Sunday 29 April 2012

A Day in the Life 2

We have three new families coming out to work with KISC this summer. They have been emailing us over the past month or so as they prepare to leave the UK and move abroad for the first time. They have had lots of questions about what life is like here, what they need to bring with them, and what not to bring!

This has got me thinking a bit more again about the ways in which our day to day life here is quite different to "normal" life in the UK. So I thought I would share some of the ways that our life is different.

As I write this it is Sunday evening, so I thought I would go back over our day.

This morning was a good morning, we were woken by the sounds of the church bells going off (instead of by one of our children waking up too early). We live right next to the Catholic church, the only one in Nepal, and they have a call to prayer at 6am and 6pm every day. So this is an unusual sound in Nepal, but it is soon joined by normal Nepali noises, such as people ringing their puja bells, some days we can hear someone blowing a loud trumpet at the local hindu temple, dogs barking, people clearing out their throat and on a quiet morning we can occasionally hear the howling monkeys at Kathmandu zoo which is just 5 mins from our house.

This morning was also a good morning as it is one of the two mornings a week when we have electricity when we wake up. This means we can put the water heater on and have hot showers. We also have a solar water heater and so at this time of year we usually have evening showers once the water has heated up, and as temperatures rise we can sometimes have a hot shower the next morning from that, but it rained yesterday so not today. Our bathroom is full of buckets and plastic bowls as we keep all our shower water and clothes washing water and use it to flush the loo and water flowers as water shortages are a major problem in Nepal (hence all the power cuts as our power is hydroelectric).

Sam also had a bath this morning in a big plastic bowl as we don't have a bath.

We then went of to International church. There are about 250 people there each week from all over the world. It is a very transient community and so as part of the service they always have a "hellos and goodbyes" section where first timers can introduce themselves and those leaving can say their farewells. There are always a lot of hellos and often goodbyes to say as well.

This afternoon we decided to rearrange our lounge as the weather is getting warmer and our lounge has a fan in the ceiling at one end so we wanted to move our sofe to be under it. The problem is our back up light (for when the power is off) is at the other end of the lounge. So we have swap which end of the lounge we sit when the power comes and goes.

Part of life here is also illness. We have to boil and filter all our water. If we are eating fruit and veg without cooking or peeling it then we have to soak it in iodine water for 20mins to kill of any bugs and in monsoon we don't eat salad at all as even that won't kill of all the bugs! So part of our day today was that Sam had a dodgy tummy. Poor boy! But he didn't seem to feel ill with it thankfully. Our first year here we were ill a lot, but the longer we are here the stronger our stomachs become and the less often we get ill. Sam and Mim obviously have strong stomachs too as they are rarely ill which is amazing when you consider that Sam's thumb is rarely out of his mouth and Mim is now crawling and at the stage where everything she finds goes straight in her mouth!

Mim had her bath this evening as we ran out of time before church this morning. But by then the power had gone off again (we currently have about 11hours/day of power cuts) and we have no back up light in the bathroom so she had a candle lit bath.

Tomorrow Dan will be off to work at 7.30 ready for school to start at 8am. Sam has now started pre-school, 3 mornings a week, so I will take him to school for 9am. They do normal pre-school things, but all their songs and a lot of the instructions are done in Nepali as well as English and his friends are from all over the world.

While he is there I will take Mim to do the food shop. This will involve going to the fruit and veg store, the bakery and then to a mini supermarket shop (about the size of a small tesco express!) and load it all into Sam's seat in the buggy to bring home! Sometimes I buy fruit locally from a man walking round the streets with a bike laden with fruit and veg which he is trying to sell. He shouts as he walks the streets to let people know what he has. If I wanted to I could buy carpets this way, get my saucepans repaired, my knives sharpened, my mattress restuffed or get my glass bottles and paper collected for recycling. Everyone has a different call so you know what they are selling or what service the are offering.

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Easter Assembly

Last Friday was the last day of our term at KISC. As has become tradition we ended the term with a whole school Easter Assembly. Every student in the school from the Reception up to the Year 13’s, along with all the staff and several parents came together to celebrate Easter.

Each year our Easter assembly has a theme, in the past these have included “Grace” and “Justice”, but this year the theme was “Why the cross?” Each year group throughout the school, and many of the staff meetings have spent time in the last few weeks considering the question “Why the cross?”.

Then as part of the assembly
(click here for more photos) several year groups got up on stage and performed something to illustrate their thoughts. Year 3 did a song, with of course the obligatory actions, Year 9 wrote their own song which several boys played and the rest of the class sang. Year 8 had an afternoon chat show featuring guests, Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate, Simon Peter and a Pharisee. Year 10 and 11 both did short dramas, Year 11’s being a re-enactment of the last supper discussing what Jesus would be doing next, and more importantly why.

So what did they decide? Well after each segment we got a summary, including actions which built on the findings of each class, these were some of the key points:
  • “Why the cross?” “Because he loves us”
  • “Why the cross?” “To set us free”
  • “Why the cross?” “For Justice and forgiveness”