Today started at 6.00am with a hasty shower and the daily hair wash - I am not sure why as by 6.30 it (my hair) was inside a helmet. By 6.45 we were at Samrong Tong DOE, it was surprisingly busy. I was expecting education to be there but all departments start at 6.45 with the flag raising ceremony.

At 7.00am we left on a 20Km+ journey to a school near the mountains (the DOE's words). Once we left highway 4 it was lovely. I am really pleased that I know Bunthorn and trust his driving because we were following two young men on their motos!! It was an exciting and beautiful journey. The nearer we got to the school the more pleased I was to be on a moto. A car would have had to have been 4 wheel drive and very slow. With Marc we can weave from one side to the other finding the smoothest route. The mountain proved to be a small hill but it had a pagoda half way up and a lily lake at the bottom!!

We arrived at the school by 7.45am to find lesson one almost over and the rest of the monitoring team already there.

On Thursday VSO had worked with the POE to provide training for the DOE DTMT (District Training and Monitoring Team) so that they could go out and monitor schools. We hoped this would be the first of many such visits.

So there we were at another school in the back of beyond, with only a few houses in view, that provides education for 560 children. Where they all come from I am never really sure - but the furthest distance any of them travel to that particular school is 3km. As usual the children were great and we had a lovely morning.

I had decided that we would have a quiet afternoon and had dedicated tomorrow to getting all my reports done. However at 1.55pm I had a phone call from VSO - could I arrange meetings tomorrow with parents of pre-school children, teachers of pre-school children and the Early Childhood Education sector of the POE. VSO want to put in support for early education and the deadline for the bid is the end of June. So of course I said yes - and there went our quiet afternoon, actually to be honest there went Bunthorn's quiet afternoon!!

All is arranged and instead of writing reports tomorrow I am off to visit another school in the back of beyond, down another unmade road, surrounded by beautiful scenery hopefully to meet parents of happy pre-school children.