A bit about daily life

I wasn't kidding when I said that I'd only come every two weeks. Actually, that's not true, I ended up coming to Padum the Friday that I last posted, but I only got about10 minutes on a computer before we had to leave to catch the bus. Oh well, I saved a little bit of money.

Actually, now I'm at the government run internet center, which is about half the price of the private center and seems to be about twice as fast. Go figure. The only frustrating part is that it opens up at 1pm, and today the man who runs it actually got here at 2pm. Good thing I'm patient and brought a deck of cards with me. Mojun and I have come to pass a few idle hours playing crazy 8's. Not that we're too idle, though.

I guess it's best to describe now a bit about the daily life at the nunnery. First of all, there are very few things that are regular or consistent, but I don't mind that. We've figured out that we're staying in the kitchen, which they use when they cook group meals. They only cook group meals when all the nuns are busy working on a project that day or there's something special going on. Generally they cook in their rooms, and usually between one and three nuns live in a room. But since we're there to teach the nuns, we're getting slightly special treatment, the nuns cook for us. Each morning, two nuns will come somewhere between 6am and 8am to begin cooking. The only way to latch our door is to lock it, so one of us has to get up to open the door. Usually I'm awake by 7:30, since it gets light around 5am and one window is facing east. Sometimes it's a little tough to get up, though.

I lied, there is one thing that is consistent, and that is tea. We drink lots and lots of tea, before breakfast, lunch, dinner, in the afternoon, if we go visit someone, if someone comes and visits us. Usually it's milk tea, which is black tea with sweetened condensed milk added to it, and sometimes sugar, depending on who's making it. There's also something called butter tea, which is seen as a treat, as butter is a scare commodity here. To make butter tea, the make the black tea very dark, then mix it with butter and powdered milk. I think that they might use different tea leaves for the butter tea, I'm not sure. Once I had white tea, which I think is made with a different kind of tea leaf, and also has milk of some sort added to it. Tea is a big deal here.

Food in general is pretty tasty here. I have yet to get really sick (knock on wood), and I'm enjoying pretty much everything I eat (not that surprising for me). I am eating vegetarian, as they are Buddhist, but they do eat eggs, so every few days we get eggs for breakfast. They grow barley here, so we eat things made from barley flour. Almost every morning we have chapati, which is a flat bread that is cooked in a pan, but without oil. We eat that with either eggs or cooked vegetables. They cook the vegetables in a pressure cooker, and onions and tomatoes seem to be in every mixture, with green beans, eggplant, or potatoes thrown in. They also serve cooked vegetables with rice, which we generally have for lunch, and sometimes for dinner. They also make dal, cooked lentil beans, and one time we had a curry dish. They like there chili sauce here, as well as spices in general. We often have soup for dinner, with a variety of things thrown in. I've found the variations in cooking amongst the nuns, and have learned which nuns make the food really spicy, which nun usually makes us eggs for breakfast, which nun will make us Maggi for dinner. Maggi is basically the India version of Top Ramen.

After the first few days, we began helping out in the kitchen. I've learned the word for stir, and a few of the vegetable names. It's fun helping them out, and it makes me feel less like I'm being waited on, something I can't stand. Maybe I'll even be able to recreate some of the meals that I've had here. I have yet to try and make the dough for the chapati, it looks very labor intensive. I will try before I leave, though.

Helping out in the kitchen also lets us interact with the nuns more. They are lots of fun, and are always making jokes. Even with the language barrier, we seem to be able to communicate. Also, it seems that we usually get one nun who doesn't really speak any English and one who knows a bit. I wonder if they planned that or it just happens. Lately, I've also used that time to give informal English lessons, teaching them words for things in the kitchen, and cooking words.

Our English classes are pretty sporadic. The nuns are sometimes too busy to have class, or they have something else going on that day down in the village. I've come to peace with this, though. I figure if they want to learn English, then they will come to class. If not, then let's not waste both of our energies. I can tell that some of the nuns are very interested in learning, which is encouraging. And some of them are very bright, and pick it up very quickly. But we are working with a large variety of abilities, for some of the nuns have only attended 10 days of school while others completed up to grade 6 or 8. The age range is pretty big, as well. The youngest is 13 years old, and I'm not sure how old the oldest is, but I believe she is in her 40s or so. But they all try in class. Actually, they are all quite shy in class. Whenever it's their turn to speak, they get very quite, even the best students. It's very interesting watching the differences between how they are in class and how they are out of class.

Well, that's a basic overview of some of my day. When I want to take a shower, I heat up water and carry it in a bucket to the shower room, which is down a hill and then up a smaller hill. The toilet is next to it, and I get pretty winded coming up the hill to my room from the toilet. I've learned to hold it longer. To wash my clothes, I go down the hill to where there is a spigot from which water is constantly coming from, and fill a tub with water to soak my clothes in for a while. Then I scrub at them by hand and rinse them in the icy-cold mountain run-off water and hang them to dry along the barbed wire fence which surrounds the nunnery. My clothes are dry within a few hours. We have electricity at the nunnery, but it is only turned on in the evenings, from about 8pm to 11pm. Sometimes it goes out all of the sudden, though, so I'm glad I have my headlamp. Also, we sometimes don't eat dinner until about 10 or 10:30, so we're rushing to finish everything and get ready for bed before the lights go out. And sometimes we're in bed by 10, and we don't have a switch for the light in our room, since it's part of the kitchen.

I think that's all I have time to write about now. We have to go catch the bus back to Sani. Don't really want to walk back, especially since we bought some vegetables to take back to the nunnery. I might come back next week, although it just depends on what else is going on around the nunnery. I'll write about some of the spectacular things I've witnessed these last three weeks. It's hard to believe that I've been here for almost three weeks already, and I only have a month left!