Day of rest

Yesterday was a day of rest. 

One thing that I started struggling with when we first got here was that there seemed to be a lot of time during which nothing was scheduled. I spoke to Mike about this on the second day. I told him when I was writing my blog posts that it felt like I kept saying that we have a bunch of down time.

He told mew that is a very common feeling and he wasn't surprised that I was feeling that way. As Americans we want to fill our time with a schedule of events and a nailed down itinerary, especially when we are working. Since Mike and I are here working I felt like every day should be well planned out and that we would be accomplishing goals and objectives everyday. Even as I am typing this I am seeing my background in wildfire coming out, goals and objectives. 

Mike assured me that we were accomplishing what we came here to do. Life is much more relational here then at home. At home we judge success by what we did, here we judge success by the relationships we forge and the friendships we make. 

With that being said, on Saturday when we were at church I met an Aussie who has been in Nepal for 16 years. We got to talking about what I do and he pointed me in the direction of a firehouse not to far from the hotel we are staying at. So yesterday I set off on an adventure to find this firehouse on my own. I have an app that uses georeferenced PDF maps with the internal GPS. The Aussie gave me some good Intel while looking at the map of Kathmandu and I was able to find the firehouse right away. 

When I was packing I threw in some patches from the Chequamegon - Nicolet National Forest with the intention of being able to trade with some other firefighters. 

When I arrived at the firehouse I found that no one there spoke any English. I was able to get my message of wanting to trade patches across though and I now have a Nepali fire patch. 

I also got some pictures of their equipment. 

These last three pictures are of an old truck they no longer use.