I woke up this morning to the thought of 'what the fuck?', and then realised I was in Nepal. Then I looked at my laptop and was relieved that there was power, not that power really makes a difference in the daytime anyway. It's just good to have the guise that there's power 24/7, till the power actually goes out and I get all funny again. Last night after I managed to get my laptop up and running and my room in order, I started to feel better and calmed down a little.
This is what my room looks like:
I even have my duck from home. A duck that went trekking. I feel a bit like Lee Min.
And that's the view from my room window. Last night I heard freaky sounds of something that sounded like it was climbing up the stairs. This morning I woke up to see a dog running on the tin roof (Oh gosh, dog on a hot tin roof), making the same noise.-----
There's a part in Conrad's The Heart of Darkness where Marlowe, the protagonist watches as a storehouse of his burns down. He gets upset, naturally, but everyone around him is like 'oh what's new?' and the natives run around trying to put out the fire with buckets with gaping big holes in them, to the extent that there's no water actually left in the buckets by the time the reach the fire. I think it's the beginning part of when he starts to go mad. Nepal, to me, feels like this. Every piece of shit is nothing new ("oh PM sacks army chief for no reason? nothing new") and the subequent event ("oh President vetoes action? nothing new") to the natives response ("oh let's protest and attempt to shut down the capital by making life worse for the majority BECAUSE MY VIEWS ARE MORE IMPORTANT. nevermind that it accomplishes nothing :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D"). Fuck this. Really.
Oh and I'm not supposed to swear too, because I am attempting to be a good christian. Living in a pastor's home. This is hard because in normal life in Singapore when I fall down or make a mistake I swear. Here EVERYTHING makes me want to swear. From the roads which makes driving feel worse than the worst air pocket to a plane, to the cars that honk more than a herd of angry agitated geese, to the kids (not even those in the home, the 6 kids of the missionaries are enough) doing what kids do: behaving badly in those oh so precocious way when there's just 2 of them.
Last night I had dinner with them (the 3 missionary families) because of the 3 visiting pastors from the big scary board of christians who've come to try and open a proper *insert my denomination here* chapter here. You know those scenes where it shows someone sitting down on a park bench and the world moves around is superfast speed? It felt like that except with more facepalm, and the world was 6 kids. 6 kids which cried, threw utensils, tried to grab at open flames (okay that was just the baby), pretended to be the baby by sitting in the high chair, played a game that involved slamming tables as hard as they could (this was a restaurant with other patrons), whinined, ran around and did other stuff I was trying to ignore. Did I mention I am strongly reconsidering being a mother? I kept thinking 'okay I'll just eat my hamburger and pretend I am a cow', but then I got worried the kids would notice how weird I was. Because kids are perceptive apparently.
And then there was the actual work in the home yesterday. With a kid who was DAMN LAZY and the other who was slow. The damn lazy kid (Joy) kept on mocking the slow kid (Hiva). I think. It was in Nepali so I don't know for sure, but the tone sure sounded like it. I had to keep thinking 'okay I will keep calm and carry on' or 'I will not massive facepalm in front of the kids'. They kept asking to go to the bathroom too, and kept giggling as they asked. I was sure something was up, but they returned really quickly so I ignored it. On reflection I might have killed Neath if I had to teach her, she seems like one of those who'd run away and be completely impossible to teach.
Okay I need to stop complaining less and just go with the flow, but damn if this thing isn't going to turn me into the guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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