Snow...

• Well, I officially welcomed in the advent season yesterday by singing Christmas carols loudly in the shower, and then building a snowman! Yep - one of the guys from the office took us to a village in the Murree hills, which has just had its first snowfall of the year! It was very exciting and beautiful, and I made a wonderful snowman. I didn’t actually realize that we were going into the mountains, so I got a bit cold, but what is a little discomfort compared with snow and mountains :) The photo is taken from Nathaigali, the village that we visited.
  
  I spent most of last week in the office. Corry and I have been talking to more members of staff about MIED (continuing our introduction to the organisation), but I have also started some proper work, particularly dealing with documents following from the closure of one of their Battagram projects. They are still running another project there, and the team returned there late this week after being withdrawn because of security. One of the guys showed me photos of the area and it looks absolutely stunning – rivers and mountains. But then he said that just over the hill was Shangla where there is a military operation. I might wait a bit before I visit :)
  
  A couple of evenings last week I went to the girls hostel for dinner. Before I came to Pakistan I expected to find it difficult to meet many girls my age, thinking that most would be married and have families. But it is great having the girl’s hostel so close – about 8 women live there and they are all around my age. The dinners have been fab – they cooked lovely food, and have started teaching me to sing and dance Pakistani style. They also wanted me to sing them the theme tune from Titanic (and worryingly enough I remembered some of it!). But I am still getting used to cultural norms and expectations, particularly gender related. The other night I was walking back with some girls, and we went past MIED’s male hostel, and one of the guys was standing outside. I was introduced to him, and then he asked us in for a cup of tea. I said I didn’t mind, and then all the girls started laughing and dragged me away saying it was completely culturally inappropriate for women to enter the male hostel.
  
  More random things I have noticed about Pakistan:
• salt in tea is truly disgusting (though the one time I tried it I may have put a bit too much in)
• on the subject of food, loosing weight seems to be almost impossible – we only have a saucepan and a frying pan, and my lunch usually consists of cheese between 2 pieces of fried bread (no toaster), and mayonnaise (ran out of tomato ketchup). Dinner often some mixture of fried potatoes and fried veg. Exercise I have done in the last month: 0. But at least I can get weetabix here, so can feel virtuous for at least one meal in a day (though I’ve started adding nutella with it and it is so good)
• It seems that half the office comes from Chitral and the other from Gilgit, so banter about polo occurs quite frequently. But the other day they started talking about playing polo on donkeys – I really don’t know whether they were being serious but there was a lot of laughter. On the subject of donkeys apparently there is a donkey contest in Karachi that takes place every year, but I am not quite sure what it involves
• Seatbelts non existent in spite of appalling driving except on motorways, where there are police to make sure that people use them, despite motorways being wide, empty and straight in stark contrast to all other Pak roads!! (have been in 2 accidents already, tho parents don’t panic as v minor. One took place right outside the military police (!) and was fine and the other was when we were stopped and someone drove slowly into us (quite skillfully really)).
• It is imperative that I know exactly where my torch is in my room, as the last four evenings there have been electricity cuts and there has been much moaning and stubbed toes. There was a big thunderstorm the other night and the electricity went off for the whole night and the following morning, so work was fun with no light and no computers. (And no heat as our gas heater had broken as well)
• Rain is exactly the same in Mansehra as in Epsom – v wet and cold, though it seems to have been greeted with pleasure by many people as it gets rid of the dust, but personally I prefer the dust
• In spite of where we live and work being NGO central (with 65 NGOs in the space of approx 1 square mile) in total we have only seen 3 other westerners walking around the township, and when we’ve been out of the township I haven’t seen any

More photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21248968@N03/?saved=1

Once again, thank you so much for your emails, it is great hearing your news. Take care and enjoy the beginning of advent :)