Happy Easter Easter is not a holiday in Kyrgyzstan so Good Friday and today, Easter Monday, are working days. But Rodney made hot cross buns and the sun shone. On Easter Sunday we sat in the garden enjoying the daffodils and almond blossom.

Packing is underway for our departure at the end of the month and the pile for the jumble sale is growing. We won't have a lot to ship this time round thank goodness.

The latest news about the University of Central Asia, just brought from headquarters, is that the three campuses in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will now be completed at the earliest by 2015. Then the graduate and undergraduate programmes will begin and the first students will complete their studies nearly 20 years after the university was established in 2000. It's quite a different philosophy to the Emirates where the educational programme in the colleges started immediately and only when these were established were permanent facilities built.