Today's topic at the course for master trainers was: "Groups" and we had great fun working with puzzles like "The Broken Squares". The trainers participating have a great sense of humor and that is wonderful. Often one of them will act or make some fun during the breaks. One of them, Mr. Tshering has a way of moving his hands over his eyes so he gets to look like a monster, another one taught us how to make origami - small boxes. I really like every single one of these guys!

Every morning miss Kinley will come and pick me up from the Bhutan Suites and this morning she had her sister in the car with her. She introduced us and guess what…. Her sister's name is also Kinley! And it doesn't stop here because they have a brother who is called… RIGHT - Kinley! 3 children in the same family with the same name. They have different surnames - Bhutanese people always give their children 2 names but they have no inherited surname like we do. They just have 2 names. I asked them if their parents call them by their second name then - no, actually their parents use pet names for all of them. It sounded very confusing to me :-)

It is blowing A LOT these days. Sometimes it is so much that we can hardly hear what we are saying in class. Ok - the building is very leaky and the curtains are flying out from the windows when the wind is really strong, so that might be part of the explanation. Looking out of the window today I saw a lot of rocks on the roofs around here, and when I asked I got the answer that it was the old way of building in Bhutan. They use rocks to keep the roofs in place! I wonder what a carpenter would think about that at home. I took a couple of pictures of it.

The fire has been put out now. In one of the Bhutanese newspapers they wrote about it:
"About 800 acres of blue pine forest was damaged by the forest fire that raged for the last three days on the hills of Namseling and Ramtokto in Thimphu.
The fire, which started around 2pm on Saturday, was contained at 4:30pm yesterday, by more than 400 people, who had come to battle the fire, with their pack lunches, twigs, water bags, spades and racks.
No motorable road goes to the area where the fire, fanned by strong winds, climbed up to for the last three days."

I am just happy it has been put out!