Hi everyone,

It is Wednesday and our much needed day off. We generally use our day off to do some errands, catch up with emails, the blog and just recover enough to finish off the rest of the week.

Saturday night we went to the puppet parade which was just wonderful. There were 9 schools involved , all of them NGO schools and all of the children were from disadvantaged families, orphans or street children. They had all made the puppets themselves with the help of lots of foreign volunteers. The person that organised the parade is English and he travels all over the world teaching children about the environment. The children were so excited and the volunteers worked them up to feverish pitch with lots of chants, drumming &c. The puppets were amazing. Hopefully you can see in the photos, there was a giant dragon, a green ghecko, a policeman, Mr toothbrush, a giant bird and several others. At the end of the parade they finished in a park and the Raffles Hotel provided a meal for them all. Then they were transported on the back of open trucks (approx 70 to a truck!) back to their villages.

We have arranged for our daughter-in-law (Theing and her mother) to come to Siem Reap next weekend from Sisophon and really looking forward to catching up with them. Have also been invited to one of the teacher's wedding on 23rd February which will be great. The wedding will be in a village about 50 kms out of Siem Reap, so it will be good to see some more of the countryside.

Our classes are going well and we now have more of a handle on where the children are at with their English. We have now split the classes into two and Barry takes the older ones and I take the younger ones. However this is not always how it works as some of the littler ones are much better than the older ones. We also have another new student at the Blind School. He is 5 years old and cute as a button. He only looks about the size of a 3 year old. His parents both have HIV.

Have a couple of other road rules to add to Barry's list and these are the ones for pedestrians.

1. When crossing the road, never look both ways. (or even one way!)

2. Close your eyes and just start walking at a steady even pace and the traffic will go around

you.
3. Never stop or you will be hit.

4. If you are hit - as a foreigner, you will automatically be in the wrong.

5. As a foreigner, you will be expected to pay any damages.

Well that's all from us. Happy Valentine's Day!.......................Lots of love Barry & Rhon