Some of our American friends and family are probably curious what our daily lives look like here. I thought I'd do a quick review of our standard day so you can know how it differs from the one we typically live in Minnesota :-)
Waking up prematurely is something that we have to work against - when the sun begins to rise after 5:30, the city around us starts to wake up - dogs barking, babies crying, pounding, music, etc. If we didn't fall asleep with earplugs in, we get them when this starts to happen. The most common noise we hear is spitting. Spitting is practically a cultural practice here. Perhaps due to the smog, the pollution, the dust, etc, everyone is constantly spitting. And not politely. Projectile spitting is both very loud and comes without warning from men and women. For whatever reason, early in the morning, it is an almost constant noise we hear as we get ready for the day.
We have a shower without a tub or curtain, so the bathroom is equipped to send water everywhere. You have to make sure the toilet seat is down so you don't completely soak the seat. The water is warm, and is connected to a gas heater, where the gas is turned on and water is pumped through a box where a fire warms the water. This is pretty hard to maintain consistently for the heat - I almost scalded myself even at the lowest setting the first time I ran it - so we generally keep the heater off and make our showers quick, using the reserved warm water in the tank. When we're done, we have a giant squeegee that we use to push all the water in the bathroom towards the corner drain. There is no outlet in the bathroom (due to water going everywhere), so I plug in my hairdryer in the bedroom and use my compact mirror bent against the wall to watch what I'm doing.
We brush our teeth with "jar water" - we keep a bottle of it on the sink. The water here isn't treated to drink, so the entire teeth cleansing process happens with the bottled water. There is liquid soap that is popular in Asia called Dettol - it's strong smelling stuff. We have a "western style" toilet - the kind you can sit down on - but when we are at work, there are eastern style toilets, affectionately known as "squatty potties." It's a hole in the ground with two foot pads on either side. When you're done, you use a spigot and water bucket to wash water down to "flush." If you're lucky, there's toilet paper. If you're not, that same bucket of water is meant for other purposes, too. Bring hand sanitizer :-)
Our laundry is done each Friday by the cleaning person - she washes our towels, sheets and clothes in a bucket that is kept in the bathroom. Powdered cleaning soap sits on the window ledge in there for her to use, and when she's done, she hangs everything out on the clothesline behind the house to dry. Cleaning in a bucket is very common - directions for doing so are right next to the washing machine directions on the back of the soap packet. When I was in India, I did my laundry in the tub, but no tub here, so bucket it is!
For breakfast, as a previous post mentioned, we boil water for oatmeal and mix in some jam to sweeten it, or add bananas. We recently bought yogurt, after we mentally got past the fact that they aren't sealed and the lids are hardly on sometimes. Around this time, we may or may not experience an electricity outtage. If we do, we have eggs on the gas stove instead (the eggs are not refrigerated). We purchased most of our groceries at a little store down the street, but fresh items like bananas have to be purchased from a fruit vendor. Usually they carry the huge load of bananas on their bikes. Derek makes coffee - Nepal just recently figured out how to successfully manufacture its coffee, our landlord told us - in a press.
We wash our dishes by hand and dry them in a plastic basket on the counter.
Derek leaves around 7:30 to walk 20 minutes down the road to the hospital. I leave shortly after him to walk the 40 minutes to the YWAM center. We work until lunch, when each of us takes a short break - Derek goes to the hospital cafeteria, and I go 10 minutes down the road to a little restaurant where they blare music and have newspapers under the glass on the tables that I try to read. They know my order - vegetarian momos, every day. My friend Anne told me to eat as many as I can, and she's never steered me wrong yet! After work, we each walk home. We both leave by 4, so I usually come back to find Derek under the covers in his workout clothes.
It's cold in our place - the windows are anything but sealed (making morning sounds even clearer in the morning), and the bathroom window has to be left open to prevent moisture from forming mold. Our bedroom door doesn't close - for some reason, there is a piece of cardboard jammed in the door, which I found and removed, only to realize just before closing the door that the door handle doesn't work, and if I had closed it, we'd have been locked in our room. We do a lot of our work under our covers or in our coats.
Then, we head to the gym, which we've already described in a previous post. Usually around now, when it gets dark, the city has another power outtage, or it may not. No real consistency these days. On our way back we stop at a local shop for dinner - usually fried rice or noodles or momos. Then, we might stop at an ATM, since we have to pay cash almost everywhere. Some nights we cook, but the food is so inexpensive, and so well made, that it seems a poor waste of our resources to try and do much ourselves. We have had spaghetti twice, when we didn't feel like venturing out again.
When we return, we're followed by the homeless dogs that stay in our area - there are two black and white ones and one blonde one that are sometimes nice, and sometimes not. There is a gate outside of our property that we open with a Cinderella-looking key, and once inside, we pet the resident dog, Seru, who belongs to our neighbor. The neighbor claims Seru is 20 years old....I'm not so sure about that ;-)
Derek gets very tired around 8, but we both try to spend evening time writing or editing pictures or catching up on work we never get done in the states. I try to keep him awake until 10, as he's still struggling to get on a proper schedule. We take out the garbage, which we hang on the gate in a bag for someone to pick up (not sure of the point of this, since most people burn their garbage right in front of their shops, or you'll find huge piles dumped on the sides of the road, also possibly on fire, or not. If the power is still on, we use regular lights, and if not, we use the generator lights, identified by red tape on the switch. Good night!
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