Day 190

Christmas is nearly here and we are loving Kathmandu's version. We've made the most of it, going to every daft local and ex-pat Christmas event and basically chucking money at the problem so the girls have a nice time. We went to a children's party and enjoyed the hired plushie panda getting a kicking from the local kids - see photos. I read Brian Keenan's An Evil Cradling and have been completely enthralled. Rufus has taken up Tae Kwon Do and is never around anymore.

We have been away a full six months now. Mostly travelling, sometimes staying still, fighting, crying, laughing and living. I defy any family unit to survive what we have done without major difficulty. Rufus and I worked out we have enjoyed two hours babysitting in 6 months. Nobody manages this! There have been amazing but stressful times. So life has slowed down somewhat and we feel ready to leave Kathmandu. I think the girls have learned a lot from experiencing a local Asian primary school, and we have all appreciated the luxury of our former life in the West - living with cold water, power cuts, poor quality food, pollution, disease, hostile climate and real, present street poverty. I have learned some things about myself - some good, some bad. I have truly missed the people who love me and who make me feel valid, alive, good, important and happy. Rufus has had to cope with life-changing health problems - and has done so with a fascinating mix of anger, irrationality, maturity and humour. We made some wonderful, life-long friends - people who truly know what we have lived through and have the same experiences. We said a tearful goodbye to the Smiths, an Australian family we have grown to know and love. A number of private, shared jokes have passed between us all and I hope they last the test of time. They gave us lovely Christmas presents when they left - a riddle book for Clover and a Man Booker prize winner for Fern. This is the plight of the eldest child - clever, responsible, sensible (my sister) and younger child - reckless, carefree, precocious - (me). So Fern gets the good book as she has declared and proved her love of reading to our friends - Clover gets the 'fun' book as she has demonstrated her love of silliness. Fern was definitely grateful - but her eyes wandered constantly to the book of joyous riddles and it felt like a metaphor for later life. I spend my time reading 'joke books' - occasionally straying into serious literature, but with one eye constantly on the good times; living a life of nonsense whilst occasionally nodding appreciatively towards responsibility and maturity.

I've had to home school for weeks, teaching Clover long division using prawn crackers (the trick is she can eat them if she gets it right) and teaching Fern her times tables by storming off when she gets it wrong and forcing her to read To Kill a Mockingbird and then explaining in pained depth why we don't use the word ******' anymore. Fern and Clover have loved and hated each other with equal passion. They have shown fury, resilience and bravery. Haven't we all? Kathmandu has had some disappointments - we have made mistakes. We found it hard to settle and reverted to the very things we had hoped to escape - the bad habits, the bickering, the lack of contentment. We didn't get the voluntary work we hoped for - and the bits we did do, for months, we felt undervalued and unappreciated. But we made some money teaching English, which helped. Rufus got sick which was HRNDS.

But this is a marvellous city in a marvellous country - a wonderful, magical place, full of interesting, fascinating and innocent people. It is a place generally untouched by Western values - even the good ones. It is not always a happy place, but it offers so much to the rest of the world in terms of learning. It has real family values, a genuine sense of identity, a happy, hopeful population. There is no bitterness, no government dependency, no confusion over potential future choices. There is a desire for hard work, for self-improvement, a real love of children and the elderly. It also offers poverty, corruption and pollution in extreme quantities. It doesn't deal with the disabled. It has a disaffected youth. It doesn't even have an organised political system. It is f***ed up in so many ways. I will never forget Kathmandu or Nepal and I will think about this place every day, for one reason or another, for the rest of my life. But we have made plans to move on and we feel much better about that decision. We can't wait to see Cambodia and Vietnam. Hope they've got prawn crackers.