Monday 22 October 2007

Dates

Since we last wrote not a lot has changed for us. We are now well into the course at Birmingham and have settled into assignments and lectures again as if it'd only been 5 minutes since we were last studying. Although we do have much more recent experience than many of those studying with us.

However the future is now starting to look much clearer. About 2 weeks ago a couple who teach at the school in Kathmandu we will be teaching at came to the college and we were able to have quite a long chat and ask some of the many questions that have been on our minds. We found out many things we didn't know, for example Kathmandu is on a fault line and is quite a high earthquake risk! We will be teaching mostly American and Korean children, even though the school is English and uses an English curriculum.

More concerning is the news that the school has been given until the 20th December to vacate the premises it is currently in. It has only been there 2 years having been kicked out of the last place in similar circumstances. Obviously this has direct consequences for us as when we arrive in January we have no idea where the school will be, or even if it will have a new premises. If they find nowhere else then they will use hotels in the meantime, but obviously it is a big concern for those at the school at the minute.

We have also been contacted directly by the school and have organised our language and orientation training. This will begin on Monday 14th January, and will take 2 months. Part of it will involve living with a local Nepali family for a few days to give us the opportunity of seeing how they live and practising our language. We are quite nervous about this although it should be a great experience.

As a result we have also got a provisional date for leaving the country. It looks like we will be going out on the 8th January, although this hasn't been confirmed yet. It should be hectic few weeks, with Christmas, New Year, our commissioning service in Liverpool on the 6th of January, then flying out, starting language training, and in amongst all that celebrating Dan's birthday!

A really positive aspect of life in Birmingham is that 2 other couples who are training with us will also be going to Nepal, and one of these will be in Kathmandu. Although they won't be teaching it will be great to have another couple who we already consider friends moving there with us.

The final thing for now, is that as part of our work with BMS we have to publish a regular prayer/newsletter. We are putting together a list of people to receive this at the moment. If you would like to be on the list then please let us know.

If you want to publish comments or responses then feel free, if you don't have a google account then just use the anonymous option and sign your name on the message you write (it won't appear straight away as we have to authorise it!).

Dan and Becky.