Check out a more complete photo gallery (than ours) of the day at www.jhamtseinternational.org/blog
The blog is one of the projects Heather’s been working on, along with teaching people to use it.
In fact, check out the main website.  It’ll tell you a bit about the place that we’re at…Spence is currently heading up a complete overhaul of the site, another one of our projects.

 

The monsoons have finally come.  It’s raining everyday, and most mornings we wake up in the middle of a cloud (you can do that when you’re up on a mountain).  Sometimes it’s cool to watch them form way down in the gorge below, and then work their way up to where you are, slowly covering your view of everything – the distant hillside villages, that waterfall over there in Bhutan, the river below, all the surrounding peaks – until everything is completely white and you can’t even see the school buildings up the hill, and the nearest prayer flags are just fluttering ghost-forms.  And then the cloud will move on and there is sunshine and blue skies and a great view again.  The place where Jhamtse Gatsal is situated is quite unique.  It’s on a green ridge, full of life and vegetation.  We’re completely surrounded by big mountains, and perched just so that we look down into two very deep valleys, with two different rumbling rivers – one flowing out of Tibet, and the other flowing into Bhutan.  From here I can count many little villages.  Most don’t even have a road going to them – you’d have to walk.  The climate is milder than most of the surrounding areas, because of a slightly lower elevation and something about the way that the winds come up from both valleys.  Good for growing lots of kiwis.  ☺  P.s. I think we’re in a good place see the solar eclipse that is supposed to happen on July 22nd.  We’ll keep you posted.  Check out 28 random photos of our first month here:

 

Good night madam, good night madam, good night madam, see you too-mado, have a sweet dream, good night madam.  ☺  Fifty polite little kids parading by, 3 times a day to the family kitchen for meals…all eager to get their English greetings out as they go by.  If I’m sitting on the porch with anyone else when the line comes, there will be a whole chorus of hellos in Tibetan or Hindi or whatever else fits.  The kids here are all from surrounding areas, but the staff come from many places, and speak many languages.  In class, the children learn Monpa (a local language), Tibetan, Nepali, Hindi, and English.  In discussions at dinner (we all eat as a big group after the children are finished), I used to have high hopes that I would start picking up on what was being said.  Then I found out that at any given time with the adults, there are typically 2-4 languages being used at the same time, and so I’m starting now with trying to learn enough of each to at least be able to differentiate which is which during a conversation. One of my jobs is teaching English to staff-members.   During play time with the kids, I get to be the student, and they love teaching me words.  Today I learned that the Monpa word for bum is ‘ninten.’  And then they proceeded to teach me a game that they called ‘ninten-do.’  ☺  Haha.

It began with a dog-bite.  The poor girl was broken up pretty badly, her injuries swelling with infection.  She was scared and was finally letting me talk to her pet her, when I discovered that one of her wounds was full of maggots.  Ick.  When Julie came around, we tried to get a closer look at the extent of the dog’s injuries.  And well, you wouldn’t like it if someone started poking and prodding you when you were miserable and in pain either.  So she snapped, and I didn’t get out of the way quite fast enough, and ended up with a wrist poked full of holes.   After a quick washing up and bandaging job in the surgery prep room at Animal Aid, I got to ride in the animal ambulance to the people hospital.  Walked in.  Told someone at a desk why I was there.  They took down some basic info (I am now Heder on my Indian hospital records), and I paid for everything (minus drugs) right up front.  Then I got sent off to a consultation with a doctor.  He asked some questions about what happened, my vaccination history, etc.  And then without ever even looking at my arm, wrote me a prescription and sent me off to the pharmacy.  Eh?  I’m confused about what just happened, but proceed dutifully.  At the pharmacy I pick up all the things I’ve been told to take, and some things that they will need to treat me.  Ah, I get it now.  Back to a treatment room, Spence and the ambulance driver in tow,  where a nurse looks at the prescription in my hand, digs into the stuff I’ve just bought, and finally takes a look at my arm.  Ten minutes later my deep holes are all swabbed out with gobs of gauze pre-soaked in iodine, I have a rabies shot in my bum, and I’m excessively bandaged up again.  It aches like crazy.  At some point, the doctor did pop his head in for a minute, and at another point both Spence and the driver were on the tile floor, trying not to faint.  Didn’t like the sight of a few tendons and blood vessels, I guess.  And with that, we were off.  I took the rest of the day off, and am now taking all the scheduled injections of rabies vaccine.  It’s dang cheap here…might as well.

Being on the go and seeing sights can get old.  So it was with great relief that we arrived in Udaipur this week, with the intention of staying for a few weeks to volunteer at an animal rescue just outside the city.  Animal Aid is a non-profit rehabilitation center, started by a retired couple from the U.S. and their teenage daughter.  Their hospital collects injured strays  – cats, dogs, donkeys, cows, monkeys, pigeons, parrots – nurses them back to health and returns them to their home on the street, if appropriate.  We are mostly working with dogs, and no matter how starved or crippled, mangy, or ugly, their forgiving and happy dog natures always come out, and we are greeted daily with many happy wagging tails.  It is a big work, and it is good to mix with so many other passionate, caring, hard-working people.

On another subject, we split paths with Steve also this last week (the other half of Walters Creative, Kjrstin, left about the time we left Hyderabad).  He is headed off to do more intensive photography work in Hyderabad, and then back to the U.S. to join up with Kjrstin, where they will be responsibly pregnant.  We will miss the amazing photography that we’ve been enjoying, but say big congratulations and wish them the best!