Thanksgiving at Kopila Valley

No turkeys were sacrificed or harmed in the production of this year’s Thanksgiving.

BUT, we had Apple Pie on Saturday!  Does that count?

See our earlier blog on Firsts for Lexi’s Apple Pie Class

For Thanksgiving this year the staff thought it would be good for each of the kids to take a moment to sit down and think about what they were thankful for. We were shocked at what some of them came up with. We live in a house full of 40 creative children! We feel so blessed to have each and everyone of them.
We all (even Uncle Ed sings “Baby” once in a while.) share a love for Justin Bieber so we thought the song was appropriate for our slide show. Enjoy!

Sent with love;)

Julia and Uncle Ed

Nepali Wedding

Wedding session is in full swing over here in Surkhet, Nepal. Yesterday our 2 class teacher, Guari Madam, had a big wedding celebration. The wedding was at her house, which was about a 30min walk from the house. We headed over after school with all of the other teachers.
When arriving at the house we felt like we were VIP guest at a red carpet event in Las Angeles. Gunga, our secretary at the school, who is also Guari’s sister, met us at the door and escorted us to the roof top. They had prepared a special area for us to sit on chairs with tables (Nepali’s normal sit on the floor).
There was bottled water waiting for us on the table. We were first served a personal fruit plate with; apples, banannas, and oranges. Then, they brought out a plate of big round doughnuts. They have got to be the biggest doughnuts I have ever seen. Oh I can’t forget, they brought out canned Red Bull! Haha Lastly, we were each served a huge plate full of; rice, beans, lamb, salmon flavored chips and a large buttery corn chip. Let’s just say we all left completely stuffed full of food for days!
Half way through the meal Gunga escorted us down to see the bride in the tent, where about 100 Nepali guests were sitting. We all lined up and took turns giving the bride and groom tika. Gauri looked so beautiful! It was interesting because again everyone stared at us like it was our wedding. The video guy kept the camera on us at all time which was a little awkward.
After dinner they brought the DJ up to the roof top and started playing old rap music! It was so funny! They insisted that we danced for them before we left. It took them a while to get us out on the dance floor, but once we got started we had so much fun.
I was so impressed with the whole wedding. Everyone was so nice and they really went out of their way to make sure we were taken care of. There is something about the Nepali people, they really know how to serve. Honestly, I just think the amount of money they spent extra to invite us and buy bottled water and Red Bull! I’m so humbled by their generosity.

A Day of Firsts – Many of Them

Global Exchange Street Clean Comes to Kopila Valley – Several weeks ago we made connections with a group of great young people from the UK group known as Global Exchange. They come to a foreign country (not just Nepal) and pair up with local counterparts, stay with host families for 3 months, and they go home, taking their Nepali counterparts with them for an additional 3 months work in a UK city that needs assistance.  Here they are focusing on sanitation and health and they asked if we could help them with a Street Clean project last Saturday.  They showed up at 0900, with a pig (more later), linked up with a bunch of our eager Children from the Home and others from the School and took to the streets around the school filling pink bags with rubbish, garbage, refuse, trash…you get the idea.  They segregated things between clean and dirty rubbish and when they came back to the school they created a piece of art for our November Art Month Celebration from the clean stuff.  You can see the pig, which they had made before arrival from material found lying about. Well here at the school, they stuffed it with rubbish and put it out to pasture in our garden.  The Aunties and Uncles are still wondering about that part of the project.  Please note from the pictures in the slide show at the bottom of the blog, everyone still found time for a hard played game of “football” before the day was done.

     

Blue Room Boys FINALLY Come Clean – I got tired of the Girls’ Rooms always winning the Daily Cleanest Room Competition – ALWAYS!  So last week I announced at Satsung the first Boy’s Room that could win the award twice would be taken out for a special treat, by me.  Low and behold the Blue Room Boys, Sagar, Padam and Madan came through twice in one week to win the prize.  Late this afternoon we four walked into town and after 3 failed attempts to find an open bank or a cash machine that worked, went to everyone’s favorite bakery and had sodas and Mo Mo’s (a.k.a. Chicken Pot Stickers for those of you back home).  In an entire bakery full of treats, they insisted on Mo Mo’s, which came with a little bowl of vegetable soup and a glass of water.  The Pictures below got taken on our way out of town (partly because we couldn’t get three biker babes who came into the bakery to take a picture of us, despite a blatant hint!).  These are three fine lads who work really hard at home and school, so I deliberately posed them on the bridge in town that spans the riverbed of rock breakers.  You can see one woman still working down and to the right.  This is where Maggie saw the first child that started her on the path to found Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School.  I couldn’t help thinking what these three boys lives would be like without that first inspiration.

Lexi’s First Apple Pies

For those who haven’t been introduced to Lexi, our youngest volunteer, but mature way beyond her years, Lexi is a veteran of over 1 years service in Nepal, the first part of it in a remote district where no one spoke English.  She hails from Maryland, speaks and understands Nepali very well and now WE know, bakes great apple pies.  She hopes to be going to college from here and has had to travel to both India and Kathmandu to take SAT tests to keep her very, very high scores current for her applications.  She plans to become a doctor, and based on her determination and depth of knowledge in so many things, Uncle Ed bets she makes it.

Lexi and several of her “family” spent this afternoon preparing and baking not one, but two apple pies.  It was quite a feat when you see the size of our oven and realize she got the recipe off the web and they were the first two pies she has ever baked.  The video attached shows her teaching the family just how the 2nd one is assembled and…what the unbaked apples taste like.

As you can see by the last bite in my bowl, it was an outstanding first and 2nd effort and as she said, “probably the best apple pie within 50 miles!”  

Here is a slideshow from a very busy Saturday in which our Kopila Kids made a difference, learned some great lessons, and continued to inspire “the Old Guy to know more stuff!

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Challenging you to Make a Difference in someone’s life today,

Uncle Ed

Greeting me with a Song!

This morning the kids sang to me as I walked in the door! I love this school;)

Carpenter’s How-To-Tip # 1

Senior Citizens and toddlers alike get educated at Kopila Valley School.  This distance learning video has yet to be approved by the Principal or the Co-Directors, but I (Uncle Ed accepting full accountability here) am rolling it out as a test marketing exercise to see if we could raise funds by creating such helpful videos for the rest of the world.  An idea like this is way too good to keep under my Nepal hat.

I actually learned it while watching the carpenter, who builds most of our furniture, make on-site modifications to our internet cabinet, shortly after we arrived.  I have used it several times now and feel I owe it to the world to share.  Nagging away at me is the thought that my best friend, Dan Baggenstos, might come down from heaven and whisper in my ear saying, “Ed, I learned that when I was two, just like your apprentice, Namraj.”  Getting me over that thought is the idea that instead I might once again hear him say “BRILLIANT!!”

So, for better or worse, here is my/our first venture into the DYI video market!  Please make all your donations to http://www.blinknow.org, provide any positive comments below, and write the negative ones on a piece of paper, stick it in a campfire and Dan will answer it for you shortly.

Please let me know if this goes viral on YouTube.  If it does I have one of the real carpenter cutting a block of wood using his bare feet for a vise.

Love to all,

Uncle Ed

Happy Thanksgiving from Nepal!

There is so much to be thankful for this year…. family and friends back home, food, health, education, God, love, a home to live in, electricity, hot water, clothing, freedom of choice and an amazing person by the name of Aaron Erman back home!

My heart is so full this year! Above all, I am Thankful for my new family at Kopila Valley. They really all have touched my heart in a way that no one could imagine. I’m so lucky to have them all. They have taught me to enjoy each day and always be grateful for what I have;)

For Thanksgiving I did an art project with the kids. They all wrote down what they were thankful for. I’m making a slideshow with all the art, but I’m too excited to wait so I’m going to show you a glimpse of our art projects. So for now, here are a couple of the kids and their pieces of art.

Here are some pictures from our Thanksgiving bonfire!

The Beauty of Kopila Valley

These last few days and nights neither of us could help but be in awe of this place. It is so beautiful in so many ways. In trying to give you a small glimpse of the physical beauty Julia shot two short videos…. but when Uncle Ed uploaded them, they were sideways again.  A little help here people at Apple (We couldn’t get it to load from her iPad so she emailed it to me and it was fine and then went sideways.  None of the help screens have the solution.)  Then Uncle tried doing a night video of the stars – tons of them – with the flip and that came out totally black.  All it provides is a night sounds recording that we won’t bore you with.

So, how about some sunset video?  Here is one going out to Margaret in NJ who is our sunset expert.  There are two more (earlier) parts to this, but neither of us has the strength to up load them right now.

Here is sunset last night:

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We celebrated ours tonight with our first (bon) fire of the season in which the kids burned their written wishes and expressions of thanks.

Love to all,

Uncle Ed

Distance Learning – with Thanks to Kyle and Don!

We are all about EDUCATION here at Kopila Valley, even for Senior Citizens.  When I came here (I have to confess to my tech friends back home) I could barely spell TCP/IP.  Now, thanks to Kyle Albertson of Cisco and Don Currie of Data-Linc I know enough about Nepali internet practices to be very, very dangerous here also.  Kyle and Don have been working via email from 6-8,000 miles away, with me for several days, teaching me some of what I never quite learned in the Cisco Systems User Group Meetings we hosted at Fisher Plaza.

Yesterday our ISP Guys, as we call them, came with a new Router and a box of CAT-5 cable.  We spent 3 hours while they installed the router and then humored me while we tested two different antenna locations.  The second one, which they had recommended before we started, turned out to be the better one.  When they left, Steve (a.k.a. Grandfather) and I started testing and fine tuning the antenna location.  The attached videos give you an idea of our (my – we can’t blame these crazy ideas on Steve) doing the best with what we have on hand.  The shutter and door were old discards I found on the upper stairwell roof.  The piece of pipe was left over from the latest sink construction, the screws and used nails came from a collection I have been saving.  You begin to get the picture.

The “temporary mount” won’t win any engineering or carpentry prizes.  But that part of our “system” is still working.

So last night I send Kyle and Don a msg of thanks saying a new day might dawn over Kopila Valley’s internet this morning.

Today did dawn bright and relatively clear…and free of internet – period.  Our connections both here and at the school were totally dead.  Thanks to Kyle and Don’s long distance training, I was able to log into the router and see problems galore, all with the ISP’s end.  A phone call confirmed they had equipment problems and were working on it.  It came back up at 0803 and then went up and down all day.  ISP Guys showed up on their scooter this evening to report one of their “modems” failed and they had to get a new one from “headquarters” better luck tomorrow.  And yet, we have had at least some connectivity most of the night.  Just to give you a measure of lack of speed, after several hour long attempts in the last 24 hours, it has taken just under 3 hours to upload these two videos which total 3 minutes and 26 seconds.  Now you can see why Maggie, Grandfather and our posts and videos are sometimes few and far between.  I find myself dreaming about a satellite earth station.  Wish our friends from Brewster WA were here.

The most important part of the whole operation, the Children, continue to grow, learn and be grateful for all your support!

Wishing everyone back home and around the world peace and better connectivity.  Uncle Ed

Families

Since we live in a family of well over forty, Libby and Lexie came up with the idea of breaking up into three families, within the one big family. Jeff, Libby and Lexie are the leaders of the families since they will be here the longest. Uncle Ed, Grandfather and I are partnered up with them to create a family unit. Libby and Uncle Ed are Libby’s family, Lexie and Grandfather are Lexie’s family and Jeff and I are the Pegasus family. We were the only family that actually came up with a name! Oh and our color is sky blue!

The family idea has worked very well with keeping kids accountable for doing homework, brushing their teeth, and cleaning their rooms. It’s also a good way to not forget about any of the kids.

On Saturday Jeff and I took our family out for and adventure walk to the temple. We had so much fun. I gave one of the girls my camera and she had a blast!

Jeff buying the kids some chocolate!

The Flour Mill

This is a young Nepali boy, about 8 years old, hauling grass. I can even believe how hard they work.

The girls carrying their clothes to the school to wash them. This is the Saturday duty.

Grandfather’s Blog

If you haven’t been there, my Brother, Steve Doyne, (Maggie, Libby and Kate’s Dad) does a fantastic job of stories about the kids with great pictures and videos.  Here is one from his latest blog which you can follow at: http://mygrandfathersblog.blogspot.com/