Mama Beine has decided that we should join the modern era, and begin blogging (even though our daily life isn't exactly modern: we live in a mud house without central temperature control, dry our clothes on the line, and use a squatty potty).
So, every once in a while, one Beine will give you a snippet of life here. I will begin with the "table tale." You see, our house didn't have a table big enough to seat all seven of us (including our kids' teacher, Alexa) for daily meals. No problem. Since there are no furniture stores here, I simply put in an order at the mission hospital workshop to have a six-foot long table made. And amazingly, it was completed in less than a week. So, some men carried it out to our house.
The first job was to remove the old table that we had. Did I mention that our door ways are so small that all of us have to duck and step up to get through (well, Josh doesn't have to duck)? So, after much twisting, grunting, pulling and pushing, we got the table out. Great, I thought, now we'll take the table to Alexa's house so she can use it for schooling the boys. Well, Alexa's house has even smaller doors than ours, and in the end, we had to abandon the idea of giving her our table. In the end, we did give her another smaller table we had, and to get that one in, we only had to remove one crossbar of support near the bottom of the table and one small post on her door (that catches the screen door). The table and door were reassembled once the table was in the room. Now, how to get the six-foot table into our dining room, which is quite long, but only about six feet across? You guessed it; disassemble the new table. Once the legs were off, it was a breeze to get it into the room, and the carpenters are very skilled at quick reassembly.
The only job left was to get the old table back into our house, and the men who carried out the big table accomplished it quickly. I ended up canceling my language lesson, because this production was a little time consuming, and of course, we offered the carpenters a cup of tea before they trekked back to the hospital. David was so impressed with our dinner table that he ordered another table for his office, which is located on the top floor of our house which is accessed by some very narrow attic-type steps. I can't wait to see how we'll get his table up there. Thank goodness for the persistence and ingenuity of most Nepalis; I'm sure we'll find a way.
Loving the adventure,
Kimberly, for the Beines
P.S. You can imagine the number of bruises we have on our heads from bonking them at doorways. Hopefully, we'll soon master the "duck at the doorway" move.
