These last two weeks of visiting my family has been amazing as always! The visit one week ago was filled with card games and laughing. It was great because Sarah was able to join us for our visits. Last Friday when we went to visit, we started out with bingo. People just started coming in and there were many people there. Somehow we got to the topic of songs…and then the real fun began. They were so fascinated by Sarah. I think it was because she was from a different culture and did not understand any Nepali. I feel the mother also got to experience that others go through the same thing when learning a new language and laughing and making mistakes is just part of a process. The mother had so much fun with Sarah—she was like a doll. It was sooo funny. The mother would teach Sarah Nepali songs and have fun listening to her talk. Sine Sarah understood no Nepali, the son would translate for us and the songs had some interesting translations. I also played cards with the little girl and after a failed attempt to teach her tictactoe, I just drew pictures with her. Imitating, the mother, she would try to teach me Neapli songs as well. She did so well at teaching and patiently repeating the words. We danced to Nepali songs with our mother. It was quite an experience and a full cultural immersion for sure! Then we played fruit basket in which everyone joined in. I look forward to more music and visiting next week!

Our family is so awesome!! They are always incredibly fun to be around, and visiting them seriously makes my week every time! This week the mom showed us some pretty crazy nepali dance moves and we tried to imitate them but it looked a lot cooler when she did them! Also, they are absolutely in love with Sarah. They like me and Kesha too, but since we are somewhat familiar with the culture, they are much more interested in Sarah. They love teaching Sarah new nepali phrases, and Sarah has already picked up on a lot. She has already learned the entire chorus to a nepali song! The mom kept asking Sarah to repeat some Nepali phrases, and she was having so much fun teaching. You could just see the excitement in her face when we repeated the phrases and songs she taught us. She would laugh at Sarah, sing to her, dance with her. It was so amusing just watching the whole scene. Judging by their enthusiasm and their curiosity about Sarah, it’s easy to see that they are absolutely fascinated by American culture.

Overall, it was another very exciting visit! I absolutely love that they are so open and not afraid to be themselves. They are crazy and goofy, just like us which makes things so much more interesting. It makes it easy for us to be ourselves, and there is minimal tension when making mistakes. We really hope the weather gets nicer soon so we can take them out! It will be really fun; I can’t wait!

Last week we had another meeting with our family. It had felt like a long time since we had seen the family, so I was excited to get over there again. This time Thayer and I had a mission set to really get some English lessons done, and I am proud to say that we were able to work on more than the previous week. We brought along some pencils and a few old notebooks to work on writing in. When we got there we talked to the family for a little about how they went and got their state ID’s, although it took a few trips to the DMV actually get it accomplished. We started talking to the dad about English and found out that the only thing he really knows in English is the alphabet, and at that only the capital letters. He has picked up the “Hi, hello, thank you, good” and very trivial words, but that is about all. He learned the letters from a toy his son has, where you can magnetically switch the letters of the alphabet out and the toy pronounces how to say it. This showed me how eager my family is to learn English and I’m proud of them. The four of them are all signed up to start school in April. For the father we wrote down the alphabet both in capitals and lower case and went over them. The little boy came over and we were asking him which letters he knew. As we were going through the alphabet with him, Tom and Jerry episodes came on and he ran away screaming “Tom & Jerry, Tom & Jerry” while waving goodbye to us. It got us all laughing. The mother brought out her workbook again, and we got some time with her in too. She had the majority of it completed, but was having trouble with some of the pronunciations. We were talking about the work “ache” and she started saying the work “pin” which confused us a bit, until I realized she was trying to say the word “pain”. We went through the book and taught her to say some words she was not quite pronouncing correctly. As we walked around their apartment, she would ask what things were. I taught her the word “toys” and she ran out to get a pen and asked if “toese” was right. I corrected her, smiling at her attempt which was actually a great guess with the way it sounds. I am so glad they are eager to learn, and know they will be very successful in their classes. At the end of the night we started going over their WIC and immunization appointments. They had to go their the following Monday, and Thayer called the next day to confirm this and check the hours. I am very very greatful that Thayer is able to communicate with the family because it helps us be more productive and helpful to them, and I think it is helping them feel more at ease too knowing that they always have someone they can call.

Today was an exciting day, well for us, the family was already used to the good news. When we came in it was only the kids and the mom, we asked where the dad was and she told us, very excited, that he was at work. I couldnt help but think that this was exciting, from the research from our recent Mid-Term paper, our family is now well adjusted because they are now able to sustain themselves. I also think that his English will improve since he will be forced to speak it, hear it and be around it more that he would be at home. Over all i thought it was very exciting news.

After the news, we got to playing with the kids and watching some awful show, which made Friday the 13th seemed like a lovely show. It was some bad acting, very gory show called Stairway to hell… again i wished i could change the channel but i just didnt feel comfortable enough to do so, and by the end of our visit we were all consumed by the images on the T.V. My parents are coming to visit me this weekend and i will ask them to bring me all of our old movies (still in VCR) so i can give it to them, the Rugrats will be more entertaining anyway!

This time we didnt really do much, Shal and i talked about maybe taking the kids out to the movies on our next visit– i really want to see Hop and i think they would enjoy it, after we try to explain the concept of Easter and the Easter Bunny to the kids and the mom… it should be interesting. Oh, they fed us again… i was so scared… but i actually really enjoyed what they gave us this time. It was a mixture of dough, onions, cilantro and potatoes all deep fried… it was delicious… a bit spicy for me but i just drank a lot of water with each bite. I really cant wait until it starts getting warm out so we can take our family out or just for walks…

This past weekend, we brought the children a coloring book as well as a Cars sticker book which they both thoroughly enjoyed.  They were pretty self entertained the entire time we were there.  It was good to know that the books were a success haha.  The father was not there this weekend.  We asked where he was, and the mother said that he was at his job!!!  We were not able to get much information because there is such a strong language barrier, but we figured out that he was able to get a job working at a discount store.  I was super excited and happy for them when I found out he was working.   The girls who live downstairs came up and said hello and they also brought food up with them.  I forget what it was called, but it was very similar to the indian food my dad makes called pakoras.  They were absolutely delicious and they were thrilled that we enjoyed them.  The girls also noticed that I had gotten my nose pierced, and since they all have their noses pierced there was some definite bonding.

My partner and I have noticed that every time the TV is on, there’s some horrifying movie on like Friday the 13th or something equally terrifying.  The kids don’t seem to mind but we’re hoping to bring them some of our childhood Disney VHS’ so that they don’t have to watch people blowing their brains out or being sucked into hell…I think they’ll like Disney much more.

As usual, we had a good time.  Time always flies by there and they are always so nice.