Explorations

Pangbisa We got moved last week, transferring from our house in the construction zone to a Residential Advisor suite in a dorm on the campus in Pangbisa,  a small rural community with a cafe, two small stores, and lots of cows and dogs.  It’s blissfully beautiful and quiet here - except for the six 20-something males living down the hall from us, most of whom are Jay’s students. They also helped us move our stuff in, which was really sweet. We were a little surprised at how much we had accumulated in two months, though mostly kitchen and household goods that we will use up. We wanted to make sure we were well provisioned before we moved up onto the mountain.   The dorms are called hostels here, and this one is mostly empty because the students who lived here are 5 th years who are spending this semester doing externships. Because the campus is newly constructed, the building is more energy efficient and warmer than the house we moved out of, which makes us very happy, an...

From Jay: There are a million stories to tell, and I think we are both anxious to write and communicate more, but between the logistical challenges of living here and actually doing the work, I find myself with a fraction of the time I had expected to have to reflect and write. But I want to share what is happening in our home life here. We live in Paro Town, and need to make our way up the mountain the days that I teach or one of us otherwise needs to be on campus, on a half-hour long drive on a windy mountain road, 16 km and 2000 foot climb. But the stress of securing rides was manageable because we had a pleasant spot to come back to in Paro. About a month after settling in here in our comfortable place, (christened Buddy’s House now, after our local Paro-dog), the vacant lot next to us that once hosted Buddy basking on top of his big pile of sand, and periodic wandering cows, and our view of the mountains to the south, exploded into an intense construction p...

I’ve been taking more photos than I have been writing, but I want to share some random thoughts, along with photos of some of the lovely places we have been in this incredibly picturesque country. Spring It’s been wonderful to see some of the fields that surround Paro and Pangbisa, where the law school is, turning green with the spring rains and warmer weather. We do a lot of walking through the outskirts of Paro town, and it’s so nice to see people out planting in the fields. Often women, planting rice. There is not yet much in the way of spring vegetables in the markets, but there is lots of wonderful freshly-harvested asparagus. We have been happily living on asparagus for the last few weeks since the harvest has become more plentiful. It's been a very welcome addition to our diet. More fiddleheads in the market!         Dzongkha This language sounds wholly unfamiliar to me. I think by the time we first went to Cambodia, I had heard a lot of Khmer already, so...

(From Jay) We have not been posting much in the way of news because we’ve been far busier than we expected. We are still slogging through logistical stuff. But Dori finally got her bank account set up, actually got paid, went to the bank to deposit that check, and successfully set up online access to the money via the app that everyone uses, “mBOB” (mobile Bank of Bhutan),  even for the simplest transactions.   The pervasive use of that technology is a great counterpoint to the incredibly convoluted and underdeveloped bureaucratic systems throughout the country in every area – such as our visa extensions, and the whole bank account thing – that we encounter every time we turn around. There is also the logistical process of getting up and down the mountain (from Paro to JSW near Pangbisa) every day that we are on campus. Which is to say that we are exhausted much of the time, with stuff like logistics adding to the general work of doing the work that we came here to do. I have ...

The past two weeks since my sister Barbara died has been tough for me emotionally, and also logistically. Underneath the grief and sadness, I have been experiencing lots of head-banging in dealing with the logistics of getting to be fully functional here. I am no stranger to cumbersome bureaucracies in developing countries, but this place is really on the far edge of the continuum. The last month has been a process of two steps forward, one step back. Or one forward two back at times. Dealing with everything all together has been hard. But that also means I get to celebrate my successes, of which there have been some! I want to share one of those, from the night before Barbara died.   Jay and I have made friends with a young woman who runs her family’s stall at the market. One or both of us goes to the market quite often, as it is a 10-minute walk from our house, so we go get fresh veggies frequently. And it is open every day into the evening. People keep telling us that local...

I am amazed at the technology that keeps me in touch with family and friends, like email, or WhatsApp messages and calls, when I am halfway around the planet. And I am grateful for the ability to communicate when something happens that I need to know about. Like the other morning, when I got woken up by a message from my brother, saying ‘call me now.’    My sister Barbara had died suddenly. She went to take a nap and didn’t wake up.    I am trying to process this, as is the rest of the family. It’s hard being so far away, though being closer probably wouldn’t really make a difference. There is not much I could do. But even though I am often a Luddite, it’s been the technology that has made me feel closer and connected, and it has been a source of comfort to know that I can reach anyone I need to.   I know that many of my friends met Barbara during her many visits to Seattle over the years, or maybe we connected up somewhere else where she and I had ventured. I w...

All of a sudden, the weather has turned. In the last week I have gone from wearing multiple layers under my down coat to walking outside in a t-shirt. Most mornings, the sun comes up over the mountains and stays out, warming the air and the earth, until early afternoon, when the up-valley winds start and big puffy clouds take over the sky. The trees are budding out, people are digging their fields, and I expect to see rice and potatoes planted soon. It’s a relief to not be so cold now.   We are entering the third week of the semester, and I know that time is going to fly by before I can accomplish even part of what I want to do here. I am doing my best, though we keep getting distracted by logistics. We have finally gotten our house pretty much in functioning order, but then this past week, we spent several days trying to take care of getting our visas extended beyond the 30-day work visa we entered with. Everyone told me that it took several days in Thimphu, the capital, but I tho...