27/12/2008 - painting and hard labour

Today I got to help build a school... Cambodian style ie slowly and the hard way!!!!

Rocks had been dumped in wrong place so we had to smash the rocks pile them on to rice sacks and bamboo rods and carry them the 50m across the field to form a new pile...
Also we needed to level out some ground which entailed using flax baskets which looked like sieves to put dirt in and them spread the dirt from the hole to the new pile we were creating to be used in the foundations of the school - nothing like efficiency at its best
It was a sweltering day out and the physical labour added to our exhaustion from the first days cycling was not a good mix - I opted out in the afternoon for the more leisurely painting tasks...

A couple of murals at the school needed touching up - the kids thought this was a great game and crowded around us to watch what we were doing - the only problem was that we could not paint with them so close and so the game began of trying to keep the kids at a distance where we could still paint, Lots of singing was done and it was a really fun afternoon.
By the end of it I was covered in blue paint in true Jane style and it bought back so many memories of helping dad out around the house.
Picked up the bike again and had a beautiful cycle back into town, orange dust flying behind me as the sun set over the rice paddies. A quick detour to a coconut stand for what would prove to be the first of many coconuts on this trip. I can hear you all saying - but Jane you don't like coconuts... yes true, but while in Rome do as the Romans do. And I will let you into a little secret it wasn't that bad...
That night back at the house we had a great meeting where a number of the issues surrounding the first part of the trip were aired and we left the next morning knowing each other a little better and feeling comforted by the fact hat we could raise issues with our wonderful trip leaders Lucky, Josh and Allana