After Chicago I headed back to the easy flight to Denver and spent some time in Boulder. I'd thought I had my training plan set months earlier but due to site considerations and participant levels it had been in a state of continual fluctuation. So it left with me with a month free in June, which now, looking back on it, I have no idea how in the world I possibly could have done without!!! So I spent some more time hanging out with my Nepali family as the season started warming up and I could sneak away to the nearby parks to read.
The exciting news was that now Vidya's parents and sister were visiting the Un
ited States for the first time ever. It was a busy household and I offered to change my plans to give them more family time but they would hear nothing of it. Unlike many homes you'd find in the US, in places like Nepal, the more the merrier, and welcoming and generosity are the order of the day! So I ended up staying on floor mats in their newly converted yoga studio. The parents didn't speak a word of English and got up early in the morning to garden and take their morning constitution. Here is a picture of them working in the garden together. (Even though I was only in Boulder as the summer was approaching, it was as deep into summer as I'd ever seen their garden, and so it was neat to see it starting to really grow and blossom.)
They watched Bollywood movies as well as unfamiliar American programs. It sudden
ly seemed quite important to me to learn a few Nepali phrases so I could converse with them around the house, so I took in some simple greetings and responses and amused everyone by learning some rather odd idioms and expressions that I'd always look for opportune times to use. Oh, and the food! That was great. Every lunch had fresh Nepali food cooked up, actually it was more reflective of their particular tribe than Nepal in general (which is really more of a tribal country like Afghanistan from what I understand). They'd put 15 cups of different beans into a crockpot, through in several kinds of spics and a whole lot of ghee, and a wonderfully tasting curry would come out the other end.
We went on some nice hikes around Boulder as well... the nature that exists here is quite nice, it sometimes feels like there are just a few developments living with nature all around (and you can thank arcane zoning regulations for that!) Sometimes Aama would come with us as well and we'd stop as Paul did some climbing.
My mom came for another visit, and we took the Celestial Seasonings tour in their factory, and then went to the nearby Western Museum of Art. Here are some fun pictures we had being silly around their outdoor artwork...They were also interested in making it to a baseball game, but by the time we talked about it the local Rockies team were playing road games. The only way they'd be playing when I arrived back in Boulder in October was if they made it to the World Series, and the Colorado Rockies, fat chance of that!!!
We did, however, get to go to the Bolder Boulder race on Memorial Day, where both Sharmila and Vidya walked the race. I went with Ba-Aama (as their parents are called, as a single entity) to the giant University of Colorado football stadium and we watched as the serious and the non-serious runners finished the race, followed by patriotic song, F-16 flyovers, and parachuting members of the military with giant American flags coming down on the field. I could only imagine how it must have seemed to a Nepali couple in their 60s that had rarely left the suburbs of Kathmandu!
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