First day at work - and still some jetlag to recover from ;-) Aksel and I met with Carsten outside the ministry at 9 am and all 3 of us went to the Department for Human Resources (also called DHR for short) which is where we work and where I have my desk when in Thimphu. The morning was spent with presentations - first we were greeted by Chief Sangay who went through our program with us and afterwards we had tea with the director, Sonam Rinchen.

Then we went to the bank together with Karma Dorji to change some money and get some Bhutanese NU in our hands. It turned out that they have got a new place - big and fancy - and we were lucky enough that there weren't many people in the queue for "Foreign Exchange". There were VERY long queues for withdrawing money - apparently the government has put a restriction on how much a person can withdraw each day - 10.000 NU, which is a little more than 1000 Danish Kr. (135 Euro). This means that people have to go the bank more often and voila: long queues.

Later Aksel spent some time studying the ministry building because part of his job here will be to assess the cost of installing central heating in it - using solar cells! If that happens it will be the very first building with central heating in Bhutan! And he also went with Karma Dorji to see some half built new buildings and how they install water and drains. I started working on the competence assessment for counselors which I am going to use at the end of this stay.

It felt nice returning to the ministry - everybody welcomed me back and it was almost as coming back to AARHUS TECH after having been here. How lucky I am to be able to feel so welcome every time I go back and forth this year ;-) After work Aksel and I went downtown Thimphu to do a little sightseeing and shopping. As usual I wanted to buy some carrots to take back to the hotel and eat during the next few days. I also bought a new traditional jacket (silver color) - the ones the Bhutanese girls use with their kira. I have decided to be the connecting link between Europe and Bhutan - wearing my European long skirts and a Bhutanese jacket for work.

Then we went to the Jumolhari to have dinner. It is such a nice place and I know Steffen liked it very much so I wanted to introduce it to Aksel as well. And I think he liked it, too.

After that, jetlag set in and we took a taxi back to the Khang and fell asleep - Aksel didn't even hear the dogs so I guess he must have been tired - as usual they own the nights here and bark and have fun all night - every night ;-)