Its been pretty non-stop here this week, its been so good to have the help of Anna and Tom.

With the kids back to school on Tuesday it was a chance for our two volunteers to take it easy in the day time but they wouldn’t hear of it. In the morning they accompanied me up to our land.

Now that we have had sustained dry weather it is an opportunity to get some work done, not only planning for the new build but also to utilise the land whilst we raise funds.

The first thing that needs doing is to strim the overgrowth, which is quite substantial.

As Tom and Anna can testify, even though the rains have gone we are now up against the sun and so it is a case of slowly slowly, doing an hour or so before the heat of the day makes it difficult.

We are keen to get proper plans drawn up for the proposed permanent facility so it is important that we get new measurements in metres to facilitate this. To do that we need to find the borders and land markers, now hidden by the last 3 months growth of weeds.

With Anna and Toms help we cleared the path down to the land and found the first marker on Tuesday.

In the afternoon our to busy volunteers then helped cut posts for our new Re-Cycle storage, and when the heat got too much, set to peeling and chopping sweet potatoes for storage in the freezer.

They were then on hand to greet the kids from school and spend time playing before dinner.

On Wednesday they did take a well earned day off, as Anna had a phone interview for a new job in Australia. All that good Karma they’ve been building up obviously did the trick, with the news that she was successful in her interview.

Slightly sad for us as it means they will be leaving earlier than planned. But we are happy that Anna has secured herself employment for the couples new start in Australia. And they are still with us until Monday so we will all have to make the most of that time.

Today it turned out that the Primary School children had a day off. This changed our plans a little but it was another productive day.

In the morning Anna took care of the girls, whilst Zak accompanied Tom and myself to the land where we did more strimming, with Zak busy with the rake.

We were successful in our target for the morning, clearing down to, and finding, the furthermost land marker.

After a delicious lunch, made by our new House Mother; Zangboon; Tom and Anna came with me on a Re- cycle run, picking up re-cyclables from The American Pacific School Kindergarten, Kwan Wiang Moobahn and our local Garden shop in Sarapee. It was a massive haul from the garden shop, whose friendly lady proprietor  has been saving stuff for a monthly collection for the last couple of months now. She stocks a wide range of garden plants, from the simple to the exotic, as well as high quality garden soil and other accessories. She also speaks a reasonable amount of English.

Back home everyone joined in sorting all the re-cyc;ables ; paper, glass, metal and plastic; and bagging it for storage in the new tidy pens I put up on Wednesday(photos coming soon).

Then it was back to chill out and playtime for everyone before dinner.