Hello all!

We have made it to Ho Kham. Our home for the next 3 weeks. It was our first day teaching yesterday and it was fantasitic! Such a buzz! im teaching the secondary kids, Rik is teaching the Primary's! The kids are as beautiful as the school itself! The school is on the edge of the pristine and still Mekong river, with huge blue Loas mountains painted like a backdrop behind. It is a small village and when i ride my pink moped to school i get beeps from all the cars and 'Hello's' from all the students.. We are beautiful white people apparently haha. I have never felt so loved being white wow! Maybe i should stop tanning... NO NEVER! baha.

The first was fantastic. I taught 3 classes and Rikki the crazy cat taught 5! Big first day! For lunch we ate what appeared to look like noodles with dogs balls. Very enticing. I ate all mine.. however all the teachers left theirs for reasons beyond us. Maybe this was my first mistake in Hoh kam.

Things that went wrong on my first day:

- Woke up

- Zero the dog put red mud all over my white pants

- I was told i needed to iron my shirt and trousers before i went to school

- I leaked... sorry for the discription.. but i had white pants. All i could do was laugh

- Taking the wrong turn home.. We got lost.

What a day.. Today was better in the way of luck. I wore a colourful skirt! Not white :)

My family is beautiful. Pok (mum) dad (Pho) and Film and fang (2 daughters).. Pok and Fang are so good at english! We dance to Britney spears, play bingo and make pretend farang sandwhiches together :)

The house is soo big... The biggest in the village. But still no flushing toilets or proper shower, or toilet paper for that matter. They have a cleaner and a cook! However we get our dinner from the roadside market most afternoons. They also have the 2 most adorable dogs. Well nearly.. I will get a picture up of them asap!

Today at school we watched the interschool running carnival! Hoh Kam did really well! We cheered and laughed with the kids.. It is really hard to communicate with them as they only no 'Hi how are you and my name is..' So when we get past basic convo we kind of laugh nervously. Oh well. It will get easier as we learn more thai and they learn more english! The children kept feeding us limes (ma noww) and laughting. We can only hope it was just limes they were feeding us. :) The teachers take us out to lunch each day and today we ate in a little bamboo hut raised on an embankment... We ate roast chicken and papaya salad! YUM

In ther afternoon we taught the kids touch footy with the balls the curves girls donated! However it ended up being more like american football due to the communication barriers. Everyone is excited! The kids and teachers love all the goodies the curves girls donated! thanks to everyone! It has brought much joy to the community of Hoh Kam! It was a hot afternoon and after half an hour we resorted to playing duck duck goose with the little-uns.. SQUEELS of laughter as i axed Rikki. Possibly the most exericse we have done all trip.

The day ended on a high as we skipped and playted elastics with the girls and the local lady boy (his name is Gay, how ironic). Some washing needed to be done, what a mission! Our sit down dinner was yum as usual.. Thai eggplant curry, rice, sweet and sour vegetables, watermelon, sweet coconut pumpkin desert, lotus seeds, boiled peanuts (so good), and white bait fish. The evening ended with an english lesson with film. Thai have trouble saying V and R and SH, Th and CH.

Well bell has rung to begin school we better go! but we both love it here! Will write soon..

miss U all

xx Prue and Rikki