As Day Fades to Night

As I sat on the rooftop of our home away from home, my mind wandered into the fading light as day slowly turned to night. I began to think about the differences that I’ve experienced here in Khahare, a small village on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. My first impressions here were filled with overwhelming capacity as I inhaled the burning plastic of the streets, paid witness to the crumbling homes of the old Newari villages and struggled to see the mountains beyond the thick, dense clouds of smog. “This doesn’t seem like the place I’d want to spend a significant amount of time in,” I thought to myself. My heart was pounding, my head was aching from the fumes and my mind was spewing thoughts of regret. In a short 3 weeks, these feelings have been suppressed by even more powerful ones; emotions of selflessness, of kindness and the importance of having an open heart and an open mind. The best way to describe this transformation is to simply state that Nepal is a dirty country, occupied by the most beautiful people.

We’ve actively engaged ourselves within the community, spending time with the children and the elders – experiencing life from a new perspective. Most Nepali’s live on less than two dollars a day. They occupy dismal structures, with no heat in the winter. Most don’t own vehicles, and some take a commute walking for hours up some of the most treacherous terrain, challenging enough to put me laying flat on my back gasping for air. Sanitary bathrooms are one in a million, rivers are filled to the brim with garbage and human feces and the smell of this place alone is enough to send people packing. You’re probably thinking, “how can anyone live this way,” or, “how can you be happy living like this?” I’ve had the same questions, but the one thing that convinces me that these inquiries are of no importance are the smiles that are contagious here. Their complacency radiates from their surroundings, and a sense of community is ever present around each bend in the deteriorating road. Community is the mud that holds the walls of their homes together. Community is what they have and community is what they thrive off of.

During our time here we’ve been getting our hands dirty cleaning garbage and building a bus shelter for the community; we’ve been getting our minds dirty brainstorming projects based on NEEDS, and not WANTS. But most importantly we’ve spent time getting to know members of the village. We’ve keyed in on what it is that they feel is necessary for a healthy community and a positive lifestyle. During a random survey of needs, it was shocking to see how many of them all wanted the same things: a shelter from the rain, a bridge that doesn’t flood, a bathroom and most importantly a clean village. Even more shocking was the fact that not one voice emerged to do something about it after all these years. That’s where we come in. We’re merely a catalyst for the reaction; every project we start is shortly taken over by community members wanting to make a difference. We teach what we know – pass on the techniques – and let others empower themselves to make the difference.

As I laid on the roof and stared into the sky I began to think.. Day doesn’t turn to night in the blink of an eye. It’s a gradual change. As the sun sets and the moon rises it makes visible one star, followed by the next, and the next, and the next, until eventually the entire night sky is glimmering with thousands. I see our role here as the moon – to give birth to one shining star after another until eventually there are thousands of stars working as a team to illuminate the darkness.

Cheers to being a catalyst for change.

For The Kind Hearted Only

I've been thinking about how best to describe my time here in Nepal however my travelmate, Lowell, did such a phenominal job that i thought it appropriate to simply repost his insights. Thanks lowell, and cheers everyone!  Greetings all you friends and loved ones. Ian and I have been here for just a handful of days, but already our hearts have been touched in innumerable ways. Nepal is a land of striking natural beauty. Steep hills rise from the valley, clad with a beautiful cloth of living greenery. The forest here gives life to a massive range of plant types, from cactus trees that must have walked here from some far off desert, to wild bananas that climbed up from the hot and fertile lowlands. Bamboo groves cluster together like old friends next to the bodhi trees which sheltered Buddha as he rose to enlightenment. Cedars and pines crown the tops of the ridges and the deep canyons are filled with ferns and mosses soaking their life from the cool moisture of the streams. People have been living and farming here for more than 10,000 years, and as one descends from the tops of the hills the forest slowly gives way to the angular geometry of terraces, houses and temples. Entire mountain sides and valleys have been shaped into grand steps of agriculture. Holding water during the dry season so that the rice, wheat, barley, and vegetables can flourish all year round. Right now is the season for growing mustard and the land is humming and overflowing with the rich yellow of their flowering. Goats, pigs, sheep, cows, chickens, and water buffalo roam around every corner, and in front of almost every house. safe under the watchful eye of some old man reclining on his porch. Great Buddhist monasteries rise out of the trees, their golden roofs proclaiming the glory of their teachings for all to see. whilst Hindu temples, thousands of years old are filled with a reverent fervor and vibrancy that we never see in America. Houses made of brick and local stone, washed red, white and tan, cluster along the roads and k creep up the mountains along precipitous paths.       Yet against this most beautiful of backgrounds, Nepal is a place of striking and sometimes appalling contradictions. people here are so happy and content it seems, and yet they live in object poverty. Traditionally containers were all made from natural materials. Bowls made from banana leaves sewn together with threads of bamboo for example. And so the habit has always been to simple throw ones waste on the ground and let it rot, or pile it up and burn it. Well now that has all changed, every single container is made of plastic. And yet the peoples habits have not changed one bit. They still just throw everything on the ground not really bothering to pick it up, and if the do decide to tidy it up, they generally just put it in a giant oil drum and burn it. No morning here is free from the smell of burning plastic. Trash piles up in every nook and cranny. The rivers are gray and bubble with black goo, their sediment layers composed of alternating levels of silt and garbage. It makes a heavy heart to see these wonderful people treating the land, which is so literally the source of all their life and livelihood, with such indifference and disrespect. They poison their fields, they poison their rivers, and they poison themselves. They think we joke when we tell them that plastic will give them cancer.      But enough about the sad parts, because Nepal is also a place which inspires me with great hope for the future. The organization we are staying with, KRMEF (Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation), has for the past month hosted a group of young adults from a school in Sweden called the Youth Initiative Program (YIP). The first couple weeks they were here they did the hard work of demolishing an old building on the site where we shall be building the new orphanage. During their last week here however they engaged the community in a wonderful series of exercise called the oasis game. The game is intended to be a structure within which a community is encouraged to examine their situation, identify problems, needs and dreams, and then come together as a team to make these dreams reality. To make a long story short, by thursday, the day Ian and I arrived. the villagers were cleaning up trash around the community center, planting gardens, and making trash bins and benches. Right where the bus stops in the village is an open area that was literally full of trash. I dont think it had every been cleaned except for the seasonal floods that might wash some of it down into the river. Plastic bags, bottles, shoes, clothes, cups, plates, silverware, old toothpaste containers, you name it, it was laying there. But on Saturday morning a different kind of flood came along. A flood of people. There must have been more than forty people who came together to clean things up and make the place look nice. Of course as i mentioned Nepali garbage pickup involves burning, and the plume of garbage smoke was miles high. Soon the villagers turned their attention to the drainage ditch running paralel to the field. All the trash in there, and there was quite a lot, was to wet to burn. The solution; get a couple water trucks and wash it all down into the stream. It was pretty horendous watching the stream of sludge and garbage go pouring off the end of the ditch into the gully, but it was also very inspiring to see all these people coming together and getting excited about cleaning up their community. Everyone was cheering and smiling and working together to solve a problem that had quite literally never been addressed before. Suddenly from nowhere all these pieces of cardboard appeared with slogans on them like "dont use plastic!" and "clean up our community!". The kids fashioned these into signs with sticks of bamboo and next thing you know two adults were leading an army little ones up and down the street chanting and marching. Singing out their cause for everyone to see. After this i didnt think the day could get much better, but boy was i wrong.     That night the YIPies organized a celebration in honor of all the work people had done throughout the week. There was a really amazing Nepali band, with all sorts of interesting instruments and sounds, not to  mention a really loud sound system. They began to play, and people began to trickle in to watch, but at first everyone just stood there stone faced, arms crossed, watching the spectacle. After the second song, two young girls got up and danced quite beautifully in front of everyone. After a couple songs with just them dancing, a bunch of us westerners decided to get up there too and thats when things started to get really fun. Once we got up, then all the kids got up there too. you can imagine a literal horde of children with us towering above them trying our best to dance in the Nepali way but just probably looking to the locals like we were doing some crazy gringo dance. But regardless. by this point pretty much everyone was smiling. after a short break and some speeches from the community leaders and the westerners, The YIPies got the whole entire village to join in a giant dance. We all got in a huge circle holding hands and did a hilarious and awesome shuffling turning dance. not a single face wasn't split open with laughter. It was a beautiful thing to see and be a part of. After the community dance finished lots more people joined us up at the front dancing. The kids were fighting over who would get to dance with us and complements flew with reckless abandon. No matter how tired i got i was simply not allowed to stop, break away from one group of eager children and another would instantly agglomerate around you. Oh what a glorious torture. It was absolutely one of the best days of my entire life. So much love, so much happiness. It doesnt matter whether you speak someones language, Love, laughter and dancing speak to everyone's heart, and remind us that despite the fact that these people live half a world away from us, and lead totally different lives, they are our brethren just as surely as our own flesh and blood. Namaste, Lowell and Ian

Creating New Meaning

Thursday, January 19th. My last day at Cannon Design and my final night in our 400 square foot apartment. There was a sense of emptiness that rested within each of the spaces and there was certainly a hole that was being drilled in my heart knowing that i'd be saying goodbye to both of them. It's an unsettling emotion when you're about to leave a place. It's almost as if someone knocks on the comprehension compartment of your brain and just says, "WAKE UP". Suddenly, just moments before you leave, a world of understanding presents itself to you. Insight finally inserts itself in to the smallest moments of your perception and you begin to understand; to acknowledge what creates a place.

My friends, my co-workers, my serbian room-mate - these are what created a place for me in NYC. And unfortunately, these are the people where i fell victim to oversight. I was always observing my built environment and the spaces that NYC has created but I never thought deeply about the people that surrounded me. I spent my time exploring the urban environment/demographic and saw my friends as an amazing benefit to my experience. But the more I think about it, it was my friends that were the core of my experience.. not the city. They were the ones that created meaning in particular spaces. I sit here in Washington DC, missing my friends and family in NYC but one thing has changed: I've begun to meet new people, and i've begun to create new meanings. 

Our purpose here in DC, the way we saw it, was to meet the architect that we would be working with in Nepal and also meet the founder of the KRMEF (Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation), which is the organization well be working with while we are abroad. The architect - Bill Hutchins, and the founder - Krishna Gurung, are both incredible people. Full of energy and altruistic minds, they both have visions of what a happy and meaningful life entails. It only took a matter of minutes to comprehend that it wasn't just a meet and greet, but these were to be two very important people in my life that are going to be responsible for the creation of a whole new world of meaning for me. 

My insight into the past couple of days tells me a few things. First: never neglect what you have, while searching for the next step. Second: Know that the people you encounter in spaces create your understanding of that place. And third: Never be scared of leaving behind your friends, because new people will always come along to fill that missing void in your heart. 

Cheers to people.

The Scale of Comprehension

At what point do you move beyond the big picture and really begin to analyze the small stuff? When do you move from understanding the macro and search for the micro? In order to understand the larger concepts in life, you really have to penetrate the paths that lead there. You have to sweat the small stuff.

One of the biggest influences on your scale of comprehension is routine. Routine isn't a word that can be generalized, so i'm going to use it in the context of a work routine: Wake up. Shower. Get Dressed. Wallet, Keys, Cellphone - Check. Out the door. Walk three blocks. Stick your head down the tunnel, yup the train is coming. Enter the train, leave the train. Walk 5 blocks. Revolving door, Elevator. Work. Lunch. 5:30, why am is till here? Walk and don't look back. Subway. Walk and don't look up. Home. 

So what effect does this have on you; when your mind tells you that this happens every day, that it isn't important? You've seen it a million times, its no longer unique. How does that effect the way that we behave and the way that we think? For me, it's increased my pace of life. Time moves faster when I always have somewhere to be. Time moves faster when I know what's going to happen next. Time moves faster when I don't have time to observe. Routine has chained me from seeing the small things. 

In order for me to see this, to question this and to seek understanding in this i only did one thing. I changed my routine. I ate a different breakfast, took a new route to work and ate lunch at a different time. I wore a new combination of clothes i haven't tried before and I walked out of the way in order to get to where i needed to be. And what happened when all this changed? I walked slower. I observed more. Things felt new again. I appreciated the creak that the door made when i closed it behind me. I noticed the taste of the air from the lobby to the street and felt the cracks in the concrete when i stepped on them. The cold touch of the metal handrail felt refreshing and the puddle at the bottom of the stairs sent small ripples as i stepped in it.  Changing small yet almost always unnoticeable habits always tends to open your vision to new things and to new understandings.

I chose to write about this today because I'm one week away from leaving NYC and these small things have begun to become more noticeable. Everyday I find myself seeing farther in to the object upon which i was gazing the day before. I know I'm leaving and I'm soaking it all in. But really, I'm trying to make up for my neglect. I did this when I moved out of my home and left for college, and when i graduated college and left for New York City. I couldn't see how special things really were until I was about to leave. I may be a few days late on this one, but i'm finally laying out my new years resolution:

To walk slower in all aspects of life. To take the time to understand the small things that make a place so special. And to never let routine push life faster than you want it to move. 

Cheers to slowing down and always being on the move.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

Home is a question that I've constantly searched for the answer. But the question is, have I found it? Honestly, I don't think i ever can. The reason why: we're always making new homes for ourselves. We're always searching for people that understand us, that appreciate and share common ambitions with us. We're always searching for comfort in the smallest nooks and crannies of life. I don't believe that home is a physical, objective place. I think we make our homes out of subjectivity; our feelings and opinions are deeply rooted in the way that we we're raised. Is it fair to say then that life is a constant search to find home again? To find those feelings of comfort in the people that surround us, in the habitats that we establish for ourselves and the ambitions that drive our will to move forward?

I've been in Rochester for 12 days now, away from the pressures of NYC and away from a demographic of people letting money drive their ambitions. My friends from high school, my family and all around familiar faces - they all hold positive ambitions here. Sure, we're all worried about money but it's not letting anyone change who they want to be and what they want to accomplish. Sharing common thoughts with my close friends, talking about our search in post-grad experiences, trying to figure out our destinations. These are things that show me that we're all in the same place and that we all share common ambitions. These are friends that I cannot replace and i know I'll spend my life searching for. I've got a solution though: never let go of these people. They are the ones that know you the best, and each one holds a little piece of home within them.

My childhood room.. filled with small articles of my past. The toys that i was raised on - lincoln logs, wood blocks and legos to name a few. Old clothes, 1st generation Ipods, a door full of skateboard stickers and a trumpet. It's all memorabilia that reminds me of who I was and what I've become. It shows me how much our idea's of comfort change throughout our lives and how our passions change with them. Being in this room makes me understand that the comfort of home can be found with our ambitions. Home will always be with us; home will always be embedded in our passions and our goals. We just need a little reminder now and then to show us that it's there.

So here i am, ready to walk out of the door and head back to NYC and I can't help but think that i'm leaving so much behind. These friends, this comfort.. it's all staying here as i depart. But one thing will change: my sense of what home really is. I know it will be with me; It's in my passions, my feelings and my opinions. It will be here when i establish new comforts and search for new friends. As I was saying goodbye this morning to a really great friend I said, "I've never had a harder time walking out of my front door" and she responded, "Which can only make walking back through it, whenever that may be, so much better."

Cheers to friends and family, opinions and feelings and ambitions. Cheers to home.

Often times we neglect the things that we appreciate the most. They become so normative to us that we fail to understand how lucky we truly are to have them. The people in our life that have made us who we are: family, friends, coworkers and even the complete stranger. Our material goods that provide us comfort: the clothes we wear, the bed we sleep in, the plates we eat from, the cars we drive. But most importantly, the spaces that we inhabit - the places that shape reaction to environment: Our homes, our cities, the streets we walk on and the grass we touch. These are just a few things that become normal to us; they're an expected normality until we experience life without them. 

There are people that stay in their comfort zone and experience life in normality and routine and there are those that push their limits and find joy by stepping out of their comfort zone. I'm an experience seeker, always looking for new ways to cross blurry lines of what i believe to be physically and mentally capable of. Crossing those lines opens vision to things that go unseen in routine. It makes me appreciate the people in my life, the materials that i possess and the spaces that i inhabit. 

My need for new experiences has brought me to quit my corporate job and find my way over to Nepal. I've seen how comfortable people get in their material lifestyles, I've watched money get tossed around with no weight and I've experienced a lifestyle in which everything I wanted was immediately available. That's Manhattan for you. I'm not claiming that this lifestyle is wrong but sometimes it can be corrupt; corrupt to the mind, the body and the soul. I've made this lifestyle for myself because i thought it was what i wanted but when i got here i realized that these things don't bring satisfaction.. they don't give me the sense of fulfillment that I've been seeking. All they've done is made me realize how fake things can be and how easy it is to mask morals with perceived success. I'm tired of pretending that I'm happy here, I need to cross a new boundary.

I want to experience another side of life - one with minimal material value. A side that doesn't require you to put yourself first and be willing to throw anyone under the bus in order to achieve success. A side where people are concerned about others more than themselves. I'm incredibly grateful for what I've been given in my life, and it's necessary that i not only give back but truly understand what it's like to not have the luxuries of what we see as normality. 

I'm ready to use my degree in architecture for something more than profit.I'm ready to really make an impact in this world. It's amazing what the built environment provides: A shelter from the rain, a warm place in winter, a barrier from the wind and a place to shade yourself from the summer sun. A playground for children to enjoy themselves, a school where they can learn and a home where they can be comfortable. These are the things that we appreciate the most, but we neglect most often. These are the things that matter most and these are the things that i want to provide to the world. 

Cheers to comprehending oversight.