Holidays

Well, I've just finished celebrating the third "new year" this year. The first was International New Year's Day on the 1st of January, then from 3rd to 5th February it was Chinese New Year, and finally this week, from 14th to 16th April we have celebrationed Khmer New Year (I know there have been a number of other countries, like Thailand and Bangladesh that have also celebrated their New Years Day this week too.).

Today is the last day of the second longest holidays in the school year (aside from the summer break). We get two weeks at Christmas time, and we have just had a whole week for Khmer New Year. Between now and the end of school I have two 3-day weekends, and one 5-day weekend, and I've got ten weeks to go! Then we have our "Summer" holidays which last 8 weeks.

Khmer New Year is actually a great time for staying at home when you live in Phnom Penh, because a very large proportion of the rest of the population leaves town. Businesses progressively started closing down for the holidays last weekend, with Thursday to Saturday being the official Public Holidays. As the week went on things got quieter and quieter. The house has been very quiet, with most of the other residents away for the holidays or part of them anyway. Wednesday I went to school for a while, and had some productive time. It was lovely and quiet, but got a little hot after lunch as the sun beat down on my classroom. That's OK, nothing was really urgent, so I headed home where it was a little cooler.

Thursday brought a visit from a friend for part of the day, together with a holiday project! I had very generously given this friend a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle some time ago, and her response was that she hoped I'd help her do it! This holiday break was the perfect time to do that. Wow, this was some jigsaw. There were so many pieces that seemed to be the same shape, and the colours were so similar on many pieces. I started at the bottom, with the water and reflection, while my friend started at the top. First of all we put the edge pieces together, and then it was go for it. My friend finished the sky first, which I thought was amazing, then I finally finished the watery parts yesterday evening. Finally this afternoon we combined forces to complete the centre of the puzzle. Here it is! Hooray. We did it!

Other holiday activities have included a dental appointment, lodging an application for a new passport,  reading books, sleeping in, and some baking. All in all a lovely time.

Tomorrow it's back to school, so I'd better stop procrastinating and make sure everything is ready. The alarm clock will go off way too early tomorrow, and I won't be able to press the snooze button. Just as well I love my job!