My Birthday in Nepal

I have always loved my birthday. Not just as a kid, but probably even more now that I'm an adult. I figured my first birthday in Nepal (I turned 42 on Februay 12) would be one I'd never forget, but oddly, as the day approached, I found myself less excited than normal.

The day started with Sam and Ambika waking me up singing Happy Birthday, giving me hugs, and asking me what I wanted for breakfast. Sam fixed us all some tea and made me a peanut butter and honey sandwich that was delicious.

After we had tea, Ambika left to get the girls ready for school, while Sam and I started getting ready for our language lesson... because nothing says "birthday celebration" more than a foreign language lesson, right?! Not sure what we were thinking, but at least we had arranged to meet our teacher at my favorite pizza place in the whole world... not that I've been to every pizza place in the world, but out of the ones I've been to, Roadhouse Cafe near Jawalakhel, Kathmandu tops them all!

Anyway, as I was getting ready, I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, all of the girls were getting ready to leave for school and started singing "Happy Birthday" to me. My birthday just got a lot better.

After the girls sang "Happy Birthday" and left for school, Sam and I left for our language lesson at the pizza place. We got there a little early, so we ordered a piece of the chocolate truffel cake to start... and the day got even better.

Then our language teacher arrived and we started our lesson. I knew the pizza would be amazing (it was), but even our language lesson was awesome. We normally joke and have fun during our lessons, but we were having so much fun eating, practicing Nepali and reading some of the Devanargari (Nepali) script that at times we even had the waiter laughing... with us because of our joking around, not at us because of our language skills for those of you who were wondering!! This birthday was turning out pretty good.

Next we ran some errands and headed home. At 6 pm my time, my mom called to wish me a happy birthday. She woke up super early her time for the call, and my mom is NOT a morning person, so that made the call (and the day) even more special. (Thanks Mom!)

After my call with my mom, Sam and I went upstairs and celebrated with Prem, Ambika and the rest of our pariwar (Nepali for family). Prem had fixed a special birthday dinner of pasta in my honor (yes, I really like Italian food), plus they ordered a yummy black forest birthday cake.

We actually started with the cake, and Sam sang Happy Birthday to me in Nepali (Janmandinko Subhakamana), followed by my Nepali family singing "Happy Birthday" to me in English.

In Nepal they have a birthday tradition that we decided to embrace - the birthday person feeds a piece of cake to someone special. As you can see I had lots of fun with that... and Sam did manage to get me back, but this birthday is now my favorite birthday so far.

Thingyan Trip Part 2

So the adventure continues....

Prem, Ramhari, me and a villager from Thingyan get in the Gypsy, and glide most of the way down the steep mountain roads that almost seemed like some insane obstacle course. But luckily we did not need to turn the vehicle on for most of the descent from Thingyan. This really helped ease some of my concerns about the fuel. One problem with the Gypsy is that there is no power steering, even when the vehicle is turned on, so this can be quite challenging but rewarding when you're low on fuel!

It was a beautiful day and we had some amazing worship in the car, It is always nice to bring Prem along when possible, his passion for Christ is quite infectious, combine this with his worship leader talents and we are a traveling praise team!

As I said before, the terrain I was driving on is not very easy on any vehicle, but the Gypsy's jarring at every bump suddenly increased 500% as the front passenger shock's mounting had broken off the vehicle. Everyone in the vehicle wanted to stop, but was at least another two hours from any town or shop, and no cell phone reception, so I decided to continue at a slower pace. We did this until we heard the next !BANG!, and this one did not sound good. I got out and found that half of the front bumper was sitting on the ground.

In Nepal, scarfs are often given as a sign of respect for visitors and highly regarded peoples. Luckily, I had one of these scarfs placed around my neck just before leaving Thingyan, and this came in handy as it was the only thing we could find to tie the bumper back on. Off we were again finally coming to a paved road leading to Hetauda, a large city where we could have work done on the vehicle and spend a night at a hotel of some sort.

I felt like a horse running to the barn, about to get home. Then the worst happened, I noticed smoke starting to billow out from below the dashboard, I looked down and saw fire through the firewall! We quickly pulled over and unloaded everyone out of the vehicle, including our luggage. We got the hood open and the fire was huge. Luckily we had a 5 gallon bottle of water sitting in the back which we poured over the fire, putting it out moments before the whole thing would have exploded!

We had quite a crowd and many kids were standing around watching. We had no water and were exhausted. We were about 15 minutes from Hetauda so Prem called his buddy Reuben who lives in Hetauda who said he was calling a mechanic to come and tow the vehicle in. This is Nepal, and nothing here happens fast so we wait... and wait. But God's provision is always there if we are looking for it. Walking down the street, far from town was a man pushing an ice cream cart! I couldn't believe it, we all sat there eating ice cream which we also bought for all of the kids around, still singing our praise songs.

We finally got a tow and the shop told us the vehicle would be ready the next day! I could not believe it, and looking back, should not have believed it. We ended up spending 3 nights in Hetauda with many more amazing stories to be told in the future. All in all my quick trip to Thingyan lasted about a week but we made it back to Kathmandu, by the grace of God. When we arrived we found the air filter cover had fallen off and the air filter was stuck in the radiator fan, plus we had a dead battery! We sent the car back to the shop where it stayed for the next month due to holidays.

Quick update: Upon returning to Kathmandu January 2nd, we replaced the battery and drove the Gypsy for the first time after the trip, after our short run around town we pulled into the drive and found almost all of the oil had leaked out of the engine. "Ke Garne?!" which means "What to do?!" So once again it is sitting in the drive gathering dust as we await word on our visas.