namaste! meero nam kristin ho!

hello!  my name is kristin!

and i am in love with the nepali culture!  

i want to give you a brief background on nepali refugees.  these people are from bhutan and lived in bhutan until the early 1990's when they were forced out because they are of nepali descent.  they speak nepali, dress nepali, look nepali, breathe nepali.  so since then, they have been living in refugee camps in nepal.  the last 18 years.  eighteen years. 

but the UN is resettling this people in different countries, and i am so very blessed to be able to enter into their lives at this point of the story.  

you would never have guessed, i'm sure, but high point, nc has a fairly large bhutanese population.  and they are a community people, and well, this past weekend they had one of their community "events".  

some of my bhutanese friends dressed me up in a sari (!) and it was beautiful - i felt beautiful. 

 

then we headed over and spent the evening with about 50 other bhutanese refugees, eating and talking and dancing and laughing.  

now i was most embarrassed when i was called out over the sound system to dance in front of a very large audience.  i won't show you a video of that - you can thank me in my comments - but i will show you a video of someone else dancing.  it's quite amazing...!

and here's another one, if you're still interested... 

the bhutanese are really a beautiful people, inside and out.  i love getting to know more about nepali everything.  and one last picture before i end this post.  here is a photo of the first bhutanese family i met when i started working at world relief a year ago.  the bhandaris....  lovely :)