One of my colleagues here, Norbu Dema, told me today that it is difficult to raise children here in Bhutan. They have no kindergartens and no daycare possibilities and often both parents work. Norbu has a little boy, 16 months old, and every morning she drops him off at her mother's house…….and so does her 3 sisters with their babies! And in a few months there will be one more because the 5.th and youngest sister is expecting a baby soon. My other close colleague, Karma, explained that he also has a son, 2 years old, but his son lives with his wife's parents 1 day away by car, so they don't see him very often. And it is like that for most young people they say. Earlier it was very common to hire nannies from India - they were good and cheap but now the government has stopped that. And Bhutanese people want too much money to do the job - parents can't afford it - so now they are left with grandparents, family and friends. Now I understand why it happens fairly often that we have a child here at the Ministry ;-)

At work I was busy preparing the next course and starting to create and describe an education for student counselors. I spent a lot of time researching "copyrights" of different materials. It is easy to find material on the Internet but not always easy to know if there is a copyright on it!

Carsten came by and asked if I wanted to go to the Khang, my old hotel, for lunch and I certainly did! We met Mr. Kaka and some new people there and it was nice to see the place again and eat my favorite tuna sandwich!

Later in the day I took a taxi to the bank to change some money and I went shopping for some clothes J Having been here before I wanted to bring some food this time ;-) So I packed a lot of protein products and some rye bread into my suitcase and not too much clothes. The idea is that I'll buy some clothes here, eat the food and thus make room in my suitcase to take my new clothes home ;-) I liked that idea - even though most clothes here are made in China or India. Luckily I am not so tall or big so I can fit the sizes they sell. Steffen would never be able to do that - he is much too tall!

At night I felt tired and relaxed with my book and a new Mahjong game on the Internet - because of the blocking of Flash I can't play my favorite "Hotshot" game on Facebook here! Oh well, it is probably good for me to get off that dependence ;-)