Rainy Days and Fresh Pork

* Disclaimer – the following post contains a couple pictures of a pig being butchered.  If you are squeamish at the sight of blood or dead animals, I recommend that you not read this post.  Thank you.

                

We got back from visiting Darjeeling about 2 weeks ago.  It has been so nice to be home again.  Unfortunately a couple of days after returning home it started raining and didn't stop for more than a week.  That means that all of the clothes that we washed after returning home didn't dry for over a week.  A week of rain in Seattle is no big deal, but here, where you must dry clothes in the sun and walk outside to go places or do most of your work, it really becomes a pain!  But when I look outside and see the beautiful green hills and lush forests, the rain really doesn't seem all that bad.

Our Paradise

Here in Sikkim the monsoon season lasts from about the end of May to about the beginning of September.  We are right in the middle of it right now.  We haven’t been doing much while it’s been rainy because it is really easy to get sick.  We do our normal chores around the house, but not too much more than that.

Last weekend there was a meeting for the youth group leaders of West Sikkim at our church.  In preparation for the meeting Passang and I spent a couple of rainy days with other youth cleaning up around the church.

Cleaning moss off of the church ground 

Sweeping the church

Cutting the weeds around the church

Although the tools and methods are a little bit different than what I am used to in America, the chores that need to be done are actually quite similar. 

On Monday my mother-in-law had one of her pigs slaughtered.  As sad as it is to see an animal die and be cut up right in front of me, to me it’s actually quite refreshing to be able to see exactly where my food is coming from.  We are so removed from our food in the US.  It’s way too easy to forget that the meat that we eat was actually at one time a living animal that had to die in order to for us to eat.  Plus freshly slaughtered, home-grown meat is WAY tastier than anything you get in the grocery store in America!

Cutting off a strip of meat

Our cousin weighing the meat

Tying 2 Kg bundles of meat together with strips of bamboo to sell at the market

On Monday evening my didi and I made fresh pork momos for dinner (SF: momos are a traditional Himalayan dumpling very similar to a pot-sticker.  They are usually served steamed but can also be fried, and they are always served with a fresh home-made hot sauce called “achar”).  Here we do everything by hand from making the wrapper dough and rolling out the wrappers to folding all of the dumplings.  They were so good!  Fresh meat really does make a big difference.

Folding momos

 

Today is Passang’s birthday!  He is 31 years old!  This year will probably be the first year in a very long time that anyone has done anything for him on his birthday.  Birthdays around here, especially for adults, are not very big events.  Many of the adults don’t really even know exactly when their birthday is.  I’m not doing anything big, just making him tacos for dinner.  I made them for the family once before and they loved them.  Again I’ll be making everything from scratch including the tortillas, re-fried beans, and salsa.  Should be fun!