A Home in Transition

I live at Lovely Home. Lovely Home is known to a lot of people here in Kathmandu. It is called Lovely Home because, well the house is quite lovely. We introduce one another to outside friends by saying "he/she lives at Lovely Home with me," and people understand.

I have lived with five constant Nepalis, several not-so-constant Nepalis, and two French girls, one French guy, two Canadian girls, one Canadian guy, one Chinese guy, one Chinese girl, three Saudi Arabian boys (we think?...) , one (sort of) British/Canadian/Costa Rican girl, one American guy, and three American girls in just the past eight weeks of my life.

This home is always an adventure, there is always a friend and rarely an enemy. I feel like I've learned more from all of them than possibly any Nepali... maybe... that or it's a really close tie. We eat three meals a day together, we sit around together at night, we do bucket laundry together and when it starts to rain when one of us isn't home we run out and grab their drying laundry from the line. We eat toast, and share peanut butter, we eat dhal bhat, and celebrate together when we rarely get noodle soup for dinner. We learn Nepali from Shila at meal time and we get asked "enough?" by Jenica. We wake up and fall asleep at the same time. We take turns buying toilet paper and we scream frantically to squish massive spiders together. We name the rats and the mice that live at Lovely Home with us, Carlos, Rodolpho, and Siddartha respectively. We chase Tommy (our host dog) down the street when he breaks his way out of the gate. We make "late night" Bhat Bhateni (the local grocery store which closes at 9:00 pm) runs for chocolate together. We make inside jokes until we are crying we're laughing so hard. And some nights? The really good ones? We sit up on the roof together and talk about life. 

This is Lovely Home.

So, when someone leaves, at first it just feels so empty. Then, it starts to fall back together and feel normal, until new interns come, and we count down the days for new interns to come. We love new people. Because sharing this house with so many crazy people you'd otherwise never meet, is half the fun, and the other half is getting to show them the ropes, which is when it really hits you... I've been the veteran of this house since my second week. And right now there are only two people here currently that will be here after me. So new people will come soon and its odd to think that now I don't know them, but they will be the hugs I receive on my last day in Nepal, and they will be the faces standing in the yard waving as I drive off with all my luggage.

Its an odd cycle of life here but it keeps everything new and exciting.

Only 15 days left... Holy Cow...