Just a quickie

HI!

Today the announcement officially came out that the war is over!!!
There are people dancing on the streets, every car has at least one flag on it, every window is decorated, firecrackers are going off everywhere, and everyone is excited! We went to the school today to meet the kids that we were donating those english books to that we brought with us and only half of them were there because of the celebrations. But the ones that were there were adorable and we played a bunch of word games to try and work on their english in a fun way. We played hang man and our own version of boggle and we all wrote our names out on this white board; the kids are amazing and I may have a new pen pal! One of the girls who was playing with us asked for my address and so i gave it to her and told her to write me; hopefully she does.

Anyways, older news: The party on saturday wasn't a huge one; a couple of the people that we work with came to our place and hung out. We played some cards and just sat around for the most part. The boys went upstairs for some cigars at one point (like they normally do) and the girls all got rides on the back of Kinishka's (one of the workers) motorcycle! It was so much fun and I'm now convinced that I need to get one for myself haha. We didn't stay up too late because we had to wake up at 5 the next morning for the elephant tour. I was wrong about it being the orphanage, that's part of the cultural tour later, but it was a sanctuary. It was all safari style with us standing in the back of three jeeps while they drove through the huge land filled with water buffalo, monkeys, and SOO MANY ELEPHANTS! I could have taken hundreds of pictures there... but I held back to a few dozen (or more... :P) it was so beautiful on the property... I think I have more tree pictures than I do elephant ones haha.
Once we got home everyone was exhausted and went to bed for a few hours before making dinner. The head monk at the temple builds little trinkets and draws and takes pictures and so he asked us to all draw pictures of ourselves infront of the temple wall for him to keep for a memory. That's what we did after dinner for the most part and we decided to get them laminated for him so that they stay longer (plus that's what he does with a lot of his things anyways so we thought we would throw that in there as an extra gift to him seeing as he's done so much for us).

The next day (today) it was back to work where we played more cricket at lunch and we sang to the locals this time instead of them singing to us (even though they sang too); since we're all becoming closer friends and everything it was way less embarassing than when we were trying to think of something to sing the other day. It's going to be sad to leave and I already don't look forward to saying our goodbye's.

That's all I have to say for now!! I'm going to walk home and enjoy all the excitement now!

LOVE
Karen