Well done Robyn on your exams (genius!) And I was thinking of you all on Wednesday and sending you my love.

It's been an exciting week! The group I play with 'the crazies' is no longer nearly as crazy. This is because for some odd reason they moved Aureal (monkey boy-climbs up anyone) Seroja (eats anything boy- including rabbit poo) and Eon (blind grabby boy) to another group. To replace them, they put two bedbound boys and a boy in a wheelchair in the group. This leaves me with a relatively unresponsive and unactive group (with the exception of Violent Victor).

The orphanage is ruled by the Director, a woman who never sees the boys and dictates to us with no real knowledge of the situation. Skip has hired two local translators (well high school girls) to allow us to communicate with the carers. But from the start of the week it seemed like they were paid to grass us up to the Director and impart their made-up medical knowledge on us.

Thankfully, since they've gotten their hands dirty throughout the week, they have learnt to understand how difficult it is to control certain boys or certain situations. They're also now sceptical over the Directors views (boys aren't allowed out it's too hot/ too cold/ a boy got ill from being out yesterday etc etc) All excuses!

Unfortunately Heidi (the girl I was working with) decided to fly home yesterday when she found out her grandad was very unwell, so the group is one short and I'm left with my group of boys by myself. It's good to have someone to bounce off for ideas, and obviously with two people the boys get double as much attention and cuddles! Without Heidi it also makes it more difficult to divide bills haha (there were 10 of us!)

We played with the older boys and the PE teacher in the gym on Thursday morning, which was nice to see. Yesterday morning we took 7 boys to the 'safari' chickens, rabbits, cats in cages! And they all had ice cream and juice- it was a great success. Not only that but the safari owners didn't charge us at all, presumably because they respect what we're trying to do.

Along those lines, we had a great compliment the other day. The translators take the bus into town everyday, we walk. Everyone in the town sees us walking up to the orphanage in our blue tops and they ask the translators 'what are they doing/ where are they going?' Most locals don't even know about the orphanage's existence. The bus driver told the translators that we were a shining example and Moldovan teenagers should learn from us, and that we're not only helping the boys but we're helping Moldova too. So that was flattering! (And what we hoped to achieve!)

We've eaten out twice this week (pizza for the vegi girl- safe bet!) and cooked in pairs 3 times. First night was great- stir fry! Then the next night Mhairi and I tried to make lentil and vegetable curry. Except they don't sell lentils here (or they're different) and we decided to cook for about 30 rather than 10 (better to have too much!) So we cooked 3 kilos of rice, and a massive pot of curry that was rank and tasted like what the boys are fed, and most of it went in the bin! Bad times!

We went to a really posh Uzbekistani restaurant last night here in Chisinau (where we're based for the weekend) but I was so tired from the week and we went out so late I was falling asleep by ice cream! Today- beach again- chilling from the week!

We checked out BBC news and Tom (a guy here's) school in Newcastle has been flooded- guessing you guys aren't having such fab weather as we are? (na na na na na!) xxx