On Wednesday I started teaching the course for counsellors. 13 teachers from the technical institutes and from the secondary schools and Mr. Bahadur from the Ministry of Education came to the course this morning. We had a busy day getting to know each other and starting the teaching, but I think it is a very nice group of people so I look forward to continuing the course. We only have 3 days this time and that isn't very much. Life is very busy again because I teach till 4.30 pm and prepare at night - but it is also interesting. Even so I am starting to look forward to going home and having some summer vacation soon ;-)

The weather is very hot at the moment and even indoors it is so hot that we need to use a fan. The course for counsellors is conducted in the same conference hall as the master trainer course in March when we were SO cold - what a difference from March to May!

Going back in the afternoon I passed one of the automobile shops where they sell new cars - or should I say "sold"? It was strange to look in through the windows because there were no cars at all! 2 people sat in the window and watched life in the streets, but no cars. The government has increased the taxes on cars - maybe this is the reason there are no more cars for sale? Or maybe the government has stopped the import of cars completely to avoid money leaving the country? I know there is a shortage of gas also right now. Most of the gas stations have no gas to sell. Gas is bought in India and probably the government is also restricting the import of fuel.
I read in the newspaper that from June 5.th all Tuesdays will be car free days from 8 am till 6 pm, which means that people are not allowed to drive in Thimphu. Only busses, ambulances and half of the taxis are allowed to drive. They wrote that this will be good for environment and that the Bhutanese people will benefit from the exercise by walking. But at the end of the article they also mentioned that saving gas this way could pay for running a school for a whole year. I believe that this is the real reason - they want to save gas and thus avoiding buying so much gas from India. People here are not happy about it - they will have a lot of problems getting to work on time, fetching kids from schools etc.

Aksel is very busy measuring the ministry building and calculating how expensive it would be to install solar heating. Apparently it will be much too expensive because the building is so big, but we'll see what he comes up with on Friday when we are to give our debriefings from the courses - and Aksel will also evaluate the idea with solar heating :-)