The Summer Holidays

While friends and family in Australia have been enjoying winter, we have enjoyed the Northern Hemisphere Summer Holidays. This is a 6-7 weak break, similar to the School Christmas Holidays in Australia.
What did this mean for us? ... apart from even more limited internet access than usual.

Rest at home, at first.
We were so tired by the end of the term we just blobbed for days. I got a wry neck so I had to blob just that bit more.

A Spring Clean.
We did a mini spring clean of the house. Mini because we don't own years of possessions, but it was still worth sorting and passing things on. And then there were the mountains of paper that accumulate as you teach. And then there was the dusting, oh the dusting! in this country every is covered with a layer of dust... if you let it sit for more than a week.

School Work - Film Edit.
During the year the film club I ran worked on a short film for the 2009 Ignite film Festival run by Anglican Media in Sydney. So I spent countless hours and days editing the film, recording voices, tweaking sound files, colour balancing shoots, applying transitions... wheew! you name it. But I am proud to say we completed the film and submitted the film in time. So keep your eyes out for the ignite festival.. September 5.... You can vote for the peoples choice award on-line! Our film is called Sorida - a film of Hope, it tells the testimony of one of the Cambodian staff at school.

NAC Visit.
A team from Nowra Anglican College arrived in early July, Here was DejaVu, the Tabitha Cambodia housebuilding trip that originally brought us to Cambodia now being experienced by a new team of people. What a fantastic opportunity to catch up with Jo Barnes, Jenny Urquhart, Andrew Leslie, Simon Godden amongst other faces of staff, parents and students. We really enjoyed catching up and sharing our experience, including through devotional times with them.

A Holiday.
You know how sometimes you haven't seen someone for a while, but when you do, it's like you have never been apart. They are such a natural part of your life. Well after a year of not seeing my two sisters, Catherine and Heather, we were reunited in Siem Reap together. They flew into Cambodia on July 19.. (that's 364 days after we had left Australia.) I spent an awesome four days with them sightseeing Siem Reap before we headed to Phnom Penh and they got to also catch up with Graham, Naomi and Nathan. Then it was more sight seeing, the killing fields, the palace, the markets. Finally, as they were flying home from Ho Chi Minh City, we caught a boat to vietnam and slowly worked our way to the capital. We enjoyed two days at a beach on Phu Quoc Island. Nathan in particular just loved playing in the sand and moulding it. After almost two weeks together my sisters flew home, a hard parting, but with the knowledge that we had built an incredible memory together that we would always cherish.

We have now been back at school for a week, we are enjoying new classes, new faces, and the same old power cuts and internet drop outs..lol

What a blessed place Hope School is, what a fantastic opportunity to preach Christ and support missionary families!

more soon,
God Bless,
Fiona