Spring

Spring has arrived in a big way in the last few weeks; turning a bare and brown city into a garden. There are trees everywhere in Bishkek and the transformation has been fast and gorgeous. The park outside our kitchen window is bursting with colour again and we recently found out that tulips are native to Kyrgyzstan and grow wild in valleys here.

Jim is back on his bike and enjoying some longer rides at the weekends. This coming Saturday he is joining a local group for a 50km cycle event. He has also started work again on his MA dissertation after a 10 month break whilst we got settled, and is looking forward to finishing it (which he has to do by the end of June!)

We celebrated Easter by watching the sun rise over Bishkek a few weeks ago. And we are still enjoying some special Easter breads and egg decorating this week, because Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday.

For Oasis the coming month is looking busy in a number of ways, not least with new arrivals: two of our colleagues have just had their first child, a little boy and all doing well. The Walkers, the family that were evacuated back in September with a very ill one month old are returning soon, so we are all very much looking forward to that. Also, today, a short-term volunteer arrived to join our team for six months. Meanwhile we continue to make progress with the necessary changes to help Oasis empower vulnerable young people. To be honest, much of this would make pretty uninteresting reading for a blog (the development of financial systems, strategic planning, fundraising, staff training and so on) but we are seeing progress and are encouraged at the way things are developing.