Katmandu living

As I wrote earlier we only had a couple of days together in December, but we managed to fit in the 3rd birthday of Joop, both with the traditional morning celebration (see picture) and with a party later in the day.

And finally, Joop and Sinterklaas. After hearing David Sedaris "six to eight black men" she is of course just happy that the former bishop of Turkey is not pretending to hit her with a small switch or take her off to Spain.

And here is a picture of Liva in a deep discusion with Swarte Piet - I guess they are discussing candy or maybe how you get all the way from Spain to Yemen in a steamboat.

With Sinterklaas getting closer the kids are getting into the spirit. Over the weekend the Dutch school had a handicraft morning where Liva and Joop produced (with a great deal of help from Lieke) Swarte Piet hats and also managed to dance with six Swarte Piets and over the weekend Swarte Piet also made a visit to our house to leave them a small treat in Liva and Joop’s shoes in exchange for the mandatory carrot for the horse of Sinterklaas. Liva is somewhat concerned if Sinterklaas will find his way down here and also where the six swarte Piets are staying while waiting for Sinterklaas to arrive but after much discussion we agreed that they were probably staying at the Sheraton and that Sinterklaas would probably come down on Turkish Air.

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!

I has now been a while since we last updated the blog, but things have been very busy here in Yemen and we have been without an internet connection. I will try to get an internet connection established this week but to keep you up to date in the meantime I publish a couple of pictures of the kids

My mother pasted away on 15 August after a long and ultimately loosing fight with cancer. When we first made this blog it was to keep her and Oma and Opa informed with our actions abroad and keep them posted with pictures etc. That others took and interest was only an added advantage. My mother managed to visit us in all the places that we lived and would have loved to also visit us in Yemen had she not become sick. We will miss her dearly.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about our accident. I finally got around to taking a picture. You can see the massive dent on the right side.

 

What is especially nice in the new house is that it is very light and airy. In the middle of the house there is a “swimming pool” without water, which we will have to use some time on child securing, but as there are windows out the this pool from three out of four sides there is a lot of light coming in. Here is a picture from the corridor with the windows to the pool on the right. It is the furniture of the one of Lieke’s collegues that you can see, though it would be nice if she would leave them! We still have a guest room so you do not have an excuse for not coming down to see us.

 

After much discussion, and many nights counting the pros and cons, we have now decided to move to another house. Though we love the house we live in right now, and it is probably a once in a lifetime experience, the kids have not been very happy with all the stairs and it has also been a bit hard on us with all the running up and down. To get from where I am sitting writing this and down to the kitchen it is descent of 15 meters or so, so it is an outing every time you want to go down to get a cup of coffee. We have also found out that though we have a very nice rooftop we do not use it enough and would like a garden where the kids can run around instead. So the last month of so we have been looking at the houses that the people who are leaving over the summer are moving out off, and we have now finally found our dream house. It has a big garden, though 2/3 is right now dessert and all rooms in the house is on one level which will be good for the kids. It is very close to the supermarket where we do most of our shopping and is not too far from Lieke’s office or the school of the kids. The only disadvantage about the house is that we will have to move before we take off for Europe on the 6 July. So, the next few weeks will be all about packing and getting ready for the move. Below you see a picture of the house and some of the garden. If you want to see a bit more detailed picture, just double click on the picture.

 

Over the last few days the rain has returned to Sana’a . Though never very serious it creates the most amazing skies. Below is the view from our top floor from yesterday night.

The thing with this kind of blog is that you will have to keep it for people to come back once in a while to check it out. We have now had a small break but here is the latest news. The big news here in Yemen is that both the kids are now finally off the bottle. Liva, being the oldest has now for a while been without milk doing the night and has also now started to be without a diaper all the time (including nights) whereas Joop seemed to have stepped up her milk consumption during the nights. So five days ago we took the big jump and stopped all together with the milk. The transition has been much easier than we had feared though Joop still is waking up. She has however stopped asking for milk so that is great.

Over the weekend we had a couple of parties. On Thursday there was a housewarming for a Dutch-Yemeni couple and Friday we went on a picnic with the whole Dutch community. It was the first time that we took the car off-road and it was a bit stressful – especially going up and down a 40 degree hill with a lot of loose rubble on, but the car did absolutely fine. After this trip it has been a bit easier to get Lieke to understand why we needed a four-wheel drive.

Talking about the car, we have now gotten the first dent in it after a car drove up into the back of our car while we were at a traffic light. So we have now gotten to know the insurance business in Yemen, but it seems to be working fine, though it somewhat time consuming as we have to take the car to two different workshop to get quotes for the repair. It however hurts a bit to already have a dent now with only 1900 kilometer on the odometer, but with the traffic here in Yemen it was bound to happen sometime or another.

Besides that there’s nothing to report from here. We are getting ready to go to Europe for the summer. We will be there from the 6th of July as Lieke has to attend a course in Maastricht and will stay until after my mother turns 70 on the 6th of August, so it will be a nice and long summer holiday. Anyway, below is a picture of the girls showing off their new “pom-poms” that they got from Betty, our young girl, today.

After a week when Lieke was first in Aden (a costal town south of Sana’a) and after that in Dubai to attend a workshop on Girls education and communication we are now finally all at home. Lieke managed some serious shopping while in Dubai. Though we can get most things here in Yemen there are some things that are a bit more difficult, so Lieke took this opportunity to do some shopping. Dubai is of course like any other big city in the developed world so they of course also had an Ikea. Lieke therefore brought home 40 new plates, of 4 different types, so we now can have at least ten visitors over (or at least eight if we want the same plates as the rest). She also brought quite a lot of clothes for herself, me and the kids. Below is a picture of the girls showing off their new t-shirts.

As I never appear on this blog I would also like to publish a picture of Liva and her dad at the kids’ konninginnedag. As you can see I have dressed up in orange to show my respect for the Dutch Queen.

 

Last weekend it was konninginnedag (or for the non-Dutch speakers Queen’s day). Being abroad this day is of course celebrated more than it would be if we were in Europe. Coming to think about it, the only times I have been celebrating the Queen’s birthday has been when I have been attending functions at the Embassy while I was abroad. Anyway, the celebration consisted of 3 different components. First there was the reception attended by 700 people. I missed this part as I had to be at home to look after the kids. After that there was a party, or as they say in Dutch Oranjebal, for the Dutch community in Yemen. They had really gone through quite an effort to make it nice, including flying down a band from Holland, Frank and Friends. Anyway this was followed the day after with the konninginnedag for the kids. Below you see a picture from the konninginnedag for the kids, that was held in the garden of one of the employees of the Embassy.


 

Lieke is off to Aden today and to Dubai tomorrow and the next four days. She will be attending a workshop on communication and girl's education and we will of course miss her. However, to show her that we can survive here is a picture from the girls getting breakfast this morning. As you can see they look rather happy.