parsin XML with DOM

hello, could somebody give me some direction here. i am trying to build a RSS 2.0 parser using DOM. what puzzles me is the following - i get the XML - $RSS_XML = file_get_contents($params['uri']); then i instantiate a DOM object - $RSS_DOM = new DomDocument(); then i load the XML - $RSS_DOM->loadXML($RSS_XML); then i get the first node - $NODE = $RSS_DOM->firstChild; here $NODE->tagName is "rss", so far OK but then if i get the first child of "rss", which is "channel" - $NODE = $NODE->firstChild; its type is not DomNode, but DomText. Only the 2nd child - $NODE = $NODE->nextSibling; has $NODE->tagName "channel". My question is - why is the first child after "rss" DomText? Thank you, Iv