Day to day life

Electrickery


The house and piece of waste ground across from where we're living. The waste ground seems to be used communally - the little boy in the picture goes to the toilet on it regularly (not what you want to see whilst having a cup of tea and watching the world go by, believe me!); people stop to read the paper; a board game is set up on a large oil drum; and people were singing and dancing here at New Year.


This elderly lady lives in a small house at the back of the waste ground and spends all her days sitting here, sometimes with a small black dog for company


The 'restaurant' (term used carefully, you'll notice) next door to us has its dish washing facilities on the waste ground too - nice.....You'll see all the rubbish that is everywhere - plastic bags are now embedded in the soil, they've been there that long. Everyone throws rubbish away here with no concern for where it lands. Having said that, the owner of the 'restaurant' next door does come out and sweep his bit of road, then throws the rubbish about two feet to the right!


Having posted quite a lot now, and not having too long left here, it suddenly struck me that we'd put up lots of pictures of the kids, and of 'touristy' type things, but not much that shows the day to day life here in Kathmandu. I'll try to take some photos of our local shops, and the busier shopping area down the road from us - the butchers' shops in particular are a sight to behold (complete with goats tethered outside and chickens in boxes waiting for their demise). There are also a couple of original houses left in the area, from before all the modern development, so I'll try to get some pictures of those too, and if it's possible to somehow show the bedlam and chaos that is the roads and traffic here if I can - although I suspect it has to be experienced to be believed! It's sometimes hard to take photos without feeling obtrusive, but I'll do my best.

The kids are back at school on Sunday, and those that have been away for the holidays will be back by tomorrow evening. We're going to spend our last week being tourists and getting to all the places we still want to see, and hopefully being able to help out with homework in the late afternoon after school. Strange to think that after tomorrow we only have one Saturday left to spend with all of the kids together. We're going to try to get small gifts for the girls that Alison's been playing with over the last couple of weeks - some have their noses pierced, for example, but don't have earrings to put in them, so they use pieces of stick! Although, talking to Sita today about her piercing it transpires that the school rules forbid jewellery - if they wear it, the Principal marks their grades down - they're also not allowed to have a fringe at school, and spend all their time trying to plaster my fringe across my head so it doesn't exist!

It's still really hot here, but we had another thunderstorm during the night and lots of rain, so it was a little cooler this morning. It feels awful to complain about the heat, but it makes it impossible to do anything or go anywhere because you just end up sweaty and tired - yuck.

I've been reading about the Iceland volcanic ash that's lingering over home - some days the heat haze and smog here are so bad you'd think we had it too! The hills across the road appeared yesterday after the previous thunderstorm, and I'd almost forgotten they were there.

Will try to post more photos as we get them.

See everyone soon!

Ann & Alison
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