Floored

* Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

We're into our 3rd week on the project this week.   The house is coming along really nicely now and we've made some good progress this week.

We love our journey into work each day too.  Basically, we are picked up by our tuk tuks and drive about 18km to a market, the last stop on the main road before turning off to the village where we work.  At the market, one of our project 8 group goes in and buys food for lunch that the ladies of the house will cook for us when we get there.  It's a very local market and good fun.  

On Tuesday, we put yet more floor boards in.  This involves levering in ends and making the gap between them as small as possible because when the wood drys out, gaps will appear.  So we don't want to lose any small children down those in the future!  The inner wall frame and door frame have been built (as modeled by my lovely assistant Miss Coad).

Tuesday night, me and Ame ate at the guesthouse and disappeared to our room from about 18:00 to watch a film.  It was really nice after a busy but lovely weekend with the Canadians.  I don't mind admitting I was asleep by 21:30 and felt blooming good for it the next day at 06:00.

By Wednesday, we had finished all the floor boards and part of the railing was done.  At lunch we came down from the house for lunch and found that the kids had built a house out of all of our cut offs!  They are very resourceful and seem to have a lot of fun together.

On the way home we took a couple of pictures of all the waving children we pass daily.  Your hand nearly falls off after all that waving, but again they seem to enjoy it.  Sometimes they come charging from far and wide and you're not even sure where you should be waving.  They normally shout "Hello Goodbye Hello Goodbye!" at you whilst you toodle past.

In the evening we kept it easy again and went off to this Japanese restaurant just at the top of our road with a few others.  It was charmingly shambolic but in the end the food was really nice.

This morning I took some biscuits for the kids.  Randomly in the local Lucky Mart, I found Danish butter cookies that were in a box with Big Ben and English soldiers marching on the front of it.  I thought I could try and explain this was England to them.  They were interested for less than 1 second as they devoured the box between them!  Good for them.

Today we had a few boo boos as the end of the banisters had not been measured properly and were uneven.  But we sorted that.  Then we have made a little mistake with the hinges on the interior door.  Oh well.  Nothing too serious and we're all learning.  We have finished two of the railings and put on the banister.  The interior wall has been started also.

At the end of the day, I now take the job of sweeping out the house so we don't return to a mess the next day.  I'm like a little Mary Poppins!

Tonight is Ray's last night.  It's been a joy working with him.  He's a retired teacher from Ireland, he always has a joke or a comment to make and we've very much enjoyed his company.  We've going to the Mexican again for some drinks and food.  Tomorrow, we'll go to work and then head off for the weekend (and Monday - we've taken a day off!) to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.