Hot Hot Hot

Hello again everyone. As you may have guesssed we are in the middle of the hot hot hot season and have been experiencing some extremely hot days with humidity levels off the page! I think it is a bit hotter here  than I remember Vientiane being but really, hot is hot - so we don't really worry too much about the actual degrees! I'm not really complaining - just letting off a bit of steam - so to speak!!  We are lucky enough to have a pool to cool down in, air conditioners to keep the house cool and a generator for back up to fight the constant power cuts - so we manage! There has been some rain storms already, some say a little early, but nevertheless very welcome. We all love it when the thunder rolls in and the sky clouds over - and then the torrents rain down bringing  much relief - and often it is gone just as quickly. Not sure how the drains in the streets will cope when the real rain starts - we'll probably need a canoe to get around in, as it doesn't take much for little rivers to form down our road. Life just continues on though, tuk tuks splash you as they scoot pass, umberallas and plastic ponchos pop up for sale on every corner, streets become uncrossable and you never stay dry for too long - but thats the wet season for you!

Speaking of being wet - we had an amazing time in Bangkok for the New Year Celebrations. Every time we ventured out of the hotel we got soaked by the Thais celebrating in the streets. It was fantastic to witness.....once........but by day 3 we were all a little over it. Some of the street scenes were amazing though with literally thousands of people swarming down the road drowning anyone in sight with water pistols, buckets of water and anything else they could think of. We thought we were prepared with a couple of pump action water pistols but no!

Some of the highlights of that weekend were catching up with loads of friends; Mark and Robert, Flavia and kids, David and Whinnie, Jo and the boys  and of course Uncle Stevie! It was great fun and wonderful to see everyone again.

Since then we have been keeping busy. Samuel has made the MRISA (Mekong River International Schools Association) school team for volleyball, which we are hosting here in Phnom Penh next weekend. He's done really well to be selected as the only grade 6'er in the team (grades 6-8) so we are very proud of him and are looking forward to chearing him on. We have some of the kids from Laos (VIS) staying with us so that should be fun. It's a whole weekend of volleyball so more on that next time.

Mixing it with the big kids!

Sienna has had another swim meet and did really well. The next one is at the Olympic Pool in a 50m pool which will test her out but she is training hard. She also performed at the school concert,  doing a guitar solo with her teacher playing "I've got a feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas -  she was fantastic. No musical talent from her mum or dad - so very proud of her too! (Note: I don't supose thats actually a solo, with her teacher, but anyway...)

Phil is busy breaking in a new Ambassador at the Embassy. They are a nice family with a son in Sienna's class and seem pretty relaxed. There has been a bit of a change in the demographics at post recently, and we now have more families with Samuel being the oldest of 16 kids. So the social scene is starting to change and we get together a bit more now and have a great time at the Akubra Bar at the Embassy. We recently had a very memorable dawn service for Anzac Day at the Embassy and it was attended by about 200 expats. Samuel read a poem and did a wonderful job. It was a really moving service complete with a Khmer bugler who did a fantastic job.

Kids pictured here with our Defence Attache, Captain Andrew Dakin.

I am still having trouble with the settings for this blog, so if you have subscribed to it and are or aren't getting notifications of these new posts, could you please let me know.  Hope you are all well and enjoying life......take care for now xMekong Molloys