Two weeks in

We've now been back in Kathmandu for 2 weeks and felt it was probably about time we updated our blog. Time has flown, but also it's starting to feel like we were never away from Kathmandu. It has been great seeing friends, catching up on news and just spending time with people we've not seen for 5 months. The welcome and help we have recieved has been great, both at the airport (see photo), with settling into our flat and even having meals provided for the first week. It has reminded us about the great community atmosphere here which is one of the things we've loved about living as ex-pats.

Samuel has seemed to cope fine with everything that has been thrown at him so far. It's a lot hotter than in the UK, despite the Indian Summer you're having, but he's been fine with that. But it's also all the things we got used to before, but are very different to the UK, he's taken in his stride. Things like the traffic, the attention recieved from the locals and the dogs barking as we walk along the streets. The Nepali's are enjoying him too, they are quite used to Bideshi's (foreigners) walking the streets, but to see a Bideshi with a baby causes much pointing, staring and quite a bit of poking and silly voices. Much like the time he spent with his Grandfathers!

Time to Return

Well time is rapidly running out on our stay here in the UK. Our suitcases are partially packed and will probably face being repacked several times before we leave on Monday. Many goodbyes have been said, but some, most notably those to Samuel’s grandparents remain.

We have had a great time here in the UK but we are also looking forward to returning to Nepal. Of course the main event of our time here has been the arrival of Samuel. He has coped remarkably well with our attempts at parenting and is thriving in all ways a child can at 3 months. Of course I am slightly biased but we think he’s great. He was just telling us yesterday how keen he is to get to Nepal and meet everyone there.

This Sunday we had a Service of Dedication for Samuel which was a great event. Many of our family and friends were able to join with us for this special event, including four of Samuel’s five Great-Grandparents. We really enjoyed the service and it was a great chance for us to refocus on what we are doing and why we are doing it, both as parents and as we return to Nepal.

So now all that is left is packing, more packing, goodbyes, a wedding on Saturday and then some more packing. It’s going to be busy.

The foreseeable future

It has been a while since we've updated our blog, and our time since then has been devoted to looking after a certain young man. It's been amazing to see how he has grown and developed over the last 2 months. It's been an exciting and challenging time for us dealing with him and all his demands.

Samuel hasn't been our only focus of the last 2 months. Dan's sister Hannah was over from Australia for 2 weeks at the beginning of July and it was great to spend some quality time with her. We've also had a number of family events over the summer, meeting up with various family members and showing off Samuel.

In the middle of July we were able to get away for a weeks holiday with Becky's parents. We stayed in a little cottage in Ringwood, just outside the New Forest and we had a wonderful week. We spent our days wondering around the forest and along the coast. It reminded us what a beautiful country it is we live in and it was great for Samuel to be able to spend plenty of time with one set of grandparents, who also provided some helpful respite for the parents.

And then the week after the holiday we attended interview for BMS. As many of you reading this will know we've been considering for some time about committing to Nepal for a longer period than just the initial 2 years we went for. Well the interview was for the position of long term workers with BMS. We were accepted and this means that once our initial 2 years is up (at the end of this year) we will transfer from BMS's mid-term program to their long term program.

What does this mean in practice? Well it now means we are committed to Nepal for the foreseeable future. The official minimum is 4 years, which takes us to 2014. Beyond that we do not know what the future holds for us, but we figure that's far enough away to not worry about it too much now. For now it's just a case of getting ready to return to Nepal, which we are due to do on September 14th.

Samuel Timothy

As you may well know this week we celebrated the birth of our first son. He was born on Wednesday 3rd June 2009 at 10.11pm and weighed 8lbs exactly.

The labour was long, Becky was having contractions for 4 days and we spent all day Wednesday in hospital. Arriving at about 8am and having a long wait till he finally turned up.

He is now home and Mum, Dad and baby are starting to settle into life as a family. Having our own private midwife certainly helps though. (Becky's mum is a midwife).

We shall be adding more pictures to facebook over the next few days (which you can still see even if you're not on facebook). For now there are a couple here to see.

Dan, Becky and Samuel.

Back in England

We’ve now been back in England for a month. It’s been a busy month catching up with lots of people and getting ready for the imminent arrival of a baby.
It has been great to see many of you; and those we haven’t seen we will hopefully see sometime soon while we are home.

We have spent a week in Liverpool catching up with friends there, and were also able to go to Wales with our church’s weekend away. The photo on the right is our caravan’s effort into a photo competition, for which we won a Chocolate Orange Selection tub. Sorry they’ve all been eaten. We have also been visiting grandparents, all very excited to be great grandparents soon!

This last weekend we were at the Baptist Assembly in Bournemouth, a good opportunity to catch up with people from BMS world mission and also others that Becky particularly has known for many years from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka days. Dan enjoyed the stories of Becky’s childish antics.

We have also spent a considerable amount of time wondering around shops such as Mothercare and Babies R Us looking for baby things that we will need. This was a little overwhelming at first as we realised we had no idea what we needed. However, we did get our heads around things eventually and think we now have most things ready. We have even packed Becky’s hospital bag and last night went to our first antenatal class, taught by Grandma to be; Becky’s mum! As of today Becky is 37 weeks pregnant and so the baby is classed as full term now and could come any day.

We moved into the BMS house yesterday which we will be staying in for the rest of our time here in the UK. If you’d like to know the address then let us know. We will try and continue to keep you updated using this blog while we are home, and will let you know when the baby is born and put up some pictures .

Rain

Tonight it rained. For the first time since the beginning of October.

Drought has been affecting 2 significant areas of life here. The first is power which we have already mentioned in our blog recently. The second is of course water supply.

Water supply is always a bit hit and miss here even in the middle of monsoon. If you have any significant number of people living on your property you probably don't get enough through the main city water line, unless you pay the right minister a bribe, or live near someone paying a nice bribe.

For most people water only comes down the line for a short period of time each day and you have to pump the water from the main line into the property. Of course with only having 8 hours of power a day the chances of the water coming past on the main line coinciding with when you have power are significantly reduced.

We have friends who live in properties that are so short on water they haven't been able to shower for over a week, or wash their clothes for a few weeks.

You can order in tankers that bring water from streams outside Kathmandu, however their is now only one stream in the valley that still has enough water to supply these tankers. So no new orders are being taken, and current orders are having to be reduced. School usually has 4 or 5 tanker visits a week and is now down to half that, which when we have 200 people using the site daily poses problems for flushing toilets and washing hands. So far we've been okay but it has the potential...

So this is why everyone here is so pleased it rained tonight. Not that one evening shower solves all the problems of course, but it does mean that the season for rain is coming and the situation will hopefully improve. Until this time next year.

Nepali Wedding

Mid-January to Mid-March is wedding Season here in Nepal and last week we were privileged to be invited to a Nepali wedding. In fact it’s not actually that much of a privilege as traditionally in Asia the person hosting the wedding has to invite basically everyone they know. So much so that we have even been invited to weddings of people we’ve never met before in our time here.

However the wedding last week was a special wedding as it was the wedding of a colleague from school; our IT technician, a man who Dan works quite closely with. Nitin is 28 years old and had been introduced to his new wife through his Uncle. The week before the wedding Dan and the other ICT guy at school took him out for a stag-do! It involved about 10 staff from school going out for Momo’s, a Nepali favourite and Nitin’s favourite food.

Nitin actually got married down in the village his wife’s family come from, about 3-4 hours drive from Kathmandu. The marriage ceremony itself is normally a much smaller event than the marriage celebration which takes place a few days after the ceremony. It is to this that the world and his wife are invited.

Traditionally at a Nepali wedding the bride is supposed to look unhappy, so as to not offend her family as in Nepali culture it is viewed that she is leaving her family to join his. However it’s a good job that the groom is not subject to the same requirements as Nitin is always smiling. Although he’s not smiling as much as normal in this photo he did carry a big grin for most of the wedding. Keen readers of our blog may recognise the other guy as Ryan who we mentioned back in June when his wife had just given birth to their third child.

Talking of children, Becky and bump are doing very well. She is now into her third trimester and growing by the day. The baby is very active and as far as we are aware healthy. It’s now only one month until we return to the UK and we are starting to pack up our house. It doesn’t seem long ago that we were doing likewise in our house back in Liverpool.

By the way the second photo was taken on a recent walk with a group of friends. Not sure if we shall update our blog again before we return so if we don’t we are due back in the UK on the 4th April. We are currently trying to arrange meeting up with people, so if you’d like to meet up with us then do let us know and we’ll try and book you in. We’ll also use the blog to keep people up-to-date with baby announcements etc while we are back.

See you soon…