Blog by Sarah Reeves, UW Both­ell Com­mu­nity Psy­chol­ogy & Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies Major, Study Abroad — Nepal

Writ­ten Feb­ru­ary 18, 2013

For the past two weeks I have been given the unique oppor­tu­nity to live and be a part of a Tibetan fam­ily. This expe­ri­ence has been stress­ful, awk­ward, fun, and reward­ing all at once.  My eyes have been opened to a new lifestyle that I have been given the chance to live.

I was first intro­duced to my Amala (this is Tibetan for mother) when she came to pick me up from my pro­gram house.  She is a very sweet and small, when she picked me up she insisted on car­ry­ing my back­pack and sev­eral other bags only leav­ing me with one piece of lug­gage to carry.  I was lucky because my Amala was friends with another women who was pick­ing up one of my fel­low class­mates Danielle, so we were able to walk to our houses as a group.  My home stay house is about ten min­utes from my pro­gram house, which is where I have to go every day for my classes. It was a nice relief to know that I would have a walk­ing buddy every morn­ing.  As we walked home there was a lot of silence; my Amala speaks very lit­tle Eng­lish so we weren’t able to talk very much. In a way this was nice because it allowed me to take in my surroundings.

Once we reached the house that I would be call­ing home for the next month I was intro­duced to my Pala (Tibetan for father). He was very excited and happy to meet me which was nice. He also speaks very lit­tle Eng­lish so this made me a lit­tle wor­ried con­sid­er­ing that at this point I knew very lit­tle Tibetan.  My Amala and Pala showed me my new room which was fully fur­nished with a bed, table, small couch like some­thing you would see in a play house, and a garbage can.  It wasn’t a lot but it was cer­tainly more than I was expecting.

My new par­ents watched me as I unpacked a few things, they then began to speak to each other and of course I did not under­stand a word they were say­ing.  They then ush­ered me into the kitchen where I was served tea and a snack, once I began to sip on my tea my Amala retrieved an enve­lope which con­tained sev­eral pic­tures of me which I had sent to them before the pro­gram began.  They were very excited to share my pic­tures with me which made me feel extremely spe­cial.  After we had gone through all the pic­tures I had sent them I then retrieved my own enve­lope which con­tained new pic­tures that I printed and brought with me.  This made them very happy, we exchanged sev­eral laughs with each other while I was try­ing to explain the pic­tures to them.

At this point I was extremely ner­vous by the fact that nei­ther of my home stay par­ents spoke any Eng­lish. I began to think about the rest of my stay and how I was going to man­age com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them.  After freak­ing out for about ten min­utes a young girl entered the kitchen and took a seat across the table from me.  I then learned that she was four­teen, her name was Dechin and she was going to be the lit­tle sis­ter that I never had, and best of all she spoke very good Eng­lish! After talk­ing with Dechin for a lit­tle while I learned that there was another lit­tle girl name Tenchin who was also going to be my new lit­tle sis­ter.  This was very excit­ing for me, not only was I going to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with my home stay fam­ily but I was also going to be given the chance to expe­ri­ence younger siblings.

The first night in my new home went smoothly I was even able to get in a full nights sleep.  The next day Dechin and I went out explor­ing which was a lot of fun, she intro­duced to me to street food for the first time and I can hon­estly say that I enjoyed it.  She also intro­duced me to chew­ing gum with a liq­uid cen­ter that was very delicious.

Day two of my home stay expe­ri­ence was also event­ful. On the sec­ond day I taught my two lit­tle sis­ters how to play the card game phase ten.  They brought the cards to me ask­ing if I knew how to play the game because they didn’t.  While teach­ing them I learned that the cards had been a gift and were given to them about three years prior. For some rea­son I thought this was funny and of course when I started laugh­ing they did the same.  After play­ing cards for a cou­ple of hours we became a lit­tle bored so Dechin went out to get new street food for me to try, she returned with mix­ture that con­sisted of spicy pota­toes and this rice shaped food that tasted like corn nuts.  I didn’t like this street food as much as I had liked the food from the pre­vi­ous day, I only ended up eat­ing about half of my snack.

It was this same night that I decided that I never wanted to eat the street food Dechin brought me ever again.  I came to this deci­sion as I was on my hands and knees hurl­ing into a Nepali toi­let, which are noth­ing like toi­lets in Amer­ica. (If you are curi­ous about how they are dif­fer­ent Google it…) It was only my sec­ond day with my new fam­ily and I was already sick and spend­ing all my time in the bath­room.  I was only sick for about twenty four hours but it felt like for­ever. I wasn’t even able to keep water in my sys­tem it all came out just as fast as it went in.

Liv­ing with this new fam­ily as been an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence and I am enjoy­ing every minute of it.  I only have a cou­ple more weeks with my home stay fam­ily but I know that we are going to stay in touch for many years to come.