After leaving our family last visit, Carrie and I felt obligated that we’d mix it up and bring classic Chicago deep-dish pizza later that week after our Refugee Resttlement class. After class, Carrie and I ordered a deep-dish pizza from Carmen’s (sorry all Giordano lovers). When we arrived though, not to my suprise, Carmen’s had screwed up the order and made us a dinky, baby pizza instead of our medium pizza we ordered. So we waited and waited and like a good establishment that Carmen’s is, they gave us the baby pizza free and took half off the price of the medium pizza. $8 for a medium and small (size of a softball small) pizzas, I’ll take it.
Having planned on arriving at 6:45 we arrived there 30 minutes late (thanks again Carmen’s) and I was expecting the family to be upset we were late (I know my friends would be). Much to my suprise, they were happy to see us and prepared the table like any good host would. We started eating the deep dish cheese pizza (didn’t know if they had any religious eating practices, so we stuck to cheese) and they looked like they really enjoyed it. After dinner, Carrie and I talked with them for over an hour about what they had been up to the past few days. The husband said that he was keeping busy with school and such, as did the wife (she is taking ESL classes because she knows very little English). We got on the subject of music again, and after rattling off some names of bands, the only person they had heard music from back in Nepal is the King of Pop, Michael Jackson (no Beatles, though). I laughed at this because it’s amazing how Michael Jackson was listened to by people in the most remote places in the world. Carrie and I decided to leave after we noticed the husband and wife getting tired.

We hadn’t been to our family’s apartment in a couple weeks due to spring break and scheduling, but this past weekend we were still welcomed with overwhelming hospitality.  A few other family members from the apartment complex were there as well; we’ve met them a couple times before. They insisted that we take pictures with them.  My partner and I were caught off guard, especially on a rainy day meant for sweatpants, but it was cute nonetheless.  I had gotten my nose pierced a couple weeks ago and they hadn’t seen it yet, so it was cool to bond over that a little bit since all the women have there’s done.  As usual, I helped the oldest man with his English.  He tries so hard.  Though he knows the alphabet, he has a hard time sounding out words and I find that he’s more memorizing what the words say rather than being able to read it himself.  It is extremely difficult for him because he does not have a recording of the sounds of the alphabet or someone to reinforce that every day, which is what I think he needs.  Though that was difficult, I was able to help him with the homework he had for his ESL class.  The youngest boy in the family showed me his progress report and he got all B’s! That is an amazing accomplishment and it was so sweet of him to show us how well he did.  They made us the same food as they had a few weeks prior; however, this time they asked me if we wanted chili in it.  I think they knew from our last experience that we could not handle spice to the same degree that they can haha.  Glad we are learning from each other