bumble old truck.

Engine starting generator buzz.

Ping! Ping ping bong! Metal drum bong!

Beep beep! Crrryyyy baby.

Moooo.

Ring ring bicycle bell, Seller's ca-aaalll! Ring! 

Come to the biii-cycle!!! Buy my stuu-uufff!

Clink, clink, bong!

Ha-BAA. At-TAA. Monks! Do! Exercise! YAH!

Murmur-and-roar, men-next-door, mumble, murmur want a job send me abroad. 

Metal rumble store fronts tumble come and buy some coke and soap.

Blaaaare-of-a-horn-tru-umpet. It's time for puuuja! 

Beep beep honk!

Door SLAM! Yell!! Mad or glad? Shriek and laugh.

Tick tick, belch.

Yelling clink clink! Tumble glass!

Loud-speaker! Listen to me! Words and music!

Sizzle, sizzle, fry.

Bumpy tractor bouncing by.

"Eh?"

Flap, flap, sheets shake and fold.

Cough-hawk-spit.

Woof woof beep!

Cockadoodle.

Rumble.

Beep!

Best Buys

We've found that living abroad entails a few deprivations--mostly minor reminders of America. There remain a few items that make our lives so much easier and more comfortable that we're frequently reminded of how grateful we are to have made these best buys.

1. VPN (virtual private network). How did we live abroad for over 2 years before we finally purchased one! It allows us to mask our location and change it virtually to the U.S. (or a bunch of other places). It allows us to view webpages (barnesandnoble.com) and services (Netflix) that are not available to people with a non-US ISP. Thus, we've been able to watch non-Bollywood movies and the Olympics (thanks CBC and BBC, but not NBC).

2. Couch covers. In a world where EVERYONE has the identical furniture including couches, ours can at least appear to the different than others.

3. Espresso Machine. Have a favorite corner coffee shop that serves espresso, lattes, and mochas?  We don't. Even if we did, we'd still be grateful to have an espresso machine to save us from a treacherous drive for some coffee.

4. UPS (uninterruptible power supply). A battery back-up to keep power on the TV, DVD player, and computer during the frequent power fluctuations/outages saves us the agony of losing work on the computer or having to re-start the movie multiple times.

5. Pam. Yes, it's that useful. You try going without cooking spray and see how your baked goods turn out.

Tips for walking around Kathmandu

1. Always walk with your mouth closed and watch your step
2. Be aware of wandering cows (see #1)
3. Don't bother covering your cough because the person next to you is hawking up a spitball (see #1)
4. Bring a change of shoes (see #1)

Cave-like temperatures

If you look at the average winter weather in Kathmandu, you will find it quite reasonable. At the coldest time of year (now-ish), it gets into the low 30's at night and up to the 60's during the day. 


Despite this salient fact, if you take a vote of expat residents, you will find a majority say that they have never been so cold. Seriously! This is scientifically proven by people from Wisconsin, upstate New York, and Finland independently stating that they have never been so cold as in Kathmandu.

Why is it so cold if it doesn't even freeze? (I won't even mention the fact that it is often sunny). 
#1: Short days mean the cold, concrete brick-built walls of the house spend more time losing heat at night than gaining heat during the day.

#2: Draftiness of windows, particularly in the bathrooms, and exterior doors.

#3: No central heat. You can heat up a room with a space heater, or build a nest of blankets right next to one as my child and dog are wont to do, but the plan fact is that the STUFF in the room does not heat up. Chair - cold. Bedsheets - cold. Jeans -cold. Floor tiles - cold. Etc. 

#4: (Not applicable to those of us so lucky as to be in USG housing) The power goes out. A lot. In fact, at peak times of "load-shedding" a home might have power for 8 or 10 hours out of 24. "Load-shedding" is a term that means "there is not enough electricity to go around from our hydro power plant during the dry season so you have to take turns." Bye-bye electric space-heater, hello indoor parka.

It goes like this. One night, you notice a nip in the air when you go to bed, and turn the space heater on when you get up. A few nights later, the indoor temperature is a bit lower. A week later, even lower, as those concrete bricks start evening out with the nighttime air temp rather than the daytime air temp. Now, you turn on the heater when you get ready for bed, too, and be sure to get your clothes for the next morning out of the closet because it is REALLY cold in there (Andrew is using it for our wine stash). By morning, air temp in the bedroom is 55 F. Just try taking your tushy into that drafty bathroom that is noticeably colder than the bedroom, and you, too, will begin your day saying you have never been so cold. 

Stuff! And lack thereof.

I'm not kidding about the parade! Nine guys just
 in this picture, but they each had their job.

On Halloween day, five little trucks drew up to our house, each holding a shipping crate or two. In a symphony of belching trucks, hammers and crowbars, shoes slipping on and off, our boxes were paraded into the house.


After having gone through all our boxes, we have discovered an assortment of items that just did not make the trip from Nairobi. Pinched by the movers? Pilfered at the port? Misplaced in a cabinet, drawer or closet during the packing of boxes? I have my suspicions but just don't know. Here are some of the items that didn't make it:

• 2 brand-new in package pairs antibacterial kitchen shears
• Assorted pantry items, like powdered cheese and unopened 3-gallon bottles of olive oil
• A chenille rug that was down in the guest room (the matching pillow made it)
• One girls size 7 rain jacket
• All our salad forks (yes, all the other silverware made it)

Adjusting

I have to admit to having a bit of a hard time settling in to Kathmandu. One reason is that, from the moment you are cogent enough to remember in actually speaking to anyone after a jet-lagged arrival, everyone at this very friendly post asks, "So how are you settling in?" You don't really know these people, so you say what is expected. It's going well, of course.

But in truth, I feel like we are having difficulty finding the ending to the phrase "home is where the...".  Our household effects seem to be taking their sweet time getting here. We don't have our car, and won't for a while because somehow it didn't get put on the manufacturing list for August, and will be manufactured this month. Supposedly. And life at the French school has proven to be a real challenge for the little one. Just about every blessed thing is in French, unlike the 50/50 plan they had when we enrolled. Mixed in with dual culture shock (Nepali and French), my little type A is finding it very difficult to cope. The advantages of gaining a second language and having a short commute to school are starting to lose weight.

We are also in "Daishan" season in Nepal. This is a huge family holiday - the Nepali equivalent of Christmas. Everything closes and everyone goes back to their home, be it city or village. There is music, lights, lots of marigolds and people dressed in amazing fancy saris. It feels very festive. Which makes me a little sad. We haven't been here long enough to have "people", we can't get around to go anywhere, we quickly tire of the near-falling-apart taxis in the insane traffic, and the kiddo is terrified of walking, on account of the motorbikes buzzing and constant honking used as a form of traffic communication.

But today I saw 3 kites being flown from rooftops. Apparently kite flying also goes with the season. Made me smile. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Nelsons Roll

I have to admit that I am doing a little back-dating blogging. I started several posts and didn't get them finished - time to catch up!

Starting with our home-leave: "Home-leave" is an official term meaning "minimum four weeks of extra paid vacation for the foreign service member so that you remember what it's like in America and also so you still think this job is cool after a few years' hard labor."

We Nelsons have been trained not to count on where we expect to be living or working in the future. For now, we can absolutely assured that we have a whole month to be on vacation in the US. Seize the day! Believe it or not, many foreign service members decry their enforced home leave... Why you ask? Because they have forgotten what it's like to have only 10 days' annual vacation? Probably, yes, but also because it is expensive. The majority of people would have trouble spending more than a reasonable one or so weeks at their in-laws, and  other places to stay generally cost money.

Our solution to this was to stay the one or so weeks at the respective in-laws', to travel between said in-laws' homes by our car which is wisely cared for by my parents while we are out of country, car-camping on our way from one to the other and back again. Thus, our schedule looked like this:

1. A week in Europe on the way, where we immersed ourselves in wine, bread, cheese, art, Parisian charm, and Disneyland

2. A few days in NM doing crazy-mad shopping that is hard for those not living in 3rd world countries to comprehend, as well as dentist and doc visits

3. Driving, camping, driving, etc, to include the following stops:

• Rock climbing in the Jemez, NM
• National forest near Pagosa Springs, CO
• Mesa Verde National Park, CO
• Arches NP, UT
• Zion NP, UT
• A'le'inn cafe along the Extra Terrestrial Highway in Rachel, NV (a quick stop so we could get out of NV before the tires melted)
• Mammoth Lakes, CA (in a BED)
• Yosemite NP, CA



The accomplished Junior Ranger in her favorite milieu.

• San Francisco, baby!

4. 10 days' worth of playing, 7-yr-old birthday celebrating, and avoiding forest-fire smoke inhalation at my in-laws' in OR

5. Driving, camping, driving, to include:

• Boise, ID, and a visit to an old college buddy of Andrew's
• Yellowstone NP, WY
• Grand Tetons NP, WY
• An night with a hotel shower and laundromat in lovely Laramie
• A few nights at one of our favorite haunts, my grandfather's house in CO

6. Back to NM for the last of the crazy shopping, packing, eating, and telling everyone we see how awesome our trip was.

Now, my dears, now, I sit in a lovely home in a cloudy city on the other side of the world. A city crammed with people, motorbikes, and houses that go UP; with rooftops where people gather, work, eat, and stare at us; where the dogs, roosters, and the locally-made horn blowing keep waking us up at night; where prayer flags flutter from buildings, marigolds decorate doors and gates, and people, dogs, and cows walk around with the red tikka on their foreheads. We can see the hills surrounding much of the Kathmandu valley from our own rooftop. I look around, think back to just 2 or 3 weeks ago, and wonder which experience is the dream. 

T minus 23 and counting...

23 hours from now, a plane will take us away from Kenya, probably forever. There have been a lot of mixed feelings in our house this week. For the little one in particular, it's been tough balancing her excitement to travel to the States soon with her sense of loss. End result: child's behavior is alternately enthusiastic and downright awful.

For me, I have realized that this is the first move we've made where we may never set foot in this city - or country - again. We'd be crazy to pay for a trip to come here, when we've already seen and done so much (and there are so many other new places to visit!). But this sense of finality is really putting a damper on my own excitement to leave.

On the bright side, we have pulled off one of our lowest stress moves of all time (thus far). Our stuff was pretty much organized / sorted / tossed / sold before the movers came. We seem to have everything now we planned on having, and all that we have fits in our suitcases - or in strategically timed care packages to family.  The house is clean, the laundry is done well before midnight, and we have time to host a goodbye cookie-party at the playground before we leave tomorrow.

Tomorrow's journey starts with a week around Europe, then a 4-week trek across the Western US. This is one of those times...home is where the family is.

Cute-isms

This one's for you, Mom.

Amidst the overwhelming number of details to take care of in getting ready for the international move, a few weeks of life without "stuff", and a vacation in Paris on the way to home leave, the kiddo has come up with a few questions. Most of them revolve around the schedule, which is complicated at best. But some of them reflect how truly she is a third culture kid.

For example, when on the phone with her grandparents, who have talked about taking her fishing or panning for gold in the lakes and rivers, she asks,
"Are there any hippos there? What about crocodiles?"

A wise question from her usual milieu.

This past weekend we were doing one of our "why didn't we buy this stuff before" shopping trips, and we went right through a big fancy new Nairobi interchange, which happened to have a cell tower  in the middle (a REAL one, not a pole with guide wires). The child asks,
"Wait, are we in Paris already?"

When we expressed confusion, she points out the cell tower and says it looks like the Eiffel Tower (it does, a bit), and notes, "It must have been that this road was so smooth I forgot we were still in Kenya!"