What an early start to the morning!!! I had to get up at 5am for my flight to Phnom Penh. My cousin and her husband picked me up from the hotel at 6:15am and we got to the airport around 6:45am. It turned out that my other cousins were already at the airport waiting to send me off!! That was soooo nice of them to get up early just so they could be at the airport to say goodbye. This is what I mean when I say they are really awesome. One of my cousins also printed out the digital pictures for me...how thoughtful!
I got hit with the excess weight on my baggage this morning. On my way to Phnom Penh, I only checked the big suitcase and I was able to sneak in two of my smaller suitcases and my backpack onto the plane with me (policy is similar to the US...one bag and one personal item). I wasn't able to do that this morning and had to check one of the smaller suitcases. It was 10kg over and it cost me $93!!!! And that's not even the worst part of it. The fee was only from Phnom Penh to Guangzhou (connection city)...they said once I got to Guangzhou, I would need to check back in and pay another fee!!! I wasn't about to pay another hefty fee, so I repacked a few things to make the checked suitcase lighter when I got to Guangzhou. I was still about 5kg overweight and the guy told me to just take it on the plane (I don't think he realized I had another suitcase). So I took both suitcases with me and this time, I didn't get stopped...thank goodness!!! :)
As I was waiting on my flight, there was an old man sitting next to me. He started talking to me and pointing to my suitcases. From what I gathered, he was telling me I had too many bags...but I could also understand that he said it's ok. I think he was going to help me by claiming one of them was his if I got stopped. We chatted for a little bit with what broken mandarin I knew and I could only understand half of the conversation. :) When we boarded the plane...he tried helping me put my suitcases in the overhead compartment. My suitcases were heavy and he's old...like at least 65-70 and he's trying to help me! I felt so bad and luckily one of the male flight attendants came over to help. I waited on him when we landed so we could walk out together...it was the least I could do! He was such a sweetie!
I got to the volunteer house around 6pm and was starving since I'd barely eaten all day. Luckily, it was around dinner time and the staff had dinner ready within 30 minutes. There are 7 volunteers starting today and 4 that are already here. Total of 3 guys and 8 girls...the guys are probably in heaven!!! There's only 4 from the US (the 3 guys and me). The other girls are from the UK, Finland, and Denmark. There's 4 of us going to the panda project, 6 that are doing the "heart to heart" project (helping autistic children) and one that is helping out the orphanage. I think I may only do 2 weeks at the panda project and spend the last week doing the "heart to heart" project just so I can get different experiences. I chatted with one of the girls who is here for 3 weeks...she also spent 2 weeks on the panda project and her last week here will be with "heart to heart". I got the scoop on what I will be doing from her...I will be cleaning panda poop..yikes! :) But she says it's not bad at all and most of the time, you're not really working...just playing with the pandas.
The accomodation isn't too bad...definitely not great, but I can deal with it. I'm in a room with 5 other girls and we are all sharing a bathroom. The part I hate about the bathroom is there is no shower curtain and the water just goes everywhere. There's not even a tub..the water just flows onto the floor and drains down. I brought some sandals...so luckily I can shower with my sandals on! :) Everyone here seems really nice so far. We've been chatting and getting to know each other. After dinner, we all made a field trip to the grocery stores to load up on snacks (I found some snickers bar...whoohoo!!!). We walked by a square and there were tons of people just out there line dancing...apparently, it's something they do every night. How fun! I'm looking forward to this experience and getting to know everyone!!
