Kids and Uncle Happy in Singapore

Hi All

Its been a really exciting couple of days so I will fill you in.

On Thursday, I went and visited a school (Happy Chandara School) run by French Cambodians in France (Tute E'Lecole). It is supported by private companies, among other Marie Claire. It is located in Kandal Province, Kien Svay District.

The school was really amazing. It just started in November and supports 86 young girls from the surrounding communes who otherwise would not be able to attend school. It is a truly remarkable school (especially when you compare the quality of the state schools). It was clean, had hygenic latrines, had many resources etc.

The reason we were there is that WFP has begun providing food (rice, oil, canned fish, salt, mung beans) to the school for them to provide a hot breakfast for the girls. The idea of school feeding is that kids who arent hungry in the morning learn more (gee I feel like I am in a Weet-Bix ad!) and acts as an incentive for poor families to send their girls to school (taking the burden of a meal off the family). The school itself provides tonnes of other food as well, such as vegetables, meat and fruit. It also provides a take home ration to the girls as a further incentive to the family (13kg of rice a month). WFP also sometimes has a take home ration system but this school was doing it itself.

They are in fact using WFP food for lunch not breakfast but it appears that this is ok.

Anyway, after returning to the office for a few hours I grabbed my suitcase, stood on the side of the road and got picked up by a van heading to Phnom Penh (basically every van doubles as a taxi - so my particular one was loaded up with firewood. Normally these affairs are pretty squishy but apart from about fifteen minutes with three of us in the front with lots of luggage it was fine. Had a broken conversation with one of the guys, which I think revolved around how old I was. Cost $1 to hop off at the airport (about an hour from Kampong Speu).

I was, of course, off to visit Mark, Tara and Amali in Singapore. I arrived late that evening and Mark picked me up and we went back to their house. The next morning i woke up and stumbled out to reaqaint myself with Amali (who I havent seen in months and havent had any real one on one time with for at least a year). At first she was a little indifferent but after reading some books with her she warmed up heaps and we had tonnes of fun. She calls me ''Uncle Happy''.

Mark and I went out to the zoo which was great and Amali had a ball. Singapore Zoo has to be the best zoo I have ever been to. The best part was Amali imitating the animals, like Monkeys she did her ''Ooh Ooh Aah Aah'' dance and she calls giraffes ''Aff Aff''. So cute :)

There was a giant ball pit at the zoo and Amali went it, and she nearly disapeared! We had to launch a rescue :)

The next day we went Bike Riding in the morning, then swimming, then playing in the play ground. Then Mark and I went cable wake boarding. Basically its an artificial lagoon with a cable system going round and round in circles. You grab on to one of the ropes and you try and stay on the board. Even though I was knee boarding I predictablly sucked but it was lots of fun...and painful the next day!

I also snuck in a lot of shopping like books, groceries, toiletries etc. Mark and Tara took me to some great eats as well, including chilli crab!

It was short but tonnes of fun. It is so easy to get over there so when the new bubba arrives I will definately be making another visit.