Saturday, January 17, 2009

Spring is coming!

The daily bursts of firecrackers, a few shops closed already so that their owners can make the sometimes long journey back to visit their families and, today at least, the warm (-ish) sunshine are all pointing to Chinese New Year and Spring Festival. The actual date depends, like Easter, on the phases of the moon and this year it’s quite early - the year of the Ox begins on January 26.
It’s a Chinese tradition to visit the family for Spring Festival, so Judy’s school is on holiday and we are planning to visit our family in UK. We fly to London via Bangkok on Tuesday, 20th. It will be great to see them all again. After a few days with Philippa and family in London, it’s back to Gloucestershire to see family and friends in Tewkesbury and Cheltenham.
Andrew Hay (it’s his flat we live in here) is back for another visit from Norway before taking his 93 year old mother on a trip to Antarctica. Andrew’s grandfather was on of the party which found the bodies of Scott and the group who died on their polar expedition. Andrew’s mother is keen to visit her father’s base hut while she still can.
Andrew is continuing his work on water purification devices for Myanmar where many people are still having to drink polluted water. Peter is continuing to assist with building the devices, although we are currently reassessing priorites for future work.
The arrival of spring means that the bees will be getting busy and Peter is hoping to have more opportunities to work with several farm projects which are keen to include beekeeping in what they do.
Sunday lunch with Andrew, Judy and a duck.

1 comment:

Simon Measures said...

It's great to keep up with your news via your blog.

Why don't the people of Mynmar just boil their water like the rest of the people of South East Asia do? Is it that boiling isn't sufficient? While living for 10 years in SEA we boiled all water for drinking for 5 minutes (at boiling point) before leaving to cool.