Katmandu living

With the winter approaching the weather is getting colder here in Yemen, though it is of course nothing like it is in Europe. It is now down to 5c at night but the days are still beautiful with high blue skies and up to 26c so it is difficult to believe that we in three weeks time (for Lieke and the kids) will be in Europe with only 10c or colder. Things are going well here in Yemen. The biggest news is of course that I finally found a job two months ago. Through funding by “Local Government Denmark (KL)” I have gotten employment by a decentralization project situated in the Yemeni Ministry of Local Administration here in Sana’a. With our new situation of two working parents we have had to reorganize our lives quite a bit. All of a sudden we now have to coordinate our travel plans and have had to employ a driver to drive the kids around during the day. Until now there has only been once that both Lieke and I have been traveling at the same time but we are of course lucky to have Rachel, our nanny, who has been staying with the kids. Lieke is off to Jordan today where she will be attending a workshop for the whole week. She will be coming home by the end of the week after which I will be leaving for Denmark for almost two weeks to participate in study tour for 13 Yemeni civil servants, who will go to Denmark to see a functioning municipality system in action. I will return to Yemen in time to celebrate Joop’s third birthday and the day after that Lieke and kids will go to Holland for Christmas where I will join them a week later. So all in all our life here in Yemen will be a bit stressed for the next month.

We have now gotten settled in our new house. The last two months have been used on getting the garden into order and getting some of the smaller issues in the house resolved. The new house, though lacking some of old world charm of our first house, is turning out to be really nice. The kids are really feeling at home and it is definitely much more child-friendly with only one level and direct access to the garden. The electricity situation seem to get worse (or maybe it is only our new neighborhood) and we have one hour power-cut everyday. Our kids are probably the only ones that are able to say power-cut in three different languages before they turn three!