(no subject)
As with any experience, staying at the orphanage hasn't all been happy-perfect-good etc. The problems are small and don't detract from how great the experience has been to stay here, but I think adding the negative things will help make my blog well rounded.
Obviously, staying in a room which is basically a corridor can be a little awkward. kids and adults come through to go to the bathroom, get something, or plug something in. I leave the door open so they can do so noislessly when I'm asleep, but that means I have to be careful getting up in the night. It's hot, so I sleep naked, but when I have been caught short (my bowels haven't fully settled down yet) I have to rush to cover myself and scurry to the bathroom, hoping noone will peep round at the wrong time and catch a glimpse of a poorly covered arse.
The bathroom is filled mostly with a walled container of water. This water is used to wash, brush your teeth and flush the loo with. This leaves the toilet seat invariably wet, and added to the lack of toilet paper (I've baught my own supply now) has left me rather sore down there. Great armies of ants scurry along the walls and down to various nooks and crannies. Grasshoppers and mosquitos are pleantiful there too. My room is similarly covered in insects. I've learnt to live with the occasional grasshopper or ant crawling up my bum in the night, but when I found a large cockroach climbing the net, I had to get it out. I grabbed a cup and paper, and a short chase around my bed clothes and along the floor eventually had it outside.
Megan and josef have now left. They have gone to phenm phen to spend some quality time together. In some ways I really like the way Josef deals with stuff. He tells me a lot of advice, but he doesn't do anything for me - he expects me to be able to deal with stuff on my own. Sometimes It feels like he doesn't really care much - for example when he took me to the mountains and I told him I have to go back, he just said ok, bye, without telling me how to go back, or when he told me he thought I probably had a heart problem which would almost certainly kill me before I'm 60 (turned out to be wrong thankfully) and he told me without seeming unhappy or sympathetic at all. However, I think he doesn't want to look after people - just gives people advice to help them look after themselves, and then lets them get on with it. He lent me his lonely planet book and a whistle to scare anyone who might attack me for while I travel Thailand and Malyasia. He speaks his mind, which sometimes feels very rude, and at times he has said stuff that is quite mean, but I guess that's just how he works.
At meal times, the kids get fed first. They only get rice with vegetables I think, something fairly basic. Next the volunteers get fed - at their own table far away from everyone else. It wasn't too bad when megan and josef were here, but now I do feel a little awkward sitting on my own with more food than I can eat, trying to polish everything off. I think about asking them if I can just eat with the kids or with the other adults, but I wonder if there is some sort of social convention here that would make that rude...
Yesterday, intent on giving my moneys worth I set out to teach as many english lessons as I could muster, and maybe get a kite building project going and have the kids finish a sewing project megan had started. However, the couple of ladies in their 60s from Australia and New zealand came by, and were here until 3pm. I was asked to teach at 5.30, and was just about to start when some more people came in a van and taught the kids about jesus. After dinner at about 8.30 I was asked to teach, but I hadn't finished before I was told it was bed time.
So I kinda feel like I'm not very useful here. I think it is a shame when I arrived Josef had forgotten to let the orphanage worker know I would be coming, because now I feel like a slightly unwanted surprise guest they don't know what to do with. I'm looknig around for somewhere else to go - there's another orphanage in Phnom phen I could visit, for example.
And that... is about it, as far as negatives go. It's been an awesome experience, I've learnt soo much, and I'm so glad I came over-all, so I'm very happy.
In other news, last night a couple of the lads asked me to help them get facebook accounts. I kinda figured becoming computer litterate would be very useful to the kids in the future.
Obviously, staying in a room which is basically a corridor can be a little awkward. kids and adults come through to go to the bathroom, get something, or plug something in. I leave the door open so they can do so noislessly when I'm asleep, but that means I have to be careful getting up in the night. It's hot, so I sleep naked, but when I have been caught short (my bowels haven't fully settled down yet) I have to rush to cover myself and scurry to the bathroom, hoping noone will peep round at the wrong time and catch a glimpse of a poorly covered arse.
The bathroom is filled mostly with a walled container of water. This water is used to wash, brush your teeth and flush the loo with. This leaves the toilet seat invariably wet, and added to the lack of toilet paper (I've baught my own supply now) has left me rather sore down there. Great armies of ants scurry along the walls and down to various nooks and crannies. Grasshoppers and mosquitos are pleantiful there too. My room is similarly covered in insects. I've learnt to live with the occasional grasshopper or ant crawling up my bum in the night, but when I found a large cockroach climbing the net, I had to get it out. I grabbed a cup and paper, and a short chase around my bed clothes and along the floor eventually had it outside.
Megan and josef have now left. They have gone to phenm phen to spend some quality time together. In some ways I really like the way Josef deals with stuff. He tells me a lot of advice, but he doesn't do anything for me - he expects me to be able to deal with stuff on my own. Sometimes It feels like he doesn't really care much - for example when he took me to the mountains and I told him I have to go back, he just said ok, bye, without telling me how to go back, or when he told me he thought I probably had a heart problem which would almost certainly kill me before I'm 60 (turned out to be wrong thankfully) and he told me without seeming unhappy or sympathetic at all. However, I think he doesn't want to look after people - just gives people advice to help them look after themselves, and then lets them get on with it. He lent me his lonely planet book and a whistle to scare anyone who might attack me for while I travel Thailand and Malyasia. He speaks his mind, which sometimes feels very rude, and at times he has said stuff that is quite mean, but I guess that's just how he works.
At meal times, the kids get fed first. They only get rice with vegetables I think, something fairly basic. Next the volunteers get fed - at their own table far away from everyone else. It wasn't too bad when megan and josef were here, but now I do feel a little awkward sitting on my own with more food than I can eat, trying to polish everything off. I think about asking them if I can just eat with the kids or with the other adults, but I wonder if there is some sort of social convention here that would make that rude...
Yesterday, intent on giving my moneys worth I set out to teach as many english lessons as I could muster, and maybe get a kite building project going and have the kids finish a sewing project megan had started. However, the couple of ladies in their 60s from Australia and New zealand came by, and were here until 3pm. I was asked to teach at 5.30, and was just about to start when some more people came in a van and taught the kids about jesus. After dinner at about 8.30 I was asked to teach, but I hadn't finished before I was told it was bed time.
So I kinda feel like I'm not very useful here. I think it is a shame when I arrived Josef had forgotten to let the orphanage worker know I would be coming, because now I feel like a slightly unwanted surprise guest they don't know what to do with. I'm looknig around for somewhere else to go - there's another orphanage in Phnom phen I could visit, for example.
And that... is about it, as far as negatives go. It's been an awesome experience, I've learnt soo much, and I'm so glad I came over-all, so I'm very happy.
In other news, last night a couple of the lads asked me to help them get facebook accounts. I kinda figured becoming computer litterate would be very useful to the kids in the future.