kepsei

That's not really how you spell the word phonetically, but it's as close as I can get it for you guys to get the jist of the pronunciation. Kepsei is a Tibetan festival food, prepared at Losar, which is the Tibetan New Year. It's coming up in a few days, but people start getting ready early. Most people take 3-5 days off here, but in the "old country" they take a month off. (More pictures of this process are on the link on the right hand side of the site.)

Yesterday 0ur neighbors graciously allowed us to jump into the process, even though we didn't have a clue about what we were doing, and didn't end up being very good at it! After we finished frying all the dough, they moved the boiling pan of oil off of the fire, and threw some small potatoes in the coals to bake--no reynolds wrap, of course. We peeled the blackened skins off and ate them with our hands. Why dirty utensils? Afterward I had to resist the urge to make war paint marks on my face with my newly blackened fingers.

It was a long day. We had language for three hours in the morning, met with some people for lunch, visited a shop, and then went home to find our neighbors baking in the courtyard. We spent the entire afternoon in the courtyard with them, and only headed into the house after it was dark, about 6:30 p.m. We then went up to our neighbors' house (see their pictures at the flckr account on the right) to practice Nepali with two visiting friends. . . then we played cards to practice Nepali numbers. . .then they served us dinner about 7:15. . .then asked us to watch a movie . . .and you can imagine that about 10:30 when I finally left, the sleep my Father gave was incredibly sweet!