Righto, hallo all!

These photos are off my first two weeks in Nepal (and all back to front), not any of kids yet but uploading those soon.

The first week here i stayed with Clare and Purdeep, old friends of dads. Their two kids, Siddy and Kanchy were off for the xmas hols so it fell down to me (and their grandma Pat) to entertain them. The four of us explored Patan durbar square and Thamel and i came up with crazy ideas for play games. First we played dressing up games - becoming pirates for the evening and kidnapping various household members to walk the plank on our makeshift ship. Then we decided to build a huge den, using hundreds of kikoys and poles and sofas, it was so big that i could actaully stand up inside it!
On my last day with them we decided to construct a dragon :) Using cardboard boxes for the body and eggcup holders for spikes, we taped, glued and newspapered ourselves into a happy oblivion for the afternoon.
I had a great time with the kids and Clare + Deep were very hospitable but then it was time for me to start the real roaming.

I met up with Himalayan encounters and they handed me an itinery so packed that i felt tired just reading it. That week i spent wandering round all of Kathmandus big tourist spots, temples, stopas, cremeation grounds.. and ice cream parlours. A small stint out of Kathmandu and into the countryside for a couple of nights, delicious suntalas which we picked off trees and hot fresh milk at 6 in the morning. We did a tiny 2 hour trek to a temple... where i played (and won!) a game of table tennis with some local teens, and enjoyed a bowl of fresh yoghurt in Baktapur,, then the following day - made it to the Trisuli centre just in time to help the 'Trisuli youth friday litter clean up' - great. All the gang at Trisuli and hostfamilies/staff along the way were very welcoming and astonished at my Nepali, i had fun surprising everyone with my language skills. But finally at the end of a chaotic week we finally made it to Pokhara where i got to meet the staff i'd be living with for the next 3 months.

It was great to be assigned a room - which was mine alone - to contain all my mess and somewhere i could settle into. Now, two and a half weeks down the line i feel like this is home. I've got my close family - Bj, Raj and Chakra dhai as well as a few extended family,, i've explored the area quite a bit - gone kayaking and been on Nepalese radio,, and am thoroughly enjoying my daily allowance of two meals of dhal bhat a day :D

More stories on the kids to come within the next week.

Namaste!