For those who are wondering why our update seems to come a little sooner this week, it's because Friday is our official day for making contact with people and handle administrative stuf... but sometimes (like last week) other engagements force us to move it back to Saturday or even into the weekend. If we catch a slow ferry to our home on Lantau, we have almost an hour to write things which we can send when we get home and that is where we are as we write.

Thanks to those who have been in touch. Duncan & Kate, the wedding cake mum sent us was lovely and the goat is on display. Thanks mum.

One of the good things about working here is that you meet "people from all around the world" as English volunteer, Roy said over lunch today. On the fulltime team, there's Joao (John to us) from Portugal, Marie-ange (MA to us) from France, Deb & Greg from Canada, Geraldine, Roy & Mike from Britain, Alex & Viv from the Phillipines, Tapash from India, Fi, Jose, Gabby, Alex & Christy from the US. Of course, there are a pile of Aussies and even Jack from as far away as Sudan. Hong Kong itself is a melting pot... we get community volunteers who are working in Hong Kong but hail from all parts of Asia, Europe, South America, Africa etc. Lunchtime in the warehouse eating area (dubbed 'Narnia') can be a good way of travelling the world in conversation.

We really experienced the multicultural last night when we had dinner with our new Venezuelan friend Sofia plus Adam, Kate & Marie-Ange. Sofia is a student doing half a day a week with the communications team this year so a few of us invited her to Lantau for dinner. MA, renowned throughout the team as chef extraordinaire, cooked a french meal for us. It was fun to be sitting with a Venezuelan girl, eating a french meal and teaching the Tim Tam slam (aka slurping coffee through Tim Tam) to the non-Aussies. We also attempted to explain to them what Australian bush dancing was, but for some reason they couldn't take our esteemed and noble cultural heritage of the do-si-do quite seriously. Even when we performed it for them....

There's heaps more we could share but we won't keep you...

• Today two new friends arrived. A & Jayson Badenhop... I think a few of you may know them.
• This week a container left for Vietnam.
• We've got our housewarming planned for next monday, more details later!
• Matt the toolman brought home a drill tonight, planning to put up some shelves in the kitchen. We'll keep you posted on his first effort as the home handyman.

Thanks again for the emails, we love getting them. Let us know if there's anything in particular you want us to tell you about in these emails.