Summer has well and truely arrived here in Pokhara and the temperatures are starting to get a bit uncomfortable. The seasons here are marked by the fruit that is available and one of the most eagerly awaited events in the morris household came a couple of weeks ago - the start of mango season. They are expensive and not very tasty to start with, but they soon become dirt cheap and very tasty and are served with almost every meal! Watermelons are also brought up from India and are one of Evie's favorites.













It was great to have Dave and Susie Kretchmer to stay last week as they take a month off from their work in South India to do some travelling. We had hoped to go trekking with them, but Bod is starting to make his presence felt and we decided to have a relaxing weekend instead.









Elle and Evie have both been a bit unwell recently, but right now we are all well and happy. Evie's potty training is making progress, but still a bit sporadic. She is learning to count, but struggling the confusion of two languages at once.... 1 to 5 usually goes something like this: one, dui (Nepali for 2), twee, four, nine. She also loves singing, with her favorite song being a mixture of Baa baa black sheep, twinkle twinkle little star and Aajaako din (this is the day that the lord has made in Nepali).

You may have heard the news about the canyoning disaster in New Zealand recently: six children and their teacher died when the river they were in flooded suddenly.



It was shocking news for us because the teacher who died, Tony McClean, had recently spent five months with us here in Pokhara. He was a great guy and in the short time we knew him he was a running partner, guitar teacher and good friend.




It is so hard to know why this happened and what good can possibly come from it, but we have to trust that somehow God will be able to work through this.

Today is election day here in Nepal and has been a holiday, with all roads and most shops
closed. All has been very peaceful here in Pokhara which we are grateful for. These are a few pics from the polling booths...
















This is Pokhara's main shopping street normally crammed full of buses, motorbikes and street sellers. Today even the stray cows seemed to have stayed away.























A happy voter: nost people seemed excited to have the chance to vote and were optimistic about positive change coming from the process.















Polling started at 7.00 in the morning and this was the scene by 8.00 - quite different from the ghostly quiet village halls I remember from voting in the UK!!












Many people queued for three hours in hot sun to cast their first vote in nine years. One quote I heard was 'we are not worried about the election process - that is fine. It is the results that will cause trouble'!!
















People were keen to cast their votes and then get away from the crowds just in case there was any trouble, and by mid afternoon all the polling stations I saw were empty. Just as well that the roads were closed - this station was in the middle of a normally busy junction.
















There were plenty of bystanders, including armed police....





















... and 'independent observers' - apparently there were over 100,000 of them around the country.





















Evie doing her own election monitoring with finger paints....

While the UK has had late season snow, we have had some fantastic bright sunny weather in the last couple of days, with incredible views of the mountains. These are a few of the photos we took this morning.

































Evie is on good form, learning new words every day. She has also started singing a mixture of Nepali and English songs. Elle is growing fast, but keeping well. We borrowed a little scanner last night and managed to track down the baby's heartbeat - very exciting, but I guess you had to be there!!

All well here in Pokhara. Election fever has been building over the last couple of weeks as it finally dawned on people that the planned polls were not going to be cancelled yet again. There has been little trouble in this part of the country, but not much peace - taxis have been driving up and down the roads tossing leaflets out of the windows and urging people over a loudspeaker. There have been a series of rallies held by each of the main parties with crowds of people bussed in from the surrounding villages to show their support. This photo is of a Maoist rally near our office. Other parts of the country have not been so lucky with many outbreaks of violence between supporters of different parties.

It seems that monitoring elections is big business. The election commission have licensed 28 international organisations and around 150 national organisations to monitor the poll. 700 international observers and 100,000 from national organisations will be deployed to make sure the polls are fair.

What they actually hope to achieve is not clear. The Maoists have stated openly that they will win the election, and that if they fail to do so it will be because of fraud. If they claim to have been cheated out of a fair result, there are fears that serious violence will return to the country. Even people who do not support the party hope that they will win just enough seats to keep them in peaceful dialogue. All roads will be closed on election day and there have been bans on the sale of alcohol and carrying of knives, and there have been rumours that the phone network will be shut down all in an attempt to prevent trouble breaking out.




















Election posters