Dhulikhel

View from the brief hike to a view point. Himalayas!

Dhulikhel Hospital aka Dhulikhel Spa. This place is huge and beautiful. Wow.

We arrived in Dhulikhel! We met up with Katie, John, and Ben who have been scoping out the scene for the past week. This is a great respite from the noise and dirt of Kathmandu--beautiful! Mountains! The hospital is also fantastic--high quality medicine and doctors in a beautiful setting. I think the hospital looks like a spa.

Other favorites so far:

HIMALAYAS! You might think you've seen mountains, but PUMP YOUR BRAKES. You have not seen these mountains. They are BEAUTIFUL! Yesterday we hiked to a lookout near our hostel along the most perfect hilly trail. Words will in no way do this justice. Find me in March and I'll show you pictures, which will also not do it justice. I felt like I was in a fantasy novel and tried as hard as I could to burn the images in my brain, so hopefully that sticks. :)

Dal baat: This is Nepali Thali (Nepali food! yum!) I literally could eat this every day for a month and probably still love it. It's scrumptious.

Chia: Nepali tea! There are chia breaks intermittently throughout the day and I could drink this stuff a LOT. Much better than the coffee breaks in the States. Why is it that just about every other country in the world has a lovely tea tradition of relaxing and sipping a hot beverage, and Americans have coffee-to-go?

Patan Durbar Square: Area near our guest house in Kathmandu where there were lots of Hindu temples with really really amazing carvings and buildings. Truly just a beautiful place! Leading to...

Hindu Gods: Shiva, Vishnu,Brahma--a Hindu trinity! I want to read stories about these gods. It is so cool to see all these carvings and temples and know that such a huge portion of the world's population finds so much significance in this tradition. I want to know more!

We met some Norweigian engineers today, and one quoted a statistic that 70% of tourists to Nepal will return. This place gets into your bones! It's so beautiful, the people so friendly, and really just something intangibly amazing. I think I'll be part of the 70%. Who wants to come with??! :) 

Nepali Thali! (Dal Baat-delicious dish that we eat at lunch/dinner

Patan Durbar Square: I have a bajillion pictures of this beautiful place. This is just to give you an idea!

Mountains! This is on the five minute walk to our guest house from the hospital.

Medicine in Nepal: X ray from a patient with disseminated TB. We have been getting some amazing medical experiences.

Aarti's Tour!

Prayer flags on the Buddhist Stupa

Favorite things in Nepal:

1) New words. We had a two hour language lesson with Dil yesterday right after arriving. I love these words; I love how great people are about helping us practice, and the way faces light up when you try Nepali phrases. When you think you hear Aarti saying "sub-I", she is not referring to a medical subinternship, however. Nepali people, like the general American populace, do not know that English word. "Sibai" means "all" as in we are alllll going to Dhulikhel, not as in we are all doing sub-i's in Dhulikhel. :)

2) Cold/Hot. The temperature during the day gets really steamy and nice! As soon as you are in the shade or the sun goes down, it's really cold! I love it! It's perfect! Nice and warm for walking around, nice and cool when you want to snuggle under covers and sleep.

3) The feeling you get inside Stupas and Mandir (temples of the Buddhist and Hindu varieties). I like that feeling that there are such big things in the world. Similar to how you feel inside churches, or listening to symphonies, or being in the mountains or on the shore of Lake Superior. It's beautiful.

4) Food. This is self explanatory, but dal baat is delicious. Fruit is delicious. New tastes are fun and I love trying it :)

5) Beautiful people. Such a wide variety of faces and skin tones and eye shapes and colors and styles. I love people watching here and chatting with people in stores or on the bus.

6) Tuk-tuks: One form of public transportation: like a small gutted out van where you pay a small sum and sit on a bench and go from place to place, stopping when you say you need to stop. Reallly reminded me of sotramas in Mali, and I think they're so much fun!

7) Baby animals! Mainly baby monkeys and puppies :) These were found in abundance today and gosh it's amazing how cute baby animals are.

8) Friends. Old and new. I am so incredibly lucky to be here sharing this experience with some of my favorite people in the world. I learn so much from them and the thoughts they share as we explore new places and learn new things. I can't wait to learn medicine here with them and see more of this beautiful country.

Sending so much love! Namaste from Nepal!!

Stupa--behind me are the prayer wheels and you turn them as you walk clockwise around the Stupa praying.

Another Stupa--we got to go inside and there were huge beautiful gold Buddha statues and wonderful paintings.

Cremations near the Hindu temples, by the river. The orange coverings are covers on bodies being cremated.

Cheers to a wonderful first day in Kathmandu!

Kathmandu

Aarti, sitting for tea in Newa Chen

Niki peering out her window at Newa Chen

Courtyard in Newa Chen

Newa Chen

Bedroom at the guest house Newa Chen

We ARRIVED!! Flight 5 hours delayed for a 10 hour layover in Bahrain, but it's cool cause I got to try a McArabia at the McDonalds, which was really delicious, and teach Arran and Niki to play Bohnanza, which is the best card game ever!! Aarti met us at the airport and took us to Newa Chen, the guest house where we spent last night and will spend tonight. It is a beautiful house from the 17th century in Kathmandu. I am blown away by the BEAUTIFUL wood carvings, friendly staff, and delicious breakfast served :) Just after arriving we left for our first language lesson from Dil, this amazing Nepali gentleman. Now we can greet and count in Nepali! The MacKinneys let us invade their home and shower and fed us dinner before the 35+ hours with 5 hours of sleep kicked in and we left to go crash in beds with hot water bottles warming our feet!

Today, 3/4/12, we woke up and had a wonderful meal of fresh fruit, eggs, and dal baat with fried flatbread, as well as Nepali Chia (tea!!). We practiced saying greetings and learned how to say we thought the breakfast was delicious. :)

Aarti Katherine and I took off for the airport to search for our bags which didn't arrive yesterday then met up for a day on the town. Aarti was an absolutely wonderful tour guide and we saw some beautiful places in the city today. We visited several stupas (Bhuddist temples) and Bhagmati (sp?), the holiest river in Kathmandu where the Hindu dead are cremated and have a very old temple. Afterward we visted Thamel, a shopping district, and shopped and had some Nepali beer (named Everest!) while meeting up with Aarti's friends from Accham where she worked last month.

The day has been so so so wonderful, and I am absolutely ecstatically happy! This is such an exciting place, with fantastic people, and it's so much fun to learn a new language and try all these new things! I really want to learn more about the religions we're experiencing all the "melting pot" of cultures in Nepal. I don't think I've ever been in a place with such ancient things interposed so much with modernity. I'm rambling a bit, and really don't want this to be a travel journal though that's what it was on this post, but I'm still swimming a bit in the newness of it all.

Miss you all and cannot wait to share the boatloads more of photos!

Departure!

At the airport with Niki, Katherine, and Arran!
&!7gj*!!%#€!!!!
So exciting!!!
First off to London, Bahrain, and then Kathmandu!

Canadian Appreciation

As mentioned, I spent a month in Nipigon, Ontario this year and had a fantastic time.  I wanted to share some of my favorite Canadian-isms--no intention to offend! It's entirely possible that these are Nipigon-isms and I just associate it all with Canada.  Just my take on some things I thought were different than in the States. My dad would make fun of my Canadian accent/inflection when I called home, and it took me a couple weeks to lose the Canadian elements that crept into my speech. It's fun to talk Canadian :)


Eh? 


Obviously everyone knows Canadians say "Eh". This is a completely under-appreciated filler word in the States. Here, we say "you know?" or "yeah" or other phrases, and really, it's completely inferior. Eh is infectious and fantastic. Everyone should say it. Give it a try, eh?


One of my clinic patients sounded like the dudes from Strange Brew or the moose characters in Brother Bear. He used "Eh" after every sentence:


"My eye is kind of puffy, eh? I woke up and looked in the mirror, eh, and it was all swollen shut eh, and after a few days I decided I'd better come in eh?"


Other speech Canadianisms:


Either pronounced eye-ther (not eee-ther). I still can't go back to eee-ther after my trip. Eye-ther is better.


mmhmm said with emphasis on the second syllable: mmmm HMMM. This is best used when actively listening to a conversation. In Mali, many of the women I spoke with would click the back of their tongue when concentrating on a conversation. In Nipigon, people said mmmHMMM. I now do both intermittently. Multicultural active listening. Give it a try!


I've not versus I haven't. Interesting contractural difference. 


The main interesting difference is the overall inflection. I don't really call it an accent because it didn't seem like an accent to me. It wasn't that the words sounded different, it was that the sentence structures did. Does that make sense? Canadian inflection!


Canadian Cuisine
While in Canada, Ray served moose meat! He is a great hunter and gets a moose every year! I felt that was as close as I'll get to having something in common with Sarah Palin. We've both eaten moose. 


Things I did not try in Canada but would like to:

Poutine:

Poutine--french fries smothered in gravy.
And now, the obligatory Super Troopers connection. You can't say "poutine" without thinking of this movie if you're me or Ashley Trock:


Just heading over the border for some french fries and gravy, sir! Poutine!
Mac, if I were your mother I'd have smothered you by now.
Smothered me in gravy you big dirty man.


Pierogi--now, I'm pretty sure this is not Canadian (Wikipedia says Polish/Eastern European), but I had never had this or been exposed to this on a menu in the States. This is served commonly at restaurants in Nipigon and there is also Pierogi day at the Nipigon hospital cafeteria. I'd still like to try it! It looks like dumplings, and I've never met a dumpling I didn't love.


Also, Canadians love hockey. There are hockey players on their money!! It's amazing!

Kathryn and I hosting a Canadian Appreciation Party in Northfield, MN

So, the result of the trip overall is that I love Canada even more and want to go back and maybe even live there in the future. What a phenomenal place, eh?