BUILDING

Well, we knew it would happen and it finally has: they have started building the 2nd floor… and the third one. This last one has been a surprise to us.

The good news is that they have built some bamboo schafolding in between our building and the landlord's so that the builders don't have to go through our garden and our staircase.
The bad news is that the builders have set up camp in the landlord's garden, where they sleep, cook, eat, clean… but actually, they are OK. A few days the noise has bothered us a lot, and one day, a troop of about 15 people marched on a Sunday at 6am right by our door: they were set to put concrete on the roof. We also need to be careful that nothing drops on us or on our laundry… but all in all is OK.

It is still raining a lot, but at least we can see the sun shining once in a while, letting us dry our laundry (and our furniture) outside – mold has spread all over our can furniture so we now have to clean it in a regular basis.
One day in the way to our Nepali class, a curtain of water dropped and for quite a long time: downhill streets were like rivers and we got completely soaked.

All new volunteers went for a refreshing Nepali language course and Simon and I proved that we have not improved during this past 3 months – not a surprise since all our colleagues speak good English.

We are enjoying work.
Simon has got some small victories in his organization, with a project on child soldiers. Other fronts don't move forward as he would have liked it, but that's life ("ke garne!" as the Nepali people would say – what to do!)
Laura likes the new organization a lot. She believes that they know what they need and how to do it, but they just lack the resources to do so. So she is learning a lot from them.

Garden is looking nice with different flowers and plants growing by the minute with all that rain. Simon weeds it every week.

Ah! We've just got a 6.8% monthly pay raise. And we are going to blow the lot (£5.77) on coming home for Christmas :)

Enough for now. Hope all is well with you all.

Bye

Simon and Laura.