Electricity

In our living room alone we have 3 different outlet plug types; our power goes off at least once a day, often two or three, for between 30 minutes to a couple hours (and this will only increase as winter approaches); there is a machine on top of our fridge that I'm not quite sure what it does except sometimes it keeps the fridge on, and sometimes it turns it off; and in between our living room and guest room there is a big battery-like contraption.

Needless to say electricity in Kathmandu is not as easy as turning on a switch.  Because of limited power we experience load-shedding, which is the (somewhat) systematic way of conserving energy.  Each district is on a schedule and your power is shut off according to that schedule (not always a perfect system however).  Our school has supplied us with an inverter, basically a battery back-up for our house, allowing us to turn on the lights in the room we are in and run small bits of electricity like our laptops through specially configured outlets.  This means big things, like oh, say a fridge or our electric water heater (which is only hooked up to our shower by the way, not the rest of the house), do not work.

We are learning to work within this system, and improving on what we have (like converting the electric water heater to gas so we don't have to have cold showers all winter!).