Namaste to all our friends-and- relations from Jill. Look I can blog!! No hands or stabilisers.!!

We did so much visiting and talking and meeting and smiling yesterday that today simply had to be a quieter day for us to collect our thoughts, which Viv gives every appearance of having done most successfully. She has already got up to next Wednesday with her lesson planning. My schoolwork is at the moment less clear but I am glad to have had the chance to see Viv's and read through some of the texts too.

There is absolutely no possibility of my asking my school for resource help. Poverty and need are real. There were some women from a working party in Patan there on the openday yesterday. They brought clothes for distribution and a few bags of pencils and exercise books to be given as prizes and attendance encouragement....

I am impressed by the journey on foot that I get to make to work too. Its stunningly beautiful and rural. Viv has a bus journey to school and yesterday we were invited to try driving the car from the Cottage. Viv drove with confidence and the horn.I was less impressive and Sem kept pushing his foot deeper into the carpet. He flinched every time I moved out of second gear and still does so whenever he thinks of it. It was fun.!!

This morning I watched the women returning with brimming baskets of Buffalo fodder. So laden you could not see much of them. (The women not the buffalo). The women later came home with the same baskets this time laden to the brim with maize. Some of their menfolk are abroad in the gulf. This is not an easy life. Yet we have still been welcomed with smiles and offers of tea everywhere.

We do have photographs to post and also a card reader. We need to get on and do that, don't we?

More to follow,
Jill x