The children have just headed back to school after their winter vacation and now have only two more months before the end of the academic year. Bishnu is working extremely hard in preparation for his School Leaving Certificate Exams which begin at the beginning of March. Bishnu will be the first of VSN’s children to take his SLC and we wish him all the luck in the world and know he will do himself and us proud. He plans to continue his education in what is known as +2 here in Nepal, studying arts subjects.

In the last 6 months the BFCH kids are now the happy recipients of a new and long awaited solar hot water system, giving them hot water in the bathrooms (sun depending), and making showering in the cold season a much, much more pleasant experience!

Back in the summer the grade 10 students organised a programme for Teachers Day, as well as the graduating SLC students and Bishnu lead both these programmes and apparently did a fantastic job. Alongside this, Suresh participated in an inter-school table tennis tournament and although he didn’t win, he represented the school well.

Sports have had a reoccurring theme with the BFCH kids. The volunteers organised a big Olympic style sports day for all the children. They ran, jumped, threw, bounced and much, much more. Ingenuity was the name of the game, and bamboo sticks became javelins and rocks shot puts! Alongside this, British Military fitness classes have become an early morning institution at BFCH. This not only keeps the children mobile and fit, but enables them to work up a genuine appetite for their morning daal bhat. All the exercises have been written up on a big poster so the kids can do them by themselves when there are no volunteers, and strangely enough they enjoy it so much they are keeping up with the routine!

The children have now also created a badminton court for themselves on the main grassy section of the garden and can be found playing every morning before daal bhat and after chores and homework are finished, in order to try and keep themselves warm! They are now awaiting with bated breath the grand opening of their new table tennis table (affectionately named Deliah), due to happen this Sunday (30th Jan) that has been beautifully hand crafted by two of our maintenance volunteers.

Maintenance at BFCH has been ongoing throughout 2010. A new retaining wall along a section on the front boundary of the property (behind the chicken coup) needed building, as the soil was eroding away, aided and abetted by a large and vicious pig and a whole load of hungry goats. The wall foundations were dug, then re-dug and then re-dug again, partly due to the pig’s penchant for filling it in again when backs were turned and partly due to some torrential pre monsoon rains. After discussions with the pig’s owner (in which I do believe bacon butties were mentioned!) and a change in the weather, our maintenance volunteers (affectionately known as Maintenance Monkeys) were finally able to complete the trench and have the building materials delivered. Everyone including the kids and homes volunteers got roped into helping, in order to keep up with the builders. The end result is a beautifully built, strong, pig and goat proof wall on top of which the wire fencing was repositioned to keep the children in and the pig and goats out.