Nepalese refugees blaze a trail in Phila.

The alarm clock's 3 a.m. ring awakened 50-year-old Rudra Kuikel and his eldest daughter, Thagi, 22, in their lightly furnished South Philadelphia apartment.

An hour later they were in a van along with other immigrants headed for the Swedesboro packaged-food plant where father and daughter, working side by side, chopped lettuce for eight hours, netting $50 each after taxes and paying $5 each for transportation.

The Kuikel family, ethnic Nepali Hindus who once lived in Bhutan, includes wife Jasodha, son Indra, 19, and daughter Tulasha, 13. They fled Bhutan in 1992 after new citizenship laws there made it impossible for them to remain in the small nation, population 691,000, which straddles India's border with China and where Rudra Kuikel was a subsistence farmer growing rice and corn.

"At first we thought we would be able to return. But time kept going on, and it became clear we would not," said Kuikel, who came to Philadelphia with his family through a resettlement program in August, experienced snow for the first time last month, and in a recent interview removed his woolen cap and proudly replaced it with his flame-stitched cotton hat of Nepalese dhaka cloth.

About 103,000 ethnic Nepalese fled or were forced out of Bhutan in the 1990s into the limbo of seven U.N.-run refugee camps in eastern Nepal. Critics have called Bhutan's policy ethnic cleansing. Bhutan's prime minister has called it "regularization" of an illegal-immigration problem that had been left unbridled for too long.

Almost two decades after entering the camps where they lived in thatched huts with no indoor plumbing, the Kuikels and about 20 other recently arrived Bhutanese refugee families are in Philadelphia, learning to use seat belts, that red lights mean stop, and that burned-out lightbulbs can be replaced without having to replace the entire fixture. They are also sporting closed shoes instead of their unusual flip-flops as they adjust to the cold and a whole lot more.

They are part of an international resettlement effort begun two years ago that sent 17,612 Bhutanese to the United States, 846 to Australia, 674 to Canada, 294 to New Zealand, and about 600 to a group of countries in northern Europe.

The Kuikels expressed a preference for resettlement in the United States because of its superior medical technology. Just a month before their scheduled departure they learned that Philadelphia would be their new home.

Efforts to step up the program created by the independent International Office of Migration could bring an additional 200 Bhutanese families to Philadelphia over the next few years, their local advocates say.

As legally admitted refugees, Bhutanese in the United States get one-time federal grants of $450 per person to help with their first month's rent and other necessities. In the beginning, they are eligible for food stamps, Medicare, and cash assistance through welfare, and they receive additional assistance from their resettlement agencies. Under the terms of their resettlement agreements, however, they are expected to become self-sufficient within eight months of arrival - a tall order, especially in the current economy. After eight months, their benefits dry up.

"American culture is rooted in 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps,' " said Juliane Ramic, social services director of the Nationalities Services Center, the Philadelphia agency that coordinated the Kuikels' resettlement. "The Bhutanese, as a group, are really doing it, finding jobs in a bad economy, moving forward, and learning as quickly as they possible can." It is only a matter of time, she said, before they "move up on the labor ladder" to better-paying jobs.

Though most of the Bhutanese families here live in South Philadelphia near Fourth Street and Snyder Avenue, several were resettled by Lutheran Children and Family Service in Northeast Philadelphia.

Ludy Soderman, director of multilingual family support for the Philadelphia School District, met the Kuikel family at an orientation open house. Now Indra is a math whiz, taking Advanced Placement calculus as a senior at South Philadelphia High School and aiming for college. Tulasha is a bright but quiet eighth grader at George Sharswood Elementary School.

"Life here is not easy" for them, Soderman said. "But you can see these kids have the light of learning in their eyes."

The office of multilingual support maintains language assistance and hotlines in Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, French, Khmer, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. In an effort to address the needs of the Bhutanese refugees, the office last year added Gregory Oliveri, an American fluent in Nepali.

In addition to having to overcome the language barrier, Oliveri said, the Bhutanese feel the pressure of being pioneers in Philadelphia. Unlike the Chinese, Russians, Vietnamese, Mexicans, and other immigrant groups who have enclaves in the city, he said, the Bhutanese are new here in every sense and working "without a safety net."

For now, the Kuikels shop in the Asian markets on Washington Avenue, though their food favorites, they say, are more Indian-inspired than Chinese. And they rejoiced when the Cambodian proprietor of a corner store near Seventh and Jackson Streets was able to order and provide them with chiura, the thick, flattened rice that is a staple of their diet.

Rudra Kuikel said that he hoped someday to have a house and car, but that for now he was happy just to have secured his family's future.

Serious Indra has his eyes on the prize. "I want to stay in the United States, get a good job, and create a higher standard of living for my family," he said. "I want to be someone."