Celebrate!

Forgive me father for I have sinned - it has been 2 weeks since my last confession!!!

Yes - sorry about the slack posting over the last couple of weeks - no excuse really except that we've been dead busy and we actually have a social life!!! At last!!!

Well since I last wrote something all sorts have happened.

The Sunday before last I went on a superb bike ride with some new found friends. Martin, Mike and Catriona... we headed out of Kathmandu and into the hills and I actually noticed that over the past 2 months I've gotten a little fitter... We went up a killer hill which totally defeated me on my first ride out and I actually managed to get to the top without falling off, having to walk or blowing a gasket and sweating like a pig!!! So progress is being made!

As if that wasn't good enough, Martin (the keenest and strongest of the lot) took us up the hill of death where all but 1 of us had to walk our bikes to the top... but it was worth it with 30 full minutes of downhill!!! Where would you find that in Ireland? Anyway, attached are a few snaps of the trip courtesy of Mike:

It is soo good to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city and discover some of the villages and stuff - and then the sun comes out and it's even better...

Anyway, last Wednesday was my birthday - yep I'm now as old as George!!! I suppose it's normal but as a new 36 year old I struggled with the idea of getting kitchen appliances for my birthday - it's not really very adrenalin is it??? We had decided that my birthday presented as good an opporunity as any to fork out for a juice and blender so we can make the most of the cheap and delicious fruit here and at the same time hopefully convince Ollie that fruit is good... Thankfully our tests so far have proved successful - who needs innocent smoothies anyway? However Ollie is yet to be convinced!!!

George out did herself by organising a total surprise birthday meal - and the kids even kept it a secret!!! We were all heading out to the Roadhouse for pizzas and the kids kept saying that we were going to have a nice quiet family meal and then when we got there it was anything but quiet! 16 kids, 10 or so parents, about 10 pizzas, cake and lots of shouting and cheering!!! Good effort - totally the worng night to go to the Roadhouse if you were not in our group. You know what I mean? I felt awful but we had a great time and George did brilliantly!

Last weekend we had all the parent and kids from Toby's class round to the house as George is the class rep for Year 2. It turned out that about a uarter of the class turned up but there were some really ineresting parents there so it was good fun and a good chance to see outside the usual missionary circle.

Then finally the last few days have been spent witnessing the cultural spectacle which is the UMN family celebration. What started out as a conference for the expat workers here has evolved into a fully Nepali programme of games, presentations, sketches, dances and songs reminisent of a Scripture Union camp talent contest! What a laugh!!! All UMN employees and their familes came to Kathmandu for 3 days (actually a lot of them are based here but travel to remote parts of Nepal for their work) to learn more about UMNm it's work and vision and create a family firm type of atmosphere. There were scores of meetings and presentations, bible studies and worship focused on sharing The Word and current activites of UMN. But what a luagh. Imagine the last night show from an SU houseparty and you are pretty much their. Nepalis love audience participation and the simpler the format the more fun everyone will have. They played musical chaires for 2 hours! 3 man tug of war nearly brought the house down! Darts - where everyone threw at dart and those lucky enough to hit the board got a sweet had everyone lining up in an effort to prove they could do it! Anyway it was a blast. They even had a CSSM style programme for the kids which was brilliant.

It was all going swimmingly and then at lunch, George was stuggling with 5 plates of rice and curried veg (while I was doing our team proud in the corporate tug of war competition) when she scooped up some rice only to find that the biggest fattest grain was actually a maggot!!! Still wriggling!!! and like any good missionary she picked it out and left it to wriggle it's way off somewhere else!!! Urrrgghhh... after that it was a little difficult to eat our rice as we had to keep double taking single grains to see if they were in fact edible!!!

Anyway, it's all good.

Tomorrow we're off for 2 weeks to Pokhora for some trekking. It should be brilliant. We're off on the Royal Trek (so named as this is where Prince Charles was taken on his trip to Nepal) and then on a language trek to Ghandrung where we will have to speak solid Nepali for 4 days - arrghhh!!!

OK take it easy,

Grenville