Yummeee..

....dinner on Friday night at the British Embassy - I suppose that makes you think it was some grand diplomatic banquet. But no, to encourage attendance at the club AGM the excellent committee offered free dinner followed by a pub quiz, sitting through 26 mins of AGM was a price we were willing to pay for a free meal. Chicken & mushroom pie, chips, beans, peas and carrots followed by apple crumble - my kind of banquet and boy, did I pig out on it. Things got better when our team managed to come a close third (we did lead until a round near the end with lots of song lyrics to complete) in the quiz - the prize, a free meal at the Embassy club!

 

Today (what would the NUT say about working on Saturday and Sunday) was the last day of the ECD core training workshop Sheila was helping to run which sounded like a great success for her and the participants. She promises to write something about it for the blog and to post some pictures so bombard her with with e-mails if nothing appears soon.

 

Prob won't post next week as we are going for a long weekend to visit a cluster of volunteers and the organisations they work for in the south. These are mainly Education and of interest to Sheila and the 2 friends we are going with - if I can find somewhere with satellite TV showing the 1st Ashes Test, I plan to spend my weekend watching that. After my comment the other week I suppose I should acknowledge that England did manage to just beat South Africa at rugby.

 

Cheers

Roshan

 

A global warming question from the quiz: If all the pack ice of the North Pole melted, by how many metres would sea levels rise by?  

SPAM

No this is not junk mail, it is my favourite new acronym. You may have read that talks between the government and Maoists ended succesfully last week with the announcement that, amongst other positive steps towards democracy, an interim government was going to be formed which would include Maoists representatives. Now the current government is made up of a coalition of 7 parties referred to as the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) so when joined by the Maoists they obviously become SPAM!

Apart from that little gem, not much to add. Sheila has had a fluey bug for the last couple of days but is battling through this to produce training materials and plans for an ECD workshop next week. She has been heartened by a UNESCO report last week which highlighted the importance of ECD in the global Education For All programme - it's not just playing with toddlers! New volunteers arrived last week so we are no longer the newbies. After a period of progressively reducing rural placements due to security situation it is good that most of the new batch will be heading out of Kathmandu once they have finished their in-country training. The volunteers living and working in rural areas help remind us what a spoilt life we have in Kathmandu.

Finally I've been told to add this great picture of Ben to show that it wasn't just sadhus he made friends with when he was here.


Other news from last week - I collected my new (used) ladies bike (thanks Rohini and Migyoung) last weekend. Will try to remember to take a photo to post next week.

Cheers
Roshan

P.S. England v Argentina - what can I say?!

Back to work after Josie & Ben's visit

They left last Saturday :-( and we are back to our normal routine albeit with the luxury of the goodies (parmesan cheese and fruit & nut chocolate being the favourites) they left us with. They also left us with a large supply of DVDs, kindly recorded by brother-in-law Reg, so we have been enjoying Celebrity Masterchef - how sad are we! When I've finished this, I hope to have a lazy afternoon watching the Champion Trophy 1-day cricket final on laptop TV. Would prefer to watch England v All Blacks but rugby doesn't quite have the following in South Asia to warrant any channel showing it.

Sheila's busy at home preparing training materials for a workshop she's due to help with so I guess the place will be covered in finger puppets, zig-zag books etc. I'll leave her to tell you more about this another time.

Finally a picture from our Chitwan trip dedicated to Martin & Gina - one of Ginge's Nepali relatives came to sit with us. Slightly more scabby than Ginge and a wider range of pest infestations. Although not obvious from this picture he also had a serious ear control problem, couldn't make up his mind whether they were pricky up or floppy down so most of the time he did one of each. Thinking of Ginge (and therefore Dando), I heard that the British Embassy is having a new bore well dug so if they are using a drilling rig I will try to get a picture. I bet you can't wait!

Cheers for now
Roshan

P.S. Congrats to Team Felpham on their result in the Sunsail qualifier. Good luck in the final - no pressure just remember we won last year.