last day with my beautiful girls

hi all,
so today marked my last day at the girl's home. I lead the fruit smoothie activity, which went really well. A lot of fruit was consumed!! the girls picked what fruit they wanted, put it in the blender, picked yogurt, milk (or both!), blended it up and enjoyed!

All the ingredients went (1 and a half water melons, 6 yellow mangoes, 4 papayas, about 40 bananas, 16 cartons of milk and 20 yogurts).

After work we took 4 (still hungry) girls and the thai staff for ice-cream at Swensons. A lovely day to finish on. Although i will be popping in tomorrow to say bye to the girls on sick ward as i wasn't able to today.

So that's it for my 6 months away. I can't believe how quick it's gone, yet it seems ages ago even since i was in Chiang mai, almost like a separate trip. It has been an amazing trip, but my time here with CCD has been absolutely life changing. There's just not the words to describe it.

Thank you everyone who's supported me through this time away, I really appreciate it.

looking forward to seeing some of you really soon!! lots of love xxxx

ready for the morning smoothie making session:

Bow doing a great job with her smoothie:

Gail enjoying her smoothie above
green girls waiting patiently for their smoothies

Mai, Mameow and Keam making picking their fruit:

Jessie finishing off the yogurt

ice-cream at swensons!

with P-wee and P-Ae.

Fun at the Funarium!

This week there's been lots of fun things going on...
Activities wise we went on a bear hunt, which was really exciting!
Thursday we went to the funarium with spending some money raised by the coventry physio teams, the girls absolutely loved it and as you'll see by the pictures, so did we!
Friday me, Nathan and Ellie had our leaving ceremony. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was just so lovely. Firstly some of the children we knew really well were there as a surprise which was completely unexpected. We were presented with flower crowns, certificates, present, cards and a giant poster picture each with us with our favourite children and also a dvd with loads of pictures. We felt very special.
Friday night we went for dinner with some friends from nichada church who are also leaving soon.
Today we've had our last swim at the lovely nichada pool before ellie and nathan fly later today.
For me i'm working with the girls tomorrow we're making fruit smoothies, potentially quite messy! tuesday i'll be packing ready to head to the airport that evening!

Me and Bea on our bear hunt...

the bear's on the loose!

the volunteers at the Funarium (the girls enjoyed it too!)

our leaving ceremony!

hello makka bakka day!

Hi all,
today we're off work as we're celebrating makka bakka day (of course none of us know what this is!).

this week we had messy play on monday, which involved putting lots of different things in bowls such as noodles, flour, strawberry compote, cornflower and water, porridge, rice - and letting the girls make lots of mess! It was really fun. Although all the stuff was edible we tried to discourage them eating the stuff and gave out muffins which we were given from the weekend instead.

At the weekend we went away with the nichada church to cbr 3 which is one of our community projects, to re-paint after the floods last year. It was fun, though quite tiring. A huge highlight was that we had air-con in our rooms - amazing!!

We did a big swimming trip on monday with 13 of us all together. Fun and chaotic as usual! It was great to discover that Orati could swim really well and that the others could have a good attempt. Also another chance to use the swimming stuff we've been sent.

Yesterday me and Jules took Malaa, Powadee and Bow to Nichada to go swimming at Diane's. When we got there though there was a problem with the pool so instead we took the girls to the big lake at nichada to feed the huge fish. We all enjoyed it, especially watching Malaa sneakily eat the bread! after this we went back to Diane's and watched a film. It was really nice for the girls (and me and Jules) just to be able to sit and relax. then diane treated us all to lunch at a local restaurant, before we headed back to the orphanage.

Malaa playing connect 4 before lunch:

malaa, bow and me (note malaa still playing connect 4)

Tiff, Catherine, me and Emily - team pink after our painting efforts:

me and ellie at the swim trip - unfortuately there wasn't enough swimming caps to go round!

Mai, me and bea during messy play

me and sommo

so that's all for this week. ive got less than 2 weeks to go now, we've hopefully got a big trip to the funarium planned for next week. we're still waiting for permission though, please pray! xxx