July 30th, 2011 Dear Esteemed Sponsors, Most of the family (except for me and my husband) went to Cambodia on April 11th, just in time for the Khmer New Year celebration, which took place from April 14th to April 16th. This was my son Neal's third trip to Cambodia. I am glad he can stay in contact with his family there. My brother David came back a couple of weeks ahead of the others because he had to return to work. He brought with him letters from our students in Siem Reap. We have 12 recipients there, but only 10 letters came and without pictures. I will ask Joseph to reach out to the other two students as well as getting pictures from all. Because Siem Reap is a tourist town, many children and young adults in Siem Reap learn to speak the "tourist languages" such as English, Japanese, Korean, or German so that they can sell souvenirs and work as tour guides. Therefore our Siem Reap students tend to know more English than our students elsewhere. All of the Siem Reap students wrote their letters to you in English. The rest of my family is back now and they brought more letters from Kompong Cham and elsewhere. I have translated those letters and sent them out. If you do not receive them for some reason, please let me know. However we are still missing a few letters and pictures. We have another volunteer going to Phnom Penh on August 16th. So I am hoping to receive the remaining letters and pictures through him. Any sponsor who will not receive any letter or picture for whatever reason will be notified. I apologize for not being able to get letters to you as reliably as we want to. Our dependence on volunteers has occasionally caused problems with the delivery of student letters. Some of the students live far out of town and there is not always somebody available to get the letters they write. We apologize for these problems. Thank you, Dalay |