Sirubari, Lamjung

This morning started out somewhat differently, there were two engineers (presumably from the government) who came by the house this morning to inspect the damage from the 2015 earthquake. Apparently this is the first time that they've been up to the village, almost 2 years later! They took a number of photos and for the first time I looked closely at the house I'm staying at while walking through with them. Because, why not. There's a fair amount of shear damage at the corners of the buildings and one portion of the building separated a bit, but to my eye it doesn't look too too bad. But, of course, I'm not an expert and have zero experience with this type of construction. Have I mentioned before that the construction is a clay-concrete type for the main walls? There are some wood posts as well and the floors and food are timber as well. Corrugated metal roofs and of course no insulation, but the mass walls do a good job of regulating the temperature. It's dark now but I'll see if I've taken any photos I can post!

At school today I felt very productive but also experienced some of the frustration I imagine the locals must feel somewhat regularly. I spent the entire day in the computer lab, getting things working smoothly. Originally there were 3 working computers and now there are 5 maybe 6! We'll test the 6th one tomorrow if the power has come back on... That's the frustrating part. The power went off before lunch and didn't come back on all day, still isn't on in fact and it's almost dinner time. Apparently sometimes the power will be out for weeks without warning.. I expected the outage when the storm came a few days ago but today has been perfectly calm and clear! No indication of what caused it. So anyway, with the help of Kevin and Jason I was able to figure out how to install programs on various computers by copying files from one computer without internet or install disks. I was also able to adjust a few settings that until previously they had just dealt with, things like resolution, incorrect drivers, etc. The two computers that we for sure fixed had corrupted memory so we swapped things around until they worked. One of them still requires a registry edit before it works perfectly and the other insists it needs a windows service pack installed, which we don't have, but otherwise success. The 6th computer which we think will work was just a matter of switching out the power supply boxes. I have to say I've learned a lot about hardware today that I didn't know before. Surprised at how well things went... I also went through and tested a number of different mice, keyboards, speakers, power cords etc, to see if they're still working. Though that became tough to do as the power was out. Still lots left to do to get things running smoothly including more software installations and finding mice and keyboards for two of the computers that are working. There are so many broken accessories here it makes me a bit sad. They definitely need all the help they can get when it comes to getting hardware. It's good that they have such a great computer teacher! He doesn't give himself enough credit, but he's quite skilled with computers and ingenious in getting things to work. I was just lucky to be raised on computers...

As I write this the power is still out and it's getting dark. For the first time I can't see lights across the valley, and there's no radio playing from down in the village below. I have a power bank to keep my phone charged, but I haven't a clue how full it is lol. I'm perfectly content if the phone does die though! The only thing I really need it for is writing these posts, taking pictures, reading my book, calling home.... You know ;) But, there are worse things than being disconnected I'm finding. Partly thinking it might be a good thing to completely disconnect for the evening.. Might just go put it away right now :)Read more