Daedalian Adventures

The road ahead is rarely straight…

By Lynelle Barrett

Summer in the Village

It is the vakantieperiode (vacation time) in the Netherlands. The schools are closed for 6 weeks, rush hour on the trains is less rushed, offices are running on skeleton crews and folks have taken their kids and caravans off to campgrounds in places like Germany, France or Sweden. Most of my students have planned their courses to be finished in July, so they can go on holiday with no homework and a clear conscience. After months of teaching, preparing lessons, writing reports and reviewing homework, my schedule has finally lightened up. Ahhh…August.

I’m still in town, though. I will be spending 6 weeks in Nepal teaching English as a volunteer, but I am not leaving until mid-September. Summer is monsoon season in Nepal. But we’ve got plenty to do this month to get ready for the big adventure. We have to go to the Nepali consulate in Amsterdam for visas, the doctor for a series of shots and the dentist for a check-up. I am shopping for a travel pack (a fancy hybrid of a backpack and a suitcase - the shoulder straps fit in a compartment for easy check-in on the plane), water filter, first aid kit (with sterile needles, just in case), hiking shoes (the old pair was so bad, I couldn’t even donate them to Amnesty) and good walking sandals.

My husband and I are fundraising for the organization we plan to work with, Volunteers Initiative Nepal (VIN). We are hoping to take a healthy donation with us to support some of their projects. My school has donated a huge pile of English grammar and vocabulary books from the school library and some of my colleagues have brought in children’s books. VIN is trying to get used laptop computers donated so teachers can use them to research teaching materials and the kids can learn some basic computer skills (computers and the internet are new and amazing to many Nepalese). My husband’s colleagues are being very generous. Everybody seems to want to help and it feels really good to have so much support. Several of my friends have admitted that they would rather give a bit of cash than go live in an impoverished village with no toilets for 6 weeks, but they think it’s cool that I am willing to do it.

Meanwhile, in July we had an Italian mini-holiday. On a Friday, we flew to Milan to visit our friend Alex. While she was at work, we spent the afternoon in a museum and doing a bit of shopping. Since Milan is a fashion capital, I think you may actually be required by law to go shopping. But I could be wrong. Then we met Alex for drinks. The display of food served at cocktail hour in Milan is amazing. Dozens of dishes with bite-size snacks cover the bar: pizza, artichokes, olives, tiny sandwiches with prosciutto or crab salad, sautéed mushrooms, grilled zucchini or aubergine, fried potatoes, tiny savory pastries, chorizo, rice or pasta salad, battered and fried squash blossoms. Since the Milanese don’t go to dinner until late in the evening, these snacks keep everyone from starving until then. At dinner, more plates of free food started to arrive before we even ordered our meals. By the time the main course was served, we could barely eat any more which was really a shame. Italy makes you wish you had eight stomachs like a cow.

On Saturday we drove to Verona (the setting for Romeo and Juliet) to meet my friend, Ilaria, who took the train up from Rome. We wandered around Verona, checked out Juliet’s balcony and Juliet’s tomb (which is funny because Juliet is a fictitious character). The museum above the tomb had a collection of Roman amphorae, ancient clay vessels used to store and transport things like olive oil and wine. Ilaria is from the south of Italy and she said that you find these all the time in the sea down south. Her family uses pieces of amphorae to hold open the doors! It’s always interesting what people in other cultures take for granted. When I lived in America, I used to take 24-hour grocery stores and shopping malls open until 9pm for granted.

Verona is known for its summer opera performances in the Roman amphitheatre and we had tickets to see “The Barber of Seville”. It was pretty darn amazing to sit in a Roman theatre watching opera, even though it was sticky hot and they packed us in like sardines. The folks in the know (Italian folks) came equipped with groceries and wine. Where they put the sacks of food in the crowded rows of stone seats, I’ll never know. On Sunday we drove back to Milan with a stop in Bergamo. Another charming Italian village, another cathedral, more cocktail snacks. We took back some of the little dome-shaped cakes that Bergamo is famous for. I think they are called marzipan-sugar-bomb-cakes but I’m not really sure. They tasted good, so I guess that’s what counts. We all had such a good time together that we are planning to vacation with Ilaria next summer all the way south in Calabria, down by the sea. I really don’t think it’s too far to travel to get a doorstop.

Donations to Volunteers Initiative Nepal are welcome! You can make a donation using PayPal on the VIN website.

Volunteers Initiative Nepal

http://www.volunteeringnepal.org/index.php