Christmas is getting closer and this weekend Joop's ballet lessons for the last couple of months finally came to their fruition as the ballet teacher put on a show with all her students. It was an interpretation of the nutcracker where Joop had a role as one of the children.
Yesterday the kids went to the Dutch school to leave their shoes out for Swate Piet to be filled with goodies and today was collection time. So the kids went to the Dutch school to see what Swate Piet had left in their shoes and also to prepare for the arrival of Sinterklaas next weekend.
Lieke and I are off today so we are trying to catch up on all the stuff we do not get around to do on a normal week. This morning we first went to the American Club Commissary to pick-up some stuff for the birthday party of Joop and after that we went to "Barbar Mahal Revisited", one of the fanciest shopping areas in Kathmandu to look at timber samples for the dinning table we want to have made.
Barbar Mahal is the stables of one of the old Rama Palaces (the palace itself was destroyed earlier) and is really cute.
When we came home we had a lamp installed that we have bought at Barbar Mahal earlier. It was not that simple as we could not find a ladder that could reach all the way to our celling in the living room so Santa, our gardner, had made a typical Asian scaffolding in the middle of our living room that the electrician could climb up on. After a few trails and errors we finally got the light to work.
It took all the people working for us to hold the scaffolding, including Santa and the guard. Bicky our driver was driving Lieke around town so he could not participate in our team building exercise.
While all the others were busy putting up the lamp, Liva, Joop and I took advantage of the empty kitchen and started this year Christmas season on making some Marzipan candy. Herman's bakery, our local baker, can deliver most that you need for these kind of thing and they have produced some marzipan. So we take some of it and rolled in some nuts and dipped it in chocolate....
With Thanksgiving here and the school having teacher development day, the kids have had a couple of days off. Wednesday we went to the school for parent-teacher conference and heard that both Liva and Joop were doing very fine. And today (friday) Lieke and I are having the day off as well as it is Eid which is an offical UN holiday. So today will be used to prepare for Joop's birtday part which we will hold on next friday. The kids are now finally back to full health again after being suffering from the flu for quite some time.
I have finally bought my iMac and the kids and I have been playing around with it the last few days.
Liva and Joop have been home the last few days with the flu. However, they are now getting better and enjoying being pampered with TV and candy.
I know that I keep on repeating myself with how wonderful our view is here in Kathmandu and how clear it is this year. However I keep on being amazed with how much of the Himalayas we are able to see this year. This photo is taken half an hour ago when the sun was going down over Kathmandu.
