Tea-3 days...

"Enthusiastic 3-12 year olds, and they're so excited about your arrival!" So are we. I'm currently sitting in a sea of fluorescent pipe-cleaners, fuzzy-felt alphabet letters and 'goggly eyes' (whatever they are)... Off to India for a cultural career break, and I'm reduced to trying to invent the kind of games that I suspect come very naturally to the primary school teacher or diligent mother. Sarah is grinning - it's a lovely mess, and she's full of inventing puppets, games and various activities to occupy exactly my kind of juvenile mind - a match made in heaven indeed. We arrive, all being well, in Darjeeling District (where we're assured that the only drink available is tea, and a curiously powerful liquor which is sucked through a bamboo straw) on Saturday for a couple of months of teaching, absorbing the culture and living and working with the local Indians and Nepalese. It promises to offer all of the delights, surprises and of course frustrations of India, and with a bit of luck we'll take you on our journey with us. That said, it's taken our contact out there 6 months to send an email courtesy of the sporadic electricity, so it might not be as often as we'd like. Please be patient. We'll add a map soon, but for now imagine the Alps meets Tea Plantations meets developing world villages all framed by the awesome backdrop of the Eastern end of the Himalayas and the mystical Kangchengjunga (one of many spellings of the word!), the fifth highest mountain on the planet and highest in India. To the West is the charming Nepal, to the East secretive Bhutan, and to the North, Sikkim, one of the jewels in the Indian inventory. More about all of these no doubt anon. In the meantime, see you at Christmas, put your Pashmina and textile orders in early, and enjoy our blog! Lots of love, Giles and Sarah x