Monday, December 24, 2007

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Hi All
Just a quickie to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year.

I'm sure you are all busy getting everything sorted for tomorrow, we are just about ready here, we'll be heading for the airport around 7.00am and Christmas dinner will be what ever they throw at us on the plane!

The little drawing (left) arrived in the post today from my Tibetan foster daughter, Kundu Lhamo.
Kundu goes to a Tibetan school in Dharamasala, India. She is one of the lucky ones, her family managed to escape over the Himalayas to the safety of Indian, although she is growing up estranged from her home land and her family, she is getting a good education and will hopefully have a bright future.
It just seems sad that we will spend Christmas so close to Tibet yet she will most likely never set foot in her own country.
Poppy & Lu have left a Christmas video message for everyone on Poppy's blog, check it out www.poppysplanet.blogspot.com/
Happy Christmas
Carri x

Monday, December 17, 2007

WE GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just had an email from the New Zealand immigration office, our business plan has been APPROVED and we're in, yay!!!!!!!!
Talk about efficient, it is less than three weeks since we submitted the application! Now we have to send our passports to the immigration office at the end of January to get our visas and permits stamped in them - that's about a week after we get back from Nepal. So we are going to land back in Singapore and have to arrange a container shipment from home, a container shipment from work, flights, sort out banking, bills, car, finish packing etc. Then the kids start school a week later and we have nowhere to live and a business to establish. Oh my God this is going to be super stressful - help!

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Injections

Just been to have our Hepatitis A and Typhoid jabs, it would have been a quick and easy procedure had it not been for the children. They behaved like a pair of overgrown babies and both of them screamed the surgery down. It took so long to calm them that we ended up getting a parking ticket!

One thing I will miss about Singapore when we leave, is the health service. Everything is just so simple and straightforward. Almost every shopping area has a health centre, if you need to see a doctor you just walk in, there is no need to be registered or make an appointment. You do have to pay but it is often not much more than an average prescription charge in the UK, and the hospitals are just something else. Forget all notion of what you expect a hospital to be, you would swear that you were in a five star hotel. Vast reception areas with lavish marble floors and columns, huge floral displays and uniformed doormen, the hospital we go to near work, Raffles International, even has a grand piano in the entrance area! don't ask me why, it is bizarre. My favorite is the women's hospital, the car park is painted bubblegum pink and all of the nursing staff wear pink uniforms, it's like a toy hospital, you half expect doctor 'Barbie' to come and examine you!
In Singapore there are two national obsessions, shopping & eating, and they don't let a trivial thing like a life threatening illness get in the way! Most of the hospitals have a shopping mall and a varied selection of restaurants on site. The hilarious thing is that in the restaurant area there is invariably a branch of MacDonald's, in a hospital!! still I guess it's good for business :)

Carri x

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Christmas in the Himalayas

Firstly, apologies to everyone for my lack of emails, I have been so bad at keeping in touch lately. With all the turmoil here with the immigration applications I am afraid everything else has been taking a back seat.
We got a letter earlier this week from New Zealand immigration just letting us know that they had processed the application and requesting copies of mine & Steve's birth certificates. We are just about to go to the solicitors and get those certified so we can forward them to Wellington. They reckon that the application will be allocated to a case officer in 2-4 weeks, so it is going to be mid January before anybody even looks at it.
We have spent the last few weeks just going round in circles trying to decide what to do next, do we go to New Zealand and wait for the outcome there or do we hang on in Singapore. Staying here is the most logical choice but with nearly everything packed in boxes now and all the furniture wrapped for shipping it is pretty depressing. So in our usual impulsive manner we have decided to do neither and we are heading for Nepal instead!

We fly to Kathmandu at 9.00am Christmas morning, we will be coming back sometime late January. Our outward luggage allowance will be mostly taken up by boxes of clothing and toys that we are taking to one of the many orphanages out there. This is all stuff that the kids have grown out of in the four years we have been out here, it seems such a shame to throw it all out when there are children so badly in need. Before you all think that I have turned into Mother Theresa, I have to admit to an ulterior motive - travelling out to Nepal for nearly a month with no clothes means that I have to buy them while I'm there!!!! and as it is Nepal I will be in my scruffy element :)

I was a little concerned as to how our kids would react to 'giving up' Christmas, we have not been able to decorate the house this year as everything is packed and we don't have a clue where! Christmas presents have been restricted to one or two tiny gifts that can be carried in hand luggage, and now Christmas Day will be spent in transit. However I am really proud of them, they have taken it all in their stride and are really fired up by the idea of giving rather than getting.

There are a few other things that we plan to do while we are there, as well as all the obvious tourist stuff and the amazing photographic opportunities, it will also be a chance to visit Kopan Monastery which is the heart of the FPMT, founded by our beloved Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa (Follow the links if you are interested) Also earlier this year we started working with a factory in Kathmandu that is producing the most gorgeous corsetry for us, so it will also be a chance to meet them in person and check out the working conditions in the factory.

So now we've got stacks to do before we go, it's back to the hospital for a load of injections, I don't even know if we need a visa for Nepal, better get on with some research! I promise I will be in touch with everyone before we leave.

Namaste
Carri x

Lama Yeshe - Portrait available from http://www.heartofthemoon.com/



Lama Zopa - Singapore 2007 - Taken by Carri