We passed!

This last week saw the visit of the inspection team from America who came to accredit KISC. The 2 inspectors were both American ladies who live & work in the middle east. Unfortunately for them the weather turned last weekend and this week has been a case of getting the jumpers and fleeces out of the cupboards ready for our winter.

They spent most of their time at KISC in meetings discussing everything that goes on with staff and students and proved to be very perceptive and asked questions that really challenged and hopefully will help us in the future. Their conclusion was that we more than deserved to pass. In fact one of the inspectors said it was one of the best schools she'd ever visited. She couldn't believe that we do all we do on the budget we have, as we are the poor neighbours compared to the other two international schools in the valley.

One big benefit of winter drawing in here is the views. For most of the year since we've arrived the mountains have been hiding away behind smog and clouds. But with the cooler weather they are really showing their beauty. So we are enjoying the ride to and from school at the moment with the spectacular views.

Life otherwise is carrying on as usual here. Just 3 weeks left until the Christmas holidays, hard to believe that here when there is no sign of anything Christmassy anywhere. I imagine those of you in England are sick of the Christmas songs already! Becky is now into her second trimester and is feeling a lot better. She wasn't getting sick, but was getting very tired, so is relieved to see the end of that.

Riding the Elephants x 2

Well it's been a little while since we've written an update and in that time we've managed to make it down to Chitwan twice.

The Royal Chitwan National Park takes up nearly a 1,000 square miles in the southern part of Nepal and is quite a popular tourist destination. It's about 100km south of Kathmandu and in a part of Nepal known as the Terai. The landscape here is so different to the rest of Nepal it really has to be seen to be believed. We've spent the last nine months here surrounded by hills, never being able to see the horizon, but down on the Terai the flat stretches as far as the eye can see in 3 directions, and the hills to the north are often hidden in the haze (although we did get one day where the hills and mountains, nearly 200km to the north came out for sunset).

The first time we went there was with Dan's Mum & Dad. They were here for just over two weeks in all and had a great time. We've uploaded a load of photos from their stay with us onto facebook, so you can view them there. The place we stayed with them was deep inside the national park and to get there from the main road you had to drive for 45 mins down a dirt track, then get a canoe across a river that was probably close to 200 metres wide, then ride a jeep through jungle for 20 minutes, before climbing atop an elephant for the last 20 minutes into the resort. If you look through the photos you will see that we managed to see a group of rhinos one morning, up close and personal, along with many other animals, but unfortunately the big one, a tiger, escaped us. However we did come across a set of tiger prints no more than 5 minutes walk from our resort that were only a couple of days old.

Our second trip came this last week as we headed down to Chitwan again with a group of children from school. Every year about this time the Secondary school disperses around the country for Activity Week. The different grades do different activities, trekking, community work, outward bound resort, work experience and for the oldest group a holiday (usually abroad). Becky's form group went to Chitwan, and as Dan's were split amongst the other trips as helpers he managed to go with Becky. The resort we stayed at this time was in a very different part of the park, in fact it was just outside which did mean we had a few more mod-cons, like electricity. The kids had a fantastic time, without any major incidents. We did have a baby elephant sit on one of the student helpers, but apart from a bit of shock they were fine.

This coming week is just a normal week in school, but in 2 weeks we have a big inspection of the school, a bit like ofsted, taking place. It's by a group called MSA (Middle States of America) and it gives us accreditation in the US. If we pass it means that American colleges and schools recognise the education that we give as being up to standard. We were accredited 5 years ago, without problems and we have had to do a lot of work as a school to prepare for this inspection. We're expecting it to go off smoothly, but there is a lot of pressure on a number of key staff, particularly Judith the CEO of the whole school. If you pray, then please do so for this important event.

As usual, I've written another long update, so well done for reading it all! If you scroll down a bit further (or click to look at older posts) you should see some school photos we uploaded to the blog last week.

School Photos

This week was school photo week, so we thought we'd show you some of our school.

This is Becky's grade 7 class (that's the equivalent of Year 8 in the UK, 12 &13 year olds)

This is Dan's homeroom. They are Grade 11 (lower sixth in UK)

This is the whole school, from the Reception class at the front to the 18 year olds at the back, and everything in between

And finally the Secondary school, doing their silly pose. They also did a sensible one but we thought this one looked good.

Go Go Go Joseph

This weekend just passed saw the culmination of 8 weeks of term for our students and for most of them it was an extremely busy term. We mentioned in our last blog about the students preparing for Joseph and the end of term also saw the production being put on.

The production was a joint venture between Lincoln, the American School, and KISC. While the majority of the students, the director, producer and musical director were all from KISC a number of Lincoln students were involved, including Joseph, and their venue was used to show the production. Unsurprisingly the American school is certainly not short of a few quid and their school theatre was up there with professional theatres. The backstage area had to be seen to be believed. Mind you no penny was spared by either school in putting on the show, and the quality of scenery, props and costumes was very impressive and most importantly everyone who came to see it was blown away with how good it looked. 

We contributed by giving less homework for a term, and helping out backstage on 3 of the 4 nights. As you should be able to see from some of the photos the sets were quite large and

 so it needed a few people to shift them. However most of the backstage work was done by students not in the cast and they lived up to the same professional standard as those students who gave a great performance on stage. A DVD of the show will be avalibe for the rough equivalent of £2.50 so if you'd like a copy then let us know (although postage will probably be the same again). The funds should help cover costs and raise money for KISC and Lincoln.

As mentioned above it is now the end of term and we have a 3 week break for the festival of Dhosai. This is the biggest Hindu festival here in Nepal and next week pretty much the whole country shuts down. It's a bit like Christmas. We have Dan's parents arriving this Wednesday and they are staying for nearly 2 weeks. We're really looking forward to seeing them and showing them some of the country, including parts we've not made it to yet. Our next blog will probably include some photos and details of the fun we got up too.

While Dhosai is a great time for Nepalis who get to spend time with their families it is also a difficult time for many here. The main reason is the cost. We all know how much extra Christmas costs, but here in a country where most people are poor and survive day to day, with no concept of saving, the extra expense of this festival must hurt. Unfortunately these expenses have to be met as if you don't meet them then you may well be shunned by your relatives or viewed to have bought bad luck on your family. One way to help this is that most organisations pay double for this month to enable employees to be able to afford things. We've done this with our Didi and milkman, but there are many people who live of the land and their own produce, for them this isn't an option.

The other people for whom this time of year is difficult are the Nepali Christians, particularly those who have recently become Christians or those whose family are all Hindu. While it will still be a great time to holiday and spend time with families, a lot of pressure will be put on them by family and friends to take part in all the rituals and sacrifices that they no longer wish to be part off. As such our church has spent a lot of time helping those new Christians prepare for this festival time and we would ask you to remember them at this difficult, but potentially enjoyable time.

Flooding

You may have heard about some serious news that has affected this part of the world recently. The terrible flooding in India and Nepal which has happened as a result of monsoon and poor maintenance. The number of people stranded and affected by the floods is well into the millions, mostly in India but plenty here in Nepal. There are still apparently people stranded on top of buildings where the boats haven’t got to them yet and even those rescued will face about a nine month wait until they are able to have somewhere to live again. Most of the houses will have just been washed away as they’re made of little more than mud and straw.

While there are organisations here that are trying to help, the concern is that the aid just won’t get to these people, because of various people/organisations incompetence. It was incompetence that saw the flooding start and I’m sure it won’t be the last time that incompetence affects these people. To read a news article on the BMS World Mission click here

Without wanting to sound self-centred the knock-on effect for us is that the power cuts, which had gone down to 4 hours per week, are now up to 30 hours and already high food prices are expected to rocket soon as supply disappears from this region. The reason for the power cut change is because the floods have taken out one of the cables that brings 70Mwatts up from India. As all of Nepal’s internal electricity supply is hydroelectric normally the power cuts disappear in the summer and only reach 30 hours in the late winter, just before the snow starts to melt. We could be in for a long winter.

On a more positive note the students at our school have been very involved in extra curricular activities recently. This term the school is putting on a production of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. The rehearsals are 3 nights a week for 3 hours after school and about 60 of the 80 secondary students are involved. Alongside this we’ve recently had 2 big sporting events. About 3 weeks back we had a Triathlon to raise money for the victims of the Chinese earthquake earlier this year. Each year group entered a few pupils for each of the 3 events, running, swimming and biking, in a relay effort. As well as this we recently had a school Interhouse Swimming Gala and many students were also involved in an Interschool Swimming competition. This involved training for several weeks on the 2 nights per week they aren’t doing Joseph rehearsals. And they still find time for school work!

Monsoon

The weather in the UK is never predictable, as I'm sure you don't need me to tell you; so living in a country where you can predict almost to the day that the rains will stop is slightly odd for those of us of British origin. However that is the case with Monsoon here. We were told this week that the 30th September is the official date for the end of the rains, but that sometimes it goes on for a few extra days.

Once it does finish, that's it for rain till the winter rains which are supposed to be around January time, although they were much later this year. It's weird to think that we won't have any rain for 3 months or so given the situation now. Everyday it rains, not all day of course, but if we go 24 hours without it it's unusual. Often it's been quite good and just rained at night, which has the added bonus of keeping all the street dogs quiet as they seek shelter, enabling a better nights sleep for us.

While the rain does vary from British style drizzle to tropical style torrents we've learnt one key thing; if you go out without an umbrella or raincoat you can guarantee what it will do. Last Saturday evening saw the biggest downpour we've had since being here. Our house fills most of the compound it's on, but there is a paved area which goes all the way around the house. Well as a result of the huge deluge in such a short period this paved area was turned into a moat, trapping us in our house.

Thankfully our flat is up two small steps and the flood waters only made it to the top of the first step, so our flat stayed dry. However we knew of two houses that weren't so lucky and our friends living in those houses saw quite a bit of flood damage. One friend said she was sat on her bed reading when she noticed her bin was starting to move across the room. In another house the flooding was so bad the dog had to actually swim through it to get to dry land. We've been reassured since that downpours like that only happen about once every year, so hopefully we won't see another one like that this Monsoon.

We've now been back at school two weeks and have really enjoyed it. Actually being on full timetables, having a form and being one of the slightly experienced members of staff, showing the new guys the way has been really good. It has been busier though, particularly for Dan who spent quite a bit of the summer organising the timetable; then mistakenly assumed that after the first day of term that would be it and no changes would need to be made.

We hope you are all having a good summer and enjoying the unpredictable English weather. Thanks for all of you who've been in touch, we do enjoy hearing news from England (or Ecuador as we did this week), apologies if we're sometimes slow to respond but we do appreciate the updates.

Jomson Trek

Well our summer is now nearly over and we are starting to get ready for the new school year.We broke up just before the end of June, and start back on monday.

We had a very lazy first week here in Kathmandu, before heading down to Pokhara in the second week. We spent a good few days there before we attempted to fly to Jomson. We were heading to Jomson because it is on the north side of the Annurpurna mountains and so in a rainshadow. However, we were told that due to the bad weather caused by the monsoon at this time of year flights are often delayed or cancelled. We were booked on the second flight of the morning and so got up at 4 in the morning to go to the airport for five where we found the gates still locked. This set the trend for the morning as we waited, usually patiently, for things to happen.

When we did get inside there was no-one to check us in, and when someone did arrive we were not allowed to check in as the first flight still hadn't checked in - even though there flight was due to leave 20 mins previously, not a good sign! Once we had finally checked in we were directed to the airport cafe for breakfast and a couple of hours later a plane arrived. However, we quickly realised it was not ours. It took off again after a very quick turn around, headed for Jomson. A short while later when it returned with the same passengers as it had not been able to land and so all planes were cancelled and we were sent home about 9.30. So we all headed back to our hotel beds for a nap hoping that we'd be able to do it all again tomorrow! So we learnt our lesson and went a bit later the next day - we were now booked onto a different airline as ours had no space. However to cut a long morning short we did finally get to Jomson! Yay!


Jomson and the surrounding area has some stunnning scenery. As I said earlier it is in a rainshadow and so the landscape is very barren, but around the villages there is a lot of green where the locals are using irrigation for farming. We were with a family of 4 and two single girls. We took it at a very leisurely pace, walking to our next stop in the mornings and then exploring the village and surrounding area in the afternoons, if we wanted to.

The lodges where we stayed were all very Tibetan in style and did very good food, alot more homely then the places we stayed on the ABC trek, as many of them were actually people's homes not just lodges which were only open in tourist season as before. Have a look at our photos on facebook to see more of the scenery and our trip.

Since being back we have both been in and out of school a bit preparing for the new school year. We have also been relaxing too. We are off to a nice hotel for the weekend now to enjoy the end of the holidays and to celebrate our wedding anniversary which is next week. Dan planned it as a surprise and told me last night!

Hope you are all enjoying your summers and have a good break at some point too.
Dan and Becky.