Donor work (Santa is in town)

One of Marks jobs is one of the least favourite and most important jobs available for the expats. He has to find thousands of dollars in order to keep the hospital running. However, not all the time the work is bad.
Him and one other NZer that normally lives in Ktm set about trying to advertise the INF gift catalogue. It was a supposed to be a light hearted advert which involved a Nepali, dressed as Santa trying to get around Nepal to deliver gifts of limbs, food and wheelchairs to those in need. The photos say the most!

 Santa also found some expat children that were very interested in him

 Poor Santa found getting around Nepal very hard at times as his sack was sooo big!

 The rice paddies prove quite a barrier to getting around Nepal

  

The bisi also though that there might be presents in the sack for them to.

 The kids on the ward at the hospital were also very interested in thsi 'strange man' with a 'strange beard'!

 Ahhh - Santa does have presents

If you are interested in the gift catalogue check out www.inf.org

Paragliding

We have often watched the paragliders that jump of Sarangkot with envy. It looks like so much fun. We got some money for our birthdays so decided that when the weather cleared up we would jump off!! We tried two weeks ago but the conditions were bad so tried again last week. They thought the conditions were OK but once we started flying the thermals died and Jo, being really heavy went down pretty quickly! Mark stayed up for a bit longer. However, it was a lot of fun. The feeling of running off a cliff and being lifted up into the air was fantastic!

Jo is getting ready

Photos from the air

Thats Jo - yep below Mark!

Jo taking a photo of Mark through her wing

Rafting the Upper Seti

We were very lucky to have Darryl and Louise, friends of ours from NZ come and visit us. They shouted us a rafting trip on the Seti river above Pokhara which we thoroughly enjoyed - thanks guys!!!

Jeewan and Binitas wedding

We had the privledge of attending a friends wedding a few weeks ago. We know the groom as he goes to our church and the father of the bride is Mark's new boss. 

 

 People waiting at the grooms house and go in a procession to the church together. The wedding is always held in the brides house or in this case it was the brides home church. There is a grand procession as the groom is taken to the wedding.

The father of the groom who was very very proud

The wedding car

This is the entrance tent to the wedding venue.
The sign says 'welcome'

The bride not only gets married but she leaves her parents family and house and moves to the grooms house. In most cases she is then under the control of the mother and law and sometimes this can be a slave like relationship. In this case it won't be too bad and it was a love marriage so she knows the person married and was happy, and the family isn't harsh family but also very very sad about the farewells. The mix of joy and sorrow was hard to watch.

The vows are being said. They were very very similar to the wedding vows that we said to each other and you really didn't need to have much nepali to understand what was going on.

Once the vows were said, malas or flower garlands and rings were exchanged. There was no kiss of the bride but there was an unveiling.

Love the cellphone in this picture. It was a relief to us to see her happy after the wedding while they were greeting guests.

It is expected that you get very dressed up for a wedding. Jo spent a lot of time and money buying a jilly milly (glittery) sari, bracelets, shoes, makeup etc.

Looking at part of the food/entrance tent. Once the wedding is over the food is served. Unlike NZ there is generally an open invitation to everyone and most people seem to come for the food and leave again. Over 1000 were expected for food.

All the expats all dressed up in our saris! Mark had to leave early but Jo stayed on for food, the farewell of the bride from her family and church (gut wrenching) and then went with the bride and groom back to their house. Jo left but we understood that the grooms party (party at the grooms house that the brides family doesn't attend) went well into the night.

This is Nepal

I couldn't find a better heading for this! Cow's are sacred here so are not eaten but for a sacred animal we are surprised how poorly they are treated!

yep - so poorly they eat cream boxes!!!

Sarangkot

A couple of weeks ago us and some of the other expat families decided to head out for a Sunday walk. We've being looking up at Sarangkot for the last few months waiting for the monsoon to clear so that we can climb to the top to the promise of great views of the mountains at the top. We finally got around to it, unfortunately by the time we made it up there the views were well and truely gone but we still had a great time. Check out some of our photos.

Lillies on Phewa Taal

Jo had the added weight of Mikaela (the daughter of another expat and bunny - most essential)

Paragliders come from all around the world to fly at Pokhara

It can get pretty crowded up there

This is development in Nepal. A perfectly good stone staircase used by all the locals is carved out to make way for a road. This road is OK but often there is no reinforcing on the banks etc and with the next monsoon the road very quickly becomes another landslide taking out someones farm and their food for the next year and costing more for the digger to go back and recreate the road.

These guys are everywhere, the paragliders love them as they're so good at finding thermals