Auntie again - welcome Tim Lasse!!!!

The big news of the day first ... I have become an auntie again!!!! Tim Lasse, my sister Helen and her husband Stefan's second son, was born early today!!!!!! I am super excited!!!! But I am also a little sad that I will not be able to meet him in person until we get back from our trip; I am hoping his proud parents will send a picture over soon ... right now he is still a bit camera shy!

Today G and I had our first day working at Apsara, the authority responsible for all the ancient Angkor monuments. In an amazing departure from our usual “lazing around until noon” routine, we actually got up just after 7:30am and were sitting at our desks at Apsara before 9am ... woho!!!! The gentleman with who G had sorted out our volunteering was away on a field trip but his deputy (so, the deputy general's deputy ...) gave us our assignments and we got on with things - G proof read and summarized a document for the website and I translated an article about one of the departments recent projects from German into English. The work was quite simple and we were done within a few hours but both of us came away saying how much we had enjoyed doing something productive, which is more than I can say for anyone else sitting in our office .... one chap was playing computer solitaire for the entire time that I was working on my translation, while what I initially thought was a team meeting turned out to be a gossip session about the boss ....things clearly are the same the world around :) Tomorrow we will be issued with our Angkor passes (super exciting and incredibly generous, considering how expensive they are) and then we are being taken on a field trip with “our” department ...not sure what I am more excited about :)

We then had a lunch time laze by the pool, as one does, before heading off to our respective teaching jobs. For me it was my first computer teaching session and it turned out to be great fun, particularly the part where the kids call me “teacher” and how I got them to line up by the door at the end to say good bye and then gave them a cookie ...not sure that was strictly necessary but I had seen that Anne Shirley do that in Anne of Green Gables and thought that looked like quite a nice little tradition to have :) but not that I an writing this, it actually sounds a little insane .. oh well! In all seriousness though, I was really impressed how quickly the kids work out how to use the computer and how intuitively they know what buttons to press. I think they will take no time at all before they all become right little tech wizards. This was only their first lesson and the teacher, who was in fact MIA today, has so far only managed to teach them who to turn the thing on ...bless him, he himself has not really ever used a computer. Anyway, so I got them started with the painting program which they really enjoyed and tomorrow we will learn to make a little movie, so watch this space ... yay!!!

Anyway, G has just come back from his class and I have, while writing this note, befriended a fellow traveler and we will all now head off for dinner together ... so ...

Take care, kids!

Lots of love
Cxxx