Learning a Language

Well I started Hindi lessons this week, it is with a private tutor and one other intern. We'll meet twice a week for an hour or so each time, while I attempt to teach myself as much as possible between meetings. Language learning is one of those things that I think certain people are gifted with, I don't think I am one of them, but I am excited to give it a shot.

For those who think I get to hike around the Himalayas all the time, well you'd be wrong, I've also been working recently as well even though it has recieved little mention in this blog. We are very close to publishing our design report for the ministry that we visited back in September. I have been working a little bit in Google Sketchup which is a free piece of software used for 3D renderings of drawings(amongst other things). One of my work tasks this past week was to create a 3D site plan from our survey data using SU. This will be used for the 3d architectural renderings of the buildings on the site.










Posted below are a couple more photos taken by another intern on the trek. Looking back on that week I must say I have a whole new respect for the power of mother nature, and how important it is to be properly prepared(but not over-prepared because then your pack gets heavy).























Indian Minute
I thought it would be fitting to have a share a few hindi phrases. Spelling is phoentic(for me) since Hindi has it's own script.

Aap kaise hain? - How are you?
Mai thik hoon, aur aap? - I am fine and you?

Aap ka naam kya hai? - What is your name?
Mera naam Nate hai. - My name is Nate

Aap kahan ke hai?- Where are you from
Mai America ke hoon. - I am from America

Aap kya kartay hain? - What do you do?
Mai engineer hoon. - I am an engineer.

On of the interesting things about Hindi is the word order. For most sentences the following order is correct:

Subject + Object + Verb

So you have to get in the habit of Yoda speak.

To The River and Back Again

The Work Recently
Sorry for the delay in posting, we have been on vacation for the past week. We have been working hard on publishing our design reports and hope to be done in the next couple of weeks.

Trekking
For our week of vacation we decided to go for a several day hike nearby the Himalayan mountians. We chose a hike that would put us at less than 5 miles from the peak of the mountain(Bandarpunch) which we can see from our office window. The peak at Bandarpunch is at 20,700 feet which is taller than any peak in North America. 5 of the interns went as well as one of our Indian friends from Mussoorie.








Bandarpunch from the office







Sunday
We started at 5:30 AM with a windy taxi ride to the trail head, taking about 6 hours to get there and with a few members of our group getting car sick. We were armed with hiking equipment that was more applicable for summer camping out of the trunk of your car than for a autumn hike in the Himalayas, although our one saving grace is that everyone had a mummy bag. We hiked about 9 kms Sunday afternoon to a village where we camped out.

Monday
On Monday we hiked to what was sort of our base camp, it is an alpine lake called Dodital. It is a place considered sacred by Hindus and was about 14 kms from where we camped the night before. The lake is at about 10,000 feet of elevation so most of our hike was a steady ascent towards the lake. We also camped out that night as well, and decided our itinerary for the rest of the trip. Most people who hike to Dodital only day hike out of there and then return the same way they came into Dodital. We decided that was kind of lame as there was another route described in the guide book that would bring us up the pass and along the valley until we reached the next town about 25 kms down the river from the pass. With that decided that we would relax on Tuesday.

Tuesday
Tuesday was our chill day, we relaxed and got prepared for the hike up the pass. Unfortunately we got heavy rain that evening which flooded our tents and forced us to spend the night in the resthouse located in Dodital.







Bandarpunch from Darwa Pass











Wednesday
Our hike up to the Darwa Pass got slightly delayed. We had hoped to get started at about 5:30 AM to make it up to the pass before the clouds rolled in and ruined our view. However it was raining when we woke up and didn't get started until around 6:30 AM. We booked it up the trail and made it there by 8:45AM which is pretty good consider most groups take at least two hours and they usually day-hike, while we had all our gear on our backs heading up to the pass. Darwa Pass is at about 13,500 feet so it was a pretty intense hike up from Dodital. From the pass Bandarpunch and the Swargarohini mountain range are in view. We got there in time to see a bit of the mountains before the clouds got there. Nick and I went for a little side hike up to a better view point. After spending a few hours at the pass we decided to head off west along the valley. The guide book describes the trail as "little more than an ill-defined goat track." We apparently didn't find that ill-defined goat track and we were not hiking at the top of the ridge as we later determined we were supposed to be doing. What this led to was having to go up and down valleys that could have been avoided if we were hiking at the top of the ridge before any valley formed. We found a place to camp that was probably around 11,000 feet and fortunately we discovered this old hut that had a bunch of firewood surrounding it, so at least we were able to get warm by the fire. The place were we camped at was pretty cool as Bandarpunch was still in view. When I got up around 11 to go pee, the sky was completly clear and the moon was almost full so the view was pretty impressive.








Our vantage point









Bandarpunch from our campsite






Thursday
We began the morning by hiking up the hill a bit to get an idea of where we were supposed to go and how to get there. We realized where we had camped was essentially on a cliff over a valley. We could see our final destination down the river valley and we had two options. We could hike up to the high ridge and hike all the way around the valley or we thought that maybe we could hike down to the river and follow the river along to the village. The river looked pretty tame from 3,000 feet above and seemed like there was plenty of riverbed to hike along. So we spent much of the morning hiking down through the forest essentially blazing our own trail. We didn't make it more than 500meters down the river until we realized that what we were trying to do was basically impossible. The river was in full rage and landslides,boulders, and cliffs made it extremely difficult to hike down the river. Our thought to not backtrack along the trail was thwarted, and the decision was made to hike back to where we came from and get back to Dodital. At this point it had started raining and hailing. We hiked back up the river about 1 km and then began the 4,000 or so vertical foot climb back to the pass. The higher elevations had gotten snow which made it almost seem like I was back in Michigan. We got to Darwa Pass around 6:30 PM under moonlight and through an inch or two of snow(which is astonishing to the two Texans and the one Californian on our trip). Most of our gear and clothes were wet from the rain and snow that we had had that day so we decided to hike down from the pass to Dodital where we thought we might have a warm meal and a dry place to spend the night. So we hiked down the pass under moonlight and flashlight and got into Dodital around 10PM. There is a dhaba(a food hut/shack) in Dodital which we had eaten at before. We woke the dhaba walla who kindly lite a fire for us and cooked us hot food and chai. I think we sat in front of the fire for about 3 hours warming up and drying out our clothes. The dhaba also had a few beds for us to sleep in, which we gladly accepted.





The snowy higher elevations









Friday
We began our journey back down to the start of the trail. We had an uneventful 24 km hike that day and got back to the town of Uttarkashi around 7PM. Unfortunately there were no more buses leaving that evening so we stayed in a hotel near the bus station and caught the first bus back to Mussoorie on Saturday morning.

Prayer Requests
Please continue to pray for our project reports
Please pray for our outreach to the guys that we are teaching english to

Check out eMi2's quarterly newsletter:
http://www.emi2southasia.org/indianthread/E_Thread_Current.pdf

With Love,
Nate

The Great Pinecone Hunt of '10

We spent about 4 hours this morning gathering pinecones for the winter months just like squirrels gathering acorns. The reason for this is the fact that almost no homes here have central heating. Homes are heated by a bucari stove, which is similar to a potbelly stove, and pinecones are the best natural firestarters. So about 10 of us interns and staff set out this morning at 9 o'clock to rather as many "export-quality"(as our director described them) pinecones. Unfortunetly these couldn't be any old pinecones, they had to be cones from a white pine since apparently those burn significantly better than the other species of pine's cones in the area. So we had quite a hike to get to the white pine forest down the hillside. The morning was full of adventure climbing into little gulleys were the pinecones would get trapped, and doing our best not to fall off the hillside. After a couple of hours of strenuous pinecone gathering we hiked further down the trail to where the "great pinecone basin" was to be found. We filled our packs and began the hike back out. I don't think many of us realized how far we had come and it took us a solid hour to get back to the office, as we hiked up about 1,200 feet of elevation. When we got backed we counted our find and between all of us we had over 500 pinecones, and these aren't small pinecones either(see picture).








An export quality pinecone, with a 1L bottle for scale











Teaching English
For the past two weeks a group of us from eMi have been teaching some guys from the area english. Someone in the church had told us about a group of young Hindu guys(18-30) who were interested in learning english, and saw it as an outreach tool. So far only two people have really been showing up consistently. They both know very little english, but it's been cool to see them improve already. It's kind of funny to be teaching english since I haven't had an english class since my senior year of high school, but being a native speaker makes me an expert I guess. It is also a challenge to not speak hinglish to them, were you leave out key parts of speech (because that's how many Indians speak english) so that they will understand you; it's a very ironic thing to do when you are trying to teach them correct english grammar.

My Favorite Pictures

Here a some of my favorite pictures thus far. I know black and white pics are so 10 years ago and cliche, but I still like them, so you'll have to endure.



Prayer Requests
-Please pray that we would be challenged and enthused to engage in the local community
-Please continue to pray for our diligence at work especially since the weather has been so beautiful lately.


-Nate

The Week After

So we have started to get down to work on the engineering and architectural design for our project. We hope to publish a conceptual design report to the client by the beginning of November.

My Work This Week
I have been working on refining our base-map of the site from our survey data. I have also completed estimates of the water usage and wastewater generation and have begun to size and place the various water/wastewater systems on the site. In the meantime the architects have been working on the floor plans of all the buildings.

Sewah School
This past Saturday we had the opportunity to do a brief program with some school children at their small village school. The school consists entirely of Hindu children, grades K-8. It is run by a christian family who run a group of village schools. We got to sing songs with them, share a bible story, and play simon says with them. It was a great ministry opportunity and it also allowed us to see some more of the surrounding hills and villages near Mussoorie.









Kids at the Sewah School




























The Indian Minute -- Food
So this got skipped last week just because of the length of last week's post. So this week's topic is food. The food here is absolutely wonderful as nothing is bland, everything has a spice to it. As with most countries food is extremely regionally dependent in India, my experience has been largely with north Indian food. The two major divisions are vegetarian and non-vegetarian since most hindus will not eat meat of any sort. Also when meat is offered it is most likely going to be chicken since muslims do not eat pork and cows are considered holy by hindus. The other division is between bread and rice, in south India they rely much more on rice to be served with dishes, where as in north India breads are more common. The most common bread in our area is chapati, it is basically a wheat flour version of a tortilla, but a little different. The typical Indian meal consists of rice and dal. Dal is a lentil stew prepared with garlic, onions, tomatoes, and spices. This is usually supplimented with subjee(vegetables) which can include potato, califlower, pepper,onion, tomato and cabbage cooked with spices, in our locality this is eaten with chapati. Other foods that I have experienced here:

Bhindi - Okra cooked with tomatoes and spices

Paneer: This is a type of cheese curd, it comes in cubes and when eaten uncooked may remind you of tofu. Paneer can be cooked,grilled, or fried. When cooked it comes in many forms including paneer palak(spinach).

Chicken or Aloo(Potato) Pakora: Pakora means fried

Parantha: This is kind of like a stuffed chapati, potatoes or paneer are usually used as a filling.

Chicken Kofta: This is chicken that has been ground or minced and then formed into a meatball, it is cooked and served with a curry sauce.

Dahi- Yogurt, sometimes prepared with thinly minced cucumber, it is served with spicy foods to provide a "cooling" food.

Aloo(potato)-this is prepared in a variety of ways also in different types of sauces, and served with rice or chipati

Momos- Tibetan dumplings, also probably the best food I've had here.

I can't do a section on Indian food without mentioning chai. Chai is the type of tea drank at all hours of the day by everybody in India. It is a black tea that is served with milk and a lot of sugar. It can be flavored with any/all of the following: caradamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, fennel, and even pepper. On the train the chai wallahs(a wallah is someone who sells stuff) would begin at 6 AM and walk up and down the aisle of train yelling "chai"; they continued well into the evening.

Also I should say a brief word about curry. Curry simply refers to a flavored gravy of stew that meat or vegetables are cooked in, it doesn't actually refer to a specific spice.

Fun Food Fact: Potatoes are widely eaten throughout India, but where not available here until there discovery in the "New World" and their subsequent immigration to India via the British colonialists.







View from the lawn at the office









"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
-Romans 1:20

Monsoon has finally ceased here in Mussoorie and everyday this week I have been able to see the 20,000 foot tall peaks of the Himalayans to the north. God's creation has always spoken powerfully to me throughout my christian journey and here it is certainly no different.

Prayer Requests:
-We have one team that is traveling back from south India this weekend so you can be praying for their safety.
-We have another intern joining us so you can be praying for her transition to the office
-Pray that we would diligently and humbly serve here at eMi and engage in the local community


--Nate