Last week was a week of goodbyes with four volunteers leaving, including one of my closest friends Fern. On Friday I went to Fern's school with her for her leaving party which was so much fun. She definitely got dealt the short straw when she came out here as her placement, Helping Hands, is a 45 minute moto ride along a very bumpy dirt track, but the upside being that she got to drive past Angkor Wat everyday. When we arrived at her school she planted a tree and then the cildren sang a song for her that she had taught them. She was given about a hundred 'Thank You' cards from her class and then everyone went outside to play games before we endured the bumpy moto ride home.

For Fern's farewell we did the usual big dinner and night out on Saturday and on Sunday our little group of four spent the day together. In the late afternoon the four of us got on motos and set off to Phnom Krom to watch the sunset over the Tonle Sap. There are relatively few hills in Cambodia, but this one is perfectly placed next to the lake and with a crumbling Angkorian temple atop it. We brought a bottle of sparkling wine with us and popped it as the sun was starting to set over the rice paddies. We stayed there reminiscing and toasting our friendship until it started to get dark and then drove back to Siem Reap. Unfortunately Anne had to work on Monday afternoon when Fern left for the airport, but Vera and I took her there to say goodbye. I have convinced Fern to pop over to New Zealand when I'm there (she only lives in Australia) so we were abe to have a relatively tearless farewell as we know we'll be seeing each other soon.

I appear to have quite bad luck when it comes to my placements as this week when I went in to the orphanage they were having their classroom tiled and so lessons were disrupted. However today I tried to make the best of a bad situation and gathered all the children I could find and handed out worksheets with wordsearches and word/picture match-ups which they loved. We have access to quite a good resource centre at the volunteer house so I have been photocopying worksheets and colouring pages which the children really enjoy doing. Most of the volunteers they have stay for two weeks maximum and so I doubt they have the resources or know where the copy shops are in the city, so the children really appreciate it when I bring them worksheets. In the last couple of weeks the orphanage has also gained 6 very cute puppies, and also strange as it may seem, a monkey, all of which the children love.

I have read two books this week, a point I would not normally think worth mentioning except for one of them mentioned the Pool House which was a rather pleasant reminder of home, and the other was a particularly good novel - 'Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafron.