King "Chip" Beach III

With wife Betsy Becker and son King "Skip" Beach IV

Chip	Email: kdbeach@msu.edu  Transitions Research Group (TRG) Office: 441 Erickson Hall Program in Learning, Technology, and Culture Voice: 517-355-6684 College of Education Fax: 517-353-6393 Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48824 Email: kdbeach@msu.edu Web: www.msu.edu/user/kdbeach/
Betsy Becker		"Skip" King Beach IV
Posting was in Gumi, Surkhet District (south of Birendranagar) Biographical details:  I am a faculty member at Michigan State University where I teach in a doctoral program and do research on learning and development as it relates to culture, particularly how culture does (or does not) organize opportunities for learning as people move between schools and other settings, e.g. families, communities, workplaces. Betsy is in a neighboring doctoral program where she teaches statistics and does methodological work in meta analysis (grouping and statistically analyzing studies done by others as if they are one big study). You can tell we are academics from the long-winded explanations required to explain what it is that we do! My son is King IV, though he mercifully goes by Skip. Betsy is his step mom. Skip is 16, a junior in high school, and is into graffiti art, aggressive skating, and has green hair. He is vacillating between pursuing college studies in zoology, architecture, or applied art. I have managed to get back to Nepal many times since N/60 with USAID, UNDP, and Fulbright. Most recently, Skip and I spent a month in Nepal visiting friends and family in Kathmandu and in Gumi, my village in Surkhet District. It was the first trip to Nepal in a long time that was not work-related. It was wonderful to just hang out in the village with my son, drink some rakshi, fish the Bheri River with nets during the monsoon, and meet my former students' and their families. Skip wants to go back (PCV in the making?). One change that I sensed in Gumi is quite recent--a loss of a sense of security. Maoist rebels had come out of the surrounding hills in force the week before our visit and trashed Gumi's only bank. Another was that while I saw myself as middle-aged, my same-aged family members and friends saw themselves as the elders of the village. Yet another change is that Skip has begun an email correspondence with the son of one of my best friends from Gumi. The son is studying in Kathmandu (no, Gumi does not yet have email).
Chip passes his bar exam with the help of friends and Khukhri Rum Punch