April holidays

Let me give you some more news from our big Family. In the middle of April we celebrated Khmer New Year. Children were at home for two weeks. The teachers and sisters took advantage of this and for two days had a formation session on the Educational Method of Don Bosco. As you know for us sisters, meetings newer end. The city of Phnom Penh was quiet and empty. In our neighborhood, where there small rooms are rented for young families from the countryside, nearly all people went to celebrate with their relatives in the different provinces. Unfortunately, when a mother with children studying with us, took 3 of them on the motorbike to a Pagoda, they met an accident. The little boy from grade 3 is recovering in Phnom Penh Children’s hospital. He lost his eye and got bad wounds on his face. The father brought him to the city on a borrowed motor bike, while they recovered the mother and other children in the nearby hospital in the province. When we heard the news we went to visit the boy and we helped the father to pay some expenses.

All the others came back safely. Soon after the new year, Pu Thy, the driver working with us for 20 years, now got his second son and we are expecting another baby from a teacher. Many times the poor parents have to send their little children to relatives, far away in provinces, so that their mothers can return back to work in factories or construction sites. For this reason, we offer to our staff and teachers a small room, which had become a temporary nursery. A mother of one of our students is looking after the little ones. It is nice to see them every afternoon when the “goodbye ceremony” begins, first with one, then with another one… all our grandchildren.

At the moment a group of pupils is intensely preparing for a singing competition offered by a Korean Music school. They already sing very well. You will hear them when you come for the blessing of the new school….. Don’t laugh! Just wait another year, pray and donate some more… please… and we will laugh for a great reason.

The country is preparing for the election at the end of July. Some are afraid of troubles, of curtailed freedom to express their real will. However, we hope all will go well, for the ever brighter future of our country and of each citizen.

We are now in the hottest time of the year, another 3 months to go, before finishing the school year. All are a little tired, already thinking of holidays, but still trying to encourage students and teachers as well to study seriously in order to learn as much as they can. In May we still have some national holidays and school free days, but then June becomes so serious with the interviews for the new kindergarten children, for scholarships for the future teachers, exams and all kinds of serious work. Thanks be to God, we have this year with us some nice volunteers who are of big help and with their youthful enthusiasm brings new energies.