Day 3 - Trekking

Got up today to find that some villagers had brought us about 50 potatoes and 2 pumpkins. I know we have lunch and dinner plans so I don't know when we are going to eat all of these.

I was preparing to speak in the evening so I spent much of the morning in a chair overlooking Gatlang village studying. A 4 year old girl decided to spend her morning watching me and touching the skin on my arm. Tom spend the morning talking Nepali with some of the men who had come to dig a new ditch around the church and then apparently boiling potatoes for breakfast!

For lunch we went to a new friends house for millet and chicken. We've never had millet before, but it is a staple food for the area as they do not grow rice here. Prepared millet is a sort of hardish brown mush that does not have that much taste. We dipped it in the chicken gravy and it was pretty good. The chicken was delicious, but I slipped Tom a chicken stomach and told him to eat it, which he did, but he was not happy when I told him what it was while he was still chewing.

While here we are talking family photos. Most people don't have a mirror, much less a photo of themselves and their family. So, we've decided to take photos of them, get them printed in Kathmandu and then send copies back to the village with Shem when he returns in May.

It's hard to get people to smile in their photos as for some reason everyone wants to take a “serious” photo. So, we've learned how to say “I like potatoes” in Tamang (and Nepali) and that usually makes people smile long enough to get the better photo we were looking for.

While walking through the village this morning we are chased for about 10 minutes by 6 very small children yelling “Nameste” at us and eating rhododendron flowers. It was cute at first, but after a few minutes of “Nameste, Nameste, Nameste, Nameste” each word getting more and more scrill it started to be a bit of a “Children of the Corn” moment.

In the afternoon, some young guys decide to take Tom and I on a “walk” to a pond. Shem says that he does not want to go and urges the boys to “go very very slowly” with us. I know it will take about one hour to walk there, but do not realize that the 1 hour is straight up! I quickly learn about altitude walking. My body was fine, but I could not breath and had to rest very often. The sun was strong and there were few trees. We made it to the pond, which was lovely and clear, but extremely windy. The boys then decided that Tom should go higher to “see a yak”, but that “sister looked done.” I was done. I found my way to a family house that happened to be a small shop with a bench outside. I was quickly surround by young women with small children. I don't know that much to say in Nepali, but was able to put together that, “My husband is watching yaks.” They proceeded to laugh and laugh at me, a lot, and at everything I said to them. I didn't think it was that funny …