You break you buy

This was our first you break you buy purchase. Sophia picked up this little wedding figurine and plop. The lady standing there brought it to the counter and made me buy it. Luckily it was only $4.

Toilet problem

This is a story about our house helper, Dolma. In our home when she uses the bathroom, she always leaves the seat up. It always bothers me because in my culture the only people that leave the seat up are men. So I started asking my other friends if they have this problem. They said that Nepali people are not used to sitting on toilets because they only use squatty potties, which I do not have a picture of. Next time I am out, I will have to take a picture of one and post it. I will try to describe it. It is like the toilet in the picture except that it is on the ground. Basically two steps with a hole in the middle. Some have a way to flush them and others don't. For the ones that don't you just juse a bucket of water to flush. Anyway. We learned that Dolma, lifts up the seat and stands and squats on the toilet to use the bathroom. So while we were in India, we found a perfect solution to our problem. We found a toilet that have a place to put your feet, but it also has a seat shaped just the same, for those who prefer sitting.

India

We enjoyed our time in India because the city we were in had a bizarre without traffic. There is no such place in Kathmandu. In Kathmandu, even if it says no bikes (meaning motorcycles) there will still be motorcylces, cars, richshaws, bicycles, etc. So it was nice to walk and shop and eat at little coffee shops that gave balloons to your kids and just do normal things that we can not do in KTM. They even had a Dominoes Pizza, which for those of you that do not know, Nepal has no fast food chain of any kind. We ate at Dominoes three times within one week! We did tourist things like visit waterfalls and parks and the kings palace. We stayed in our friend Tashi's family's hotel. Tashi is Lhakpa's wife from the previous post. Everyday we got to see the mountain Kanchanjanga, which is the third highest mountain in the world. That was a beautiful site. Although it took all of 7 hours total from Kathmandu to Gantok, it was a fun trip.

Urinal

This is a picture of a small sign on a tree at the Indian Immigration office that said urinal. Yes the sign is pointing to the cement block with two bricks on the ground and no door!! There is not even a hole in the ground like most "sqatty potties" here.

Gantok, Sikkhim, India

We took a trip as a family to Gantok, Sikkhim, India. That is in the northeast corner of India between Nepal and Bhutan. Boy was it an exciting adventure. First we took a 45 minute plane ride to Bhadrapur, which is on the border of Nepal and India. Then we took a 30 minute taxi ride to the border. At the border, first you go into Nepal's immigration (picture that says Immigration). The next picture is Bo communicating at the border how much a taxi ride was going to cost all the way to Gantok. We are so thankful our friend Lhakpa, (the man in the blue shirt in the picture of Bo with a bunch of guys. This picture is the actual border.) came along with us because he speaks their language! Then on the India side, we have to go to India's immigration office, which at first looks like a building (picture of Bo walking holding Izzy), but once you get there, the actual office is next to it in a HUT!

The Fall part of the birthday party

For Sophia's birthday party we had bobbing for apples, hanging apples (see pic), and corn hole. Bo did an awesome job and making the corn hole platforms. (Thanks dad for the sander!) I made the corn bags and voila we had a fun game. We had fifteen teams of two play in the tournament which lasted about 4 hours, but it was fun to watch, so noone seemed to mind that it took so long. We also did games for the kids like Pass the Pumpkin and pin the nose on the pumpkin. We wanted our girls to see what a fall party was like since they do not have such things over here. I think we pulled off a good one!

Sophia's 3rd Birthday Party

For Sophia's 3rd birthday we decided to have a Fall Party. We invited almost all the foreigners we know in Kathmandu so we had about 50 people here. It was fun. Making chili for that many people was not, but I had another girl help me and we both just borrowed pots from our landlords. Sophia asked for a yellow and pink cake, so that is what I made for her. Her grandmother sent her a princess dress for her birthday. She loved it and did not want to take it off.