Here I was thinking I had it good. My family has a refrigerator, which maybe for KTM is not that big of a deal, but for me it is. I am still getting used to the more expensive prices and travel costs compared to the terai where I was before. It is hotter there and almost no one has a fridge. So they have a fridge and I buy bread. I tell them that if I keep the bread in the refrigerator it lasts longer. I do this in America and that way a small loaf will last all week without going bad. I explained this logic to them the day I bought the bread. So they put the bread in the refrigerator for me and made me happy.

This past weekend it was hot! I was looking for some pepper at the store and I saw ice cream!! Very excited because it only cost 85 rupees ($1.20). That night my Nepali bhahini (younger sister) told me that maybe we should eat the ice cream tonight, because when they turn off the fridge it will melt. Hhmm. You turn off the fridge at night? So we had the ice cream that evening, it had already melted a little because they had turned off the fridge a little bit before. The ice cream was still delicious.

The next day my bread was not. It had gone moldy – which is what happens when you turn the refrigerator off at night. Funny thing is that when I explained my logic as to why I keep the bread in the fridge no one bothered to tell me they turn it off at night. Oh, well, I will have to eat my bread faster now.

They are very happy with their refrigerator, saying that they have had it is a Japanese refrigerator and they have had it for over 20 years and it still works very well. I now wonder if the fridge really does work well? If they turn it off every night then they don’t really allow it to work continuously, therefore it never really gets cold inside. By turning it off every night they may be preserving their fridge, and it really does work very well. The other option is they don’t keep it on long enough to know that it does not work very well anymore. When winter comes I am sure they do not use it because it would be cold enough in KTM to keep things cool outside. In the winter do they put things inside the fridge to keep them from getting too cold?