12th Day in Pokhara

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Early this morning Charis was off on the bus to Kathmandu. Unfortunately slept a few minutes too long and when I got out to the street at 7:30am she'd already left.

I had big plans to study this morning while Jan was working on the water pump at the Home but the electricity is once again and so there is no point working on the pump as he won't be able to work out if it's working. So we were off to buy supplies and get the last of the classroom decorations up on the wall.

We then went up to the Home and got all the children to come into the classroom to have their heights measured. They were jumping all over each other to be first - it was madness. We eventually managed organised chaos but can't complain about how enthusiastic these children are about everything you do with them. We eventually measured all their kids for their heights and then got them to write their names (in English and Nepali), their ages and their heights on the photos we had taken of them. It was a huge hit and they did a fantastic job.

After that Jan collected the water pump and we took it back to Himalayan Encounters so he could pull it apart and see if he could get it fixed which, of course, he managed. He never ceases to amaze me - both at home and here - give him anything technical that's broken and before you know it, it's right back at ya and working again! Brilliant!!

In the late afternoon we headed back to the school just to play games with the children. They always have such a great time. Unfortunately, no matter how much you try to reinforce the fact that they don't need us to organise such activities for them, they still often need us to get them going. Maybe by the time we leave they'll be able to organise it themselves. We know it's possible because we've seen the children at the other home doing it!! Just have to keep hammering it home - it just takes one of them to say - "Hey lets play ....". The games aren't difficult - just 'duck, duck, goose', 'traffic lights', and we made a high jump string because a few of the boys love to trying seeing how high they can jump or playing limbo!! They seem to manage to organise volleyball, which involves a lot more preparationg, but not the simple games. Anyway, we'll keep at it.

This evening we again had dinner with Tony and Trish and were entertained by Tony's adventure stories and were then treated to yet another dance performance. This time the nieces of Tony's partner. The three girls were terrific and had been organised to entertain a couple of 'family groups' of trekkers who had brought their own children from the UK to Nepal for a short trek in the Himalayas. Loveley evening of entertainment had by all!

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Photos

Map of Nepal
The idea of our map of Nepal was to then have strings leading from each of the photos of the kids to the place on the map where the children come from in Nepal.

In process
Took us awhile to get Bijay free to help us locate the birthplaces of the children

The kids loved this idea!
Finally finished.