It is hard to believe I have been here 3 weeks already.  While I had virtually no down-time at home, I actually am surprised at just how much I really have in these last few days.  Perfect – it gives me a great opportunity to report back to you of all the happenings.

First, these are the projects we hope to accomplish this season;  We have already started the first bank of toilets our of 5 we will do this year.  This first one is for the village school of Ban Na Lea – the 3-room school itself was sponsored by The Rotary Club of Toronto Twilight, in its entirety.  We will also do the final four toilet banks (out of 10) for the village of Ban Pha Yong – the first village we ever visited.  We also hope to do two water projects – one for Ban Na Lea where they only get water for 8 months per year and must trek for the rest of the year, plus Ban PhoneSavanh.  This village has water in the old section but has grown quite a bit in recent years – all the new residents have only a cesspool of sorts – it is disgusting and there is lots of sickness.

We also hope to build two school additions – the final phase of a secondary school that we built two years ago.  We want to add an office and a small library.  The other school is in the village of Hat Kham that we built last year.  The school was so popular that they had 25 new kids register this year – enough for an additional classroom.  Nobody expected this, especially the villagers.  We are also sponsoring 19 students from Primary School 1 right up to university, plus a teacher during the apprenticeship year. There are lots of small projects too like adding solar light to two hospital clinics, a fence project and I a considering a couple of other requests but they will wait until I see how much money I have left.

First, I realize that I ever offered an update on Ban Na Lea school.  It has been finished since September – here are a couple of photos.

Currently we are constructing toilets for the school – they should be finished in about three weeks, in time for our visitors to arrive from the Toronto Twilight Rotary Club.

Next, I just received word that the truck with all of our water filters is now full at 275 systems.  It will be leaving Thakek either later today or tomorrow morning – it will be a 3 day journey to arrive in Luang Prabang and another day to drop of the filters in five different villages.  This is the largest single order we have placed.