Katmandu living

While in Hong Kong I bought myself a GPS - that is, I bought it on behalf of Lieke as it was a birthday present from her. We are of course planning to take a few hikes while we are Nepal as this country is made for hiking. However, what hooked me on the whole GPS thing was my friends in Denmark telling me about Geocashing - this modern version of a treasure hunt where you find boxes hidden by others through their coordinates. So...., after I got my GPS I used two mornings on hiking around discovery bay to get all the geocaches that was hidden there - I even managed to get "travel bug" (picture at the top) that I am planning to place in cache here in Nepal. The only bad thing is that we only have few caches here in Nepal and that they are all at places like the Everest Basecamp etc. So it will be hard to get my cache count up until we go on holiday again.

After just over a week in Hong Kong we are now back in Kathmandu. We had a very nice trip where we got to spend some time with Martijn, Maki and the kids and also got to meet up with Simone and Dominic again. Whenever we take holidays from Nepal a major part will be dedicated to shopping and this time was not different - We went to Ikea and brought home 40 kg of plates, bed linen and other things - I managed to buy a new lens to my camera and also the GPS that Lieke promised me for my birthday. As we had been to Hong Kong quite a few times by now we didn't use much time on sightseeing - we managed however to go to the peak of Hong Kong and the kids got a trip to Disneyland. All in all we had a very nice trip.

We spent out Christmas eve at Martin's and Karma's house where we had a traditional Danish Christmas meal with Duck (x3), caramel covered potatoes, normal potatoes, red cabbage and rice pudding. A very nice evening...

Joop is turning 6 today and I just wanted to publish some pictures before I am off to work

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.

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.

Liva has gotten her first e-mail account and it is being checked frequently. However, she hasn't quite understood that she has to write e-mails to people herself if she wants to receive e-mails. Should anyone want to write to her, her e-mail address is livamaya[at]gmail.com

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.

Lieke is in Manila for one and half week and seem to be doing fine (we just called her and she had been out shopping). Kathmandu continues to be beautiful these days - the view is so clear that it at times seem like the mountains have moved closer. Today we went shopping at the shop in the American club for the first time. There is not that much to buy and things cost the same as in the shops eventhough everything is supposted to be tax-free. It is nice though to be able to pick up Samual Adams Boston Ale and zip-lock bags (yes, they even import zip-log bags) and also nice to have access to wine, not to talk about flour for our breads. The kids are now laying infront of the television enjoying their Sondags-slik (Sunday candy) as we forgot to get candy yestereday.

Here in Nepal we are slowly coming out of the rainy season and we can now again see the mountains on most days. From my office that is on the fourth floor and further up the hill than our house you can see quite a few of the Himalayas so every afternoon is quite a spectacle.The photo below is however from our house and is taken 20 minutes ago when the sun went down.

Posted via email from Kathmandu living

This weekend was Tihar, one of Nepal's biggest holidays. As we had two extra days off Lieke had arranged for us to go to Pokhora to stay two days at the Shangri La Hotel and go on a two day hike to see the Himalayas closer-up. To go to Pokhora, that is a couple of hundred kilometer away from Kathmandu, we took a plane early Saturday. Most of the domestic flights here in Nepal are flown by small propeller planes, and the plane we took was smaller than most with two rows of single seats (it was one of Buddha Air's Beech planes). To go to Pokhora we followed the Himalayas giving us a first row view.
The kids loved the small plane as we could follow the action in the cockpit - It was a female first-pilot and a male second-pilot - the second-pilot read the paper most of the trip.