Kathmandu

Today was my first working day at CWIN. I was given a background brief of my first project. I will be working a programme with Responding to Conflict in London on Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups. My role is to create a Baseline report and Research Report on the CAAFAG. At the moment I have to read background documents to familiarise myself with the issues. The staff of CWIN are all very friendly and enjoy taking breaks to have long chats about the culture in Kathmandu and the city itself. They're making me feel at home as they are very easy relaxed happy people.

Today I moved from the Amar hotel to a flat in Sanepa which is a quieter less polluted area of Kathmandu. My flat is about a 40 minute walk from CWIN. The giggly HR office Pooja lives nearby and has told me she'll come round and we'll go to her husbands restaurant. I found the room through a friend of a girlfriend of a friend from Geneva. At the moment I'm living with David who works at United Nations Development Programme and is from North Carolina and Daniel who's French and works for an NGO, he likes making chocolate mousse from scratch late at night. Jessica who also just arrived in Kathmandu and works at UNDP will move in tomorrow night.

Last night I went with David and Jessica to a restaurant near where we live with 5 other people, most from the UNDP and the states, one UK and one French/German girl Svenia who works at an NGO. It was really nice evening getting to know everyone and this weekend I'm going to Chitwan National Park with Svenia and Jessica to explore and see the Elephants.

This is a view from the roof of the Amar hotel in the morning, in the distance you can see the hills surrounding Kathmandu and very old temples on the hills in the middle distance.