Over a month...

and so much to say.
I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Kathmandu Nepal situated across the street from my "Didi's" house. Didi is the Nepali (and Hindi) word for older sister. My ideas when came to Nepal were to get out of the cities and make it into the mountains and find out what big mountains really mean. I completed one of the requirements and I plan to leave for trekking in 2 days! I worked on a farm for about a month in a small village called Megauli in the Chitwan district of Nepal. Megauli's claim to fame is that it hosts the elephant polo championships every December! It is a rural area bordering Chitwan National Park in lowland Nepal.
I crossed the border without any difficulties (I walked across without getting my Indian visa stamped without even realizing it) and went to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. Through the website workaway.info I was in email contact with a man named Bishnu who has a volunteer organization out of Kathmandu, he saw my profile and said, "I have a place for you." From Lumbini, i hopped on local transportation and with a little difficulty arrived in Megauli and met Ramu. Ramu is a second generation farmer (There has been a little unrest in Kathmandu lately, strikes and such, a march is walking by the cafe at the moment...) His family migrated to the fertile lowlands, known as the Terai, from the mountains after DDT was used to eradicate Malaria in the 1950's and 60's. Southern Nepal is under 1,000 feet elevation on the Gangetic plain. This area has much of the arable land and almost all of the industry. It is also hot. It was between 80 and 100 degrees with almost 100% humidity.
Ramu and his family took me in without any questions, Bishnu asked Ramu if I could come only 3 days before, and we got to work on the farm. I joined in the daily ritual of: wake up at 5:30, out in the fields by 6 or 6:30, depending on whether we had tea or not. Work until about 9 or 10 when the sun was scorching and then breakfast of "Dal Baat Tarkari." Lentils Rice and Curried veggies. We ate entirely food that was grown on the farm! Then we'd do odd jobs near the house, feeding the cows, etc. or rest until about 4 PM when we'd go back out in the field until dark. Then we'd eat Dal Baat again, or roti's and then sleep. It was a wonderful and wholesome routine.
During my stay I attempted to reach an internet connection in Narangarh (24 kilometers and almost 2 hours by bus...) there wasn't electricity and I got heat stroke, which proceeded to become a fever and diarrhea, I was knocked out cold for a couple of days. My immune system was out of whack big time, consequently I got 2 staff infections on one foot. This put me down for another week. Luckily there's a rural clinic no more that 200 meters down the "road" from Ramu's house. I became a regular there for about a week and a half. For the infections I got shots of local anesthesia and then they popped the suckers like giant mutant zits and packed the holes with iodine soaked bandages. I spent a week with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and hope that there was electricity so that the fan would run. I survived the ordeal and it's just another lesson of how important our bodies are and how much I take my healthy body for granted.
While I was bed ridden Ramu's older sister came to visit and she told me that when I come to Kathmandu to come and stay with her. So that's how I'm living like the locals again. I am so astounded at how open people have been to me, inviting me into their lives. Ramu's family has become my Nepali family. Bishnu's husband works as a chef and she's a stay at home mom until she can find work as a teacher. I've been helping her three year old son practice his ABC's, walk him and the neighbor's daughter to school and cooking dinner. My Hindi has morphed into a Hindi/Nepali mix that allows me to communicate adequately here. I plan to leave for trekking in two days! I'm determined to get some mountain time!
Excuse the scatteredness, it's reflecting my state of mind, trying to organize everything for trekking and opening up the cyber world after a month of not looking at it has sent my mind spinning.
Love to everyone and sorry if anyone was worried :D