We're not in Seattle anymore

I know I promised a blog about our hike up to Taktsang-that will follow shortly; but I just had to write about our first successful trash pick-up experience. When we moved into our new "cottage" I asked about where we put our garbage. Our very nice landlady said, "Oh, they will come by and you just take it out." Okay, I thought-when, what time, what if we aren't here? I asked what day and Ugyen said, "Oh, I don't know. They alternate days. They will honk when they arrive." So, after two days and quite a lot of garbage from our packing and Henry's x-box wrappings, I wondered about the garbage. The next morning (extremely early) I heard some honking. Later that morning, I figured that the honking must have been the garbage truck. That was three days ago-still lots of garbage. No trash can, no bags-just random boxes with refuse. So, this morning at 6:00 am I heard honking off in the distance. I looked out the window and saw a neighbor girl waiting at the road with a large bag of trash. I hurriedly gathered all of our boxes, emptied trash containers into our "compost" and piled about twenty empty plastic bottles into two cardboard boxes. Emma and I took our boxes out into a light mist and waited with our two neighbors. Eventually, we saw the truck back up into our little dead end spot. I watched as neighbors down the street handed their containers; the garbage collectors empty whatever was handed and then returned to the person on the street. Finally our turn arrived-we handed the person in the back of the truck our two boxes (we actually had three boxes but one was so collapsed that we combined it with another). The trash pick up person dumped out all three boxes and then cleaned them out and handed them back to us. I looked at the one box with the giant hole and the grease marks from our macaroni and cheese night and handed it back to him. He gave me that bobble of the head and took it after a long pause. I wonder what he thought I could do with the box. And we're not talking strong cardboard-we're talking about that really soft cardboard that practically melts when damp. All that compost and all those plastic bottles. A guilty conscience for a Seattleite. At least we have our cardboard to reuse.