Term Three

Hello friends, I hope you are all well.

It's been a while since I have written and a lot has happened. I had a wonderful few weeks back in New Zealand over Christmas with the family, also enjoying as always the clean air and general beauty of New Zealand. Then it was straight back into term three and winter smog in Kathmandu.

KISC

Year 10 students at Last Resort

It's been another busy term at KISC, getting my students through their A level and IGCSE Biology courses has been the main focus, it was a push at the end, but we made it, with just a few lessons that they will need to do to finish off over the holidays. Then it will be straight into revision and exams after Easter break. I've really enjoyed teaching them, they are such fantastic students. We also had a few highlights; the House Music Competition where they did stunning performances, especially the swing dances! a night away to The Last Resort with a few of the year 10 students, Athletics Day, Staff Lip Sync and teaching the singing elective to name a few.

Sadly we had to tear down the basketball and futsal site as the lease was no longer available. However we have nearly fully secured a new much larger site which will hopefully have a 25 year lease bringing us a lot more security and room for all our classes. This is great news for the school as we have been getting a little short on classroom space! KISC has also set up a partnership with INF in Pokhara to help keep the school there going..another exciting new development.

I've enjoyed continuing my role in the science faculty, we have a great team and all is going well.  

Staff Lip Sync

I have decided to stay on another year with KISC and will be doing the Head of Arts role next year, while still teaching some science classes. This means I'll oversee the music and arts events, I'm looking forward to this as I'll be running the musical, the end of year christmas concert and all going well a Tri-Schools music festival with the other two international schools.

Queuing for kerosene

NEPAL

The blockade continued for the first few months this year and finally was lifted a month or so ago. So most things are relatively back to normal, though there are still queues for kerosene and it can take a while to get gas bottles refilled. There was a mad panic of queues for petrol a few days back when there was a rumour that the blockade would start again.  It's difficult to know what's rumour and what's true here; last year after the earthquake we worked out which were the rumours when we never saw the tiger that had escaped from the zoo and never felt the predicted 9.5 or 13.0 earthquakes!:)

There also seems to be more difficulty now for us getting visas. KISC had some resistance to visas, with a few of us having to go a couple of times before they would allow us to have them. It's hard to say exactly why, there is suspicion that we all get paid and are therefore avoiding paying Nepal taxes. It's difficult to prove that you don't get any money! Fortunately we did get our visas. However INF has still not got their agreement with the government renewed which means some people need to leave the country, until it is sorted. And our neighbour upstairs has been unable to get her visa renewed and is having to leave for two months.  Please pray for visas here!

OTHER NEWS

I've now been in Nepal three years and while I've been back to New Zealand for short visits to see family mainly, it's time to come back for a little longer to reconnect with friends, church and supporters, so I will be back for two months during June and July which I'm looking forward to. I'll be sharing with church and INF groups about Nepal and what we are doing here....if any of you have any other groups you would like me to talk with please let me know I would be happy to come and speak.

Dog's favourite spot!

Well that's most of what's been happening, I'm still enjoying bike rides in the hills, seeing occasional glimpses of the mountains, just went to Bardia national park and saw two tigers! Coming up we are helping with a Christian Womens Conference here over the weekend, and then we (Suzie, myself and one art student) are going out to the village of our friend Dhwoj to visit. He has been supporting his village with earthquake relief efforts through raising support and providing materials to rebuild. Skill Nepal has also been supplying  training to build traditional houses in earthquake proof materials.  You can see more of the relief efforts in this area here https://www.facebook.com/Ghyachchok/.


Well I think that's about it from me, I'm looking forward to catching up when I am back in the country.

Love Debs

Please pray for:
Visas for christian foreign workers in Nepal
Restoration of fuel and gas, and end to black market
Students exams
My eyes, they get sore reading and working on the computer which makes it hard to get my work done