Hello again and Happy New Year to you all. Hope those of you that celebrate Christmas had a great time.We thought we'd just give you a little update on our own festive season.
So, what have we been up to? Well, first of all, our landlord has decided to add two new storeys to our house so we have been living on a building site for the past month and a half:
Things started off relatively peacefully. One day, the site manager turned up with a young couple and announced that, if it was alright with us, they would build them some makeshift accommodation in our back garden (they were labourers from a town some hours away). We have always felt the house is a bit larger than we need and our perfectly good spare room meant that they could avoid the worst of the cold nights. So, Kalpana and Shyam became our in-house neighbours. It was a pleasure to have them stay and chat to them in the evenings. They belong to the indigenous 'Tharu' community. Although Nepali is their second language too, it made them giggle when we tried out our very basic Tharu, so we gave up and stuck with Nepali! One weekend their son, sister and nieces came to visit and here they are in the room they were staying in:
Despite Kalpana and Shyam being such gentle folk, we did start to get very tired of the building work because there were about 20 labourers coming to the house every morning and the area around our house became increasingly filthy. The building work (and our frustration with it) peaked one day when a huge, very noisy, cement mixing and lifting machine arrived. The builders had to knock down the garden wall to get it in and it continued working until 9pm. At this point and because we were a bit worried about the safety of the building, we decided to start to look for another place to live. We're feeling better about the house now because the builders are having an extended break and have promised not to work while Steve's parents visit. Also, our landlord has assured us that the 7 foot foundations are ample for the extra floors.
Now, onto the festive bit. Apart from getting the day off work, most people in
with Christmas trees ……
snowy mountains …….
and of course mistletoe…….
So we headed off to Dadeldhura, the nearest hilly area, for a long weekend. We had lots of lovely walks and fresh oranges which grow there.
To celebrate new year, we invited friends and neighbours to join us for some chiya (Nepali spicy tea) and spicy fruit cake (Steve made 4!). Over 20 people came including our neighbours below, but everybody left before 7pm! We hope it wasn't either the company or the cake!
Hoping to do another blog within the next few weeks.
