Nayaa Ghar

This means new house in Nepali and this weekend we got one! We moved into our new flat last Saturday. Up until now we’d been staying in a nice, but small, transit flat. So we had been looking for a new place and now we are there.

The new flat is much bigger and nicer than the transit flat. It is about 15-20 minutes walk from school which is a bit further than the previous one but we figure it will help us keep fit! It is the ground floor of a house belonging to a Nepali couple. The wife’s brother is the husband of our Nepali teacher which is how we found out about it.

It is a one bedroom flat, with a lounge, kitchen and separate dining room. The rooms are nice and big, and it has carpet throughout which helps it stay warm in the winter. We are really happy to have found it as it is very nice. It does have a warm shower, which is a bonus here.

We are now well settled in to our language training and feel like we are starting to make progress. We can talk a little about things we have done and will be doing, we also have enough to go buy fruit and veg and even barter if we feel up for it!

We are also starting to get involved in things at school. Becky is off on a field trip the week after next and Dan will be teaching the primary children ICT for a couple of weeks as their normal teacher is away. He is really looking forward to trying to teach 5 year olds!!

Photos are being added to the pages on facebook from time to time, Becky now also has a set of photos on there:

Dan's photos

Becky's photos

Dan & Becky

School

Having been here 3 weeks now there are so many things that we could tell you about. To make life easier on us, and to keep some content for a few months when things seem normal we'll try and focus on certain things each time we add a post to our blog. It seems sensible to start with the reason we are here.

KISC (Kathmandu International Study Centre) is a school setup for the children of missionaries here in Nepal. The school has been going for about 20 years and has grown a lot in that time. It's also had to cope with many changes of site and a high turnover of staff and pupils.

If you click on the link below you can see on the photos that the hall is yet to be finished. The basic frame of it was dismantled and bought from the old site, so it is just a matter of filling in the gaps! The school now doesn't have much open space so the PE department are eager for it to be ready so they will have some more space.

The main teaching block was a carpet factory before, with each floor being open plan, so they have had to put in walls to create classrooms. We think the admin block must have been offices for the factory. It's amazing to see how they have adapted what they had into a fully functioning school with good facilities.

The school day runs from 8am to 3pm. We have 2 hours Nepali each morning and an hour in the afternoon, so quite an easy day at the moment. It has been good to be in school though, as we are getting to know staff and enjoying the school meals put on for staff each day!

To view photos of the school:


Schoool photos

I'm planning on uploading some more photos to the general Nepal album, so you can check it out regularly to see if we've added more.

Hello From Kathmandu.

Sorry for the delay in keeping in touch - we have had a bit of trouble getting onto our yahoo email at school and home as the network doesn't like it! We have been able to read some of the messages that people have sent - so thank you for those. We will hopefully get it sorted and reply next week sometime.

We've had a good first week here, settled in and enjoying ourselves. We are staying temporarily in a small flat, which is built as part of the KISC hostel which is used for boarding when needed. at the moment it has a lovely American family in it who are teachers at KISC too. The flat is directly behind the zoo, so we can hear Lions roaring regularly, and see the monkeys too - which are really noisy! They howl a lot!

We began our language lessons this week - we have 4 days a week, and one day cultural, so today we are off on a tour of Kathmandu. Should be interesting! There are 8 of us who are new at the school, two other couples - the husbands will both be teaching, and their wives doing other things, and 2 single ladies - both about our age.

Yesterday we spent about 4 or 5 hours at the airport and cargo building collecting our freight - in the end we got it without much hassle at all which was great - we were expecting it to be expensive and a lot of hassle - but it was just lots of waiting around!

Thanks again to those who have been in touch,

Dan and Becky.

P.S. If you'd like to see some photos, try this link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25669&l=a0049&id=725531985

We've arrived

Just a quick one to say we are here. We had a good trip and arrived yesterday. We've settled in quickly to a small flat and are getting to know the area. We shall give a proper update with lots of news soon.

Dan & Becky

Tonight we fly

Well this is it! After nearly 10 months of waiting the day is finally here. As Neil Hammond from the Divine Comedy put it:

"Tonight we fly
Over the houses, the streets and the trees -
Over the dogs down below;
They'll bark at our shadows
As we float by on the breeze.
Tonight we fly
Over the chimney tops, skylights and slates -
Over the hills and far away!
Tonight we fly
Over the mountains, the beach and the sea
Over the friends that we've known,
And those that we now know
And those who we've yet to meet."

We're all set now, our cases are packed, we had a good nights sleep, with dreams of arriving somewhere new and exotic. We are nervous and excited and many other emotions too. This evening we shall go to the airport with our families and say our final goodbyes.

It's been a great few weeks of seeing lots of friends and family and saying lots of goodbyes. Thanks for all your comments and well wishes. We know we'll be in your thoughts and you shall be in ours. We shall update this again once we arrive and let you know how we are settling in.

Keep in touch we want to hear all your news.

Goodbye!

Dan and Becky

Merry Christmas!

Well this may be our last post from the UK for quite some time!

We finished here in Birmingham last Thursday. We are still here though til this Friday (21/12) as we have more space to do all our packing. So far it just looks like a bomb has gone off! Hopefully it will look like we've had a bit more progress by tomorrow evening as we leave Friday morning!

It has been a good term here which we have enjoyed, but we're also glad to be getting going now! Although the reality of it all is starting to sink in, and is quite scary. We've been really blessed with some great people to train with here at IMC and we will miss them a lot - but hopefully stay in touch.

We will spend about a week with family over Christmas, then we're in Liverpool for a bit over new year and then on the 5th and 6th of January as we have a commissioning service at the Tab (our church in Liverpool) on the 6th.

Then off on the 8th in the evening. When we get there we have 8 weeks language and orientation training before we actually start teaching. We're looking forward to this as it will give us time to acclimatise to a new way of life - but i think we will be itching to get back into the class room by the end of it.
We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas with your family and friends and a Happy New Year too. Dan and Becky.

Good News

When we last wrote KISC (Kathmandu International Study Centre) was having a few issues, but since then we have had some good news. The school achieved it's legal status recently, as before it was only temporary and hadn't been approved by the new government. Now it has more capability to apply for visas and do various other things which a temporary institution wouldn't be able to do.

We have also heard they have found a new site, which is available to move onto in January, in time for our arrival. Although this hasn't been confirmed yet. When we first get out there we'll be living in a hostel owned by the school, before finding our own flat.

We're currently working hard on assignments and are starting to organise our stuff. Working out what we need to take, what we want to take and what don't need. It is already looking like a 'fun' job! We only have 3 weeks left here now and it seems pretty scary that it'll all be over soon and we'll be off.

Other news is that one of the couples who were supposed to be coming to Nepal with us have found out this week that they no longer are. They were supposed to be living in the south of the country but for various reasons they won't be. It's obviously been a bit of a shock for them, but there are some other options open to them elsewhere which they are looking into. It means that they probably won't be going out in January as planned, unless something else gets sorted very quickly.

Last thing is that BMS World Mission (the agency we're going with) website has been relaunched. If you'd like to take a look then go to http://www.bmsworldmission.org/ and if you click on people and places you should be able to find us, although the info is very limited at the moment! You can also use the website to find out a bit more about what they do if you want to.

Dan & Becky