We woke up to lovely jungle sounds this morning, prepared ourselves for the day before setting off for the walk to breakfast. By 8.30 we had finished and headed to the bunong place to meet one of the girls to go to our class. But when we got there we were told it had been cancelled due to a field trip for the students...I think this kind of thing happens a lot because we are there for extra more advanced English. We were told we would have free time until the next class at 2pm, but after pushing slightly for an idea of something to do we were invited along to the market with some of the girls. After an hour or so we headed off to the market to buy the ingredients to cook lunch for some of the students who live too far away from home or are too poor to get any. The market was a standard rural Asian market, with crowds of people ( mostly wearing pijamas I might add) buying their food. There were all sorts of vegetables some of which we'd never seen before in our lives, and lots of meat everywhere looking hot manky and fly ridden! Pigs heads every other corner, meat hanging up next to clothes, fish swimming around in buckets, it was all slightly hectic but in a peaceful kind of way which probably doesn't make sense to anybody who reads this.
Once we'd gone round and collected all the stuff we got back and prepared all of the vegetables. We talked to the students whilst we worked, some are better at English than others. We ate at around 11.30 all sat on the floor in the main area of the shop, rice and a big kind of mash of lots of different vegetables in a stew followed by some weird fruit that I can't describe but was nice. We then had an hour and a half before the lesson began and all the student were doing their own thing/ going back to school so we settled ourselves down to read a few information leaflets and have a chat with bill about the project. As well as teaching 3 classes through the day we will be assisting with things such as giving out breakfast to the people that have walked for miles to come sell their stuff at the shop. Once or twice a week we will go out to a neighbouring village to help take supplies to 3 sponsored elderly people who have no family to take care of them. They have also recently managed to install solar panel lights in their huts too for when they need to get up in the night and employed some local girls to do night sits sometimes to help them. We may go out to the villages to collect more crafts but we may not as we bought lot yesterday and it should last in the time we're here. We will also hopefully get to go see some of the waterfalls and local sights on the bikes in our free time, and maybe go visit some of the students families in nearby villages.
It all sounds great....I'm still caught wandering if perhaps we've paid a little too much for what we get but we need to try not to think of it that way and just enjoy it I guess. All of the boarding school students are sponsored by the government either because they are extremely poor, disabled or show very good academic ability. They all have to move very far away from their villages to be there and live at the school. Any students who wish to go to university have to either try and get a scholarship or get sponsored by mainly volunteers who have taught there. There was one girl we were talking to who said she wasn't bunong but Khmer, so we asked bill why this was as she seems to be the only one we have come across in the area. He told us that one day about 3 years ago a woman and her baby turned up at the centre, she had been trafficked along with her baby son and daughter for the last 3 years. The men trafficking them had stated they were going to take her baby and sell him in Vietnam, so she ran away and told bill her daughter was still there. So bill went to find them to get her, which turned out to be extremely difficult because of the money they had spent getting her there they didnt want to give her away. bill threatened them with the involvement of the police etc...and I'm not sure why that didn't happen but in the end he BOUGHT the girl off them for 30 US dollars!!!
He reunited her with her mum and brother, settled them down into the community which accepted them really well, and started to try and get her into school. Due to her having no papers the principle said no way...unless you pay 100 dollars then we will overlook that. Corruption much?? Anyway apparently bill then went to a well established teacher within the school who he was friends with and explained the situation, who then promptly went into the principle, claimed the girl was his niece (which she clearly isnt as she isnt bunong) and into the school she went. Now she's doing really well, earns money working at the shop, and has been sponsored by a couple of volunteers to go to university.
After a while of talking about various things and spending time with his pet monkey...oh yes his monkey. He's called munong, he's 2 and a half years old and was rescued by some girls in a nearby village when one of the dogs killed his mum. Bill took him in, has a certificate from some certified place to say he's able to keep him and has he him ever since. I'm not sure what I think about it....they seem to have an ok relationship, apparently they sleep in the same bed and are together all of the time, where bill goes he goes. He's certainly well kept, but he's always on a lead and he has a small space to be in most of the days. He also seems slightly aggressive, even with bill at times. Saying that he seems happy enough and everybody around here knows him, guess only time will tell how the arrangement will work out.
It got to 2pm, it went past 2pm. We were supposed to be at the orphanage for a class at 2. At 2.20 bill managed to get in touch with the girl who was supposed to be taking us, who was in one of the villages away from the town. So that's the 2nd class cancelled for the day. By this time we were a bit annoyed because that's one whole day where we've not really done anything at all. So we were told we had more free time, but it started to rain a bit so we went into the bar and had a coke and sat chatting to some guy for a while. Then we went for a wander to see what was around but turns out nothing much within walking distance really. So we ended up walking back to the hotel and sitting there for the next hour and a half relaxing before heading back out.
The day got better from there, although we were sat waiting for a while and were 20 minutes late for the class because of it it was really great. It was dark by the time we set off for the school, we went on bikes with haang and one of the students. It's about a 5 minute drive, the school is set apart from the road and the majority of students who go there live in the dorms because they have had to travel so far to be there. The school was more or less empty at the time we got there apart from one classroom with around 14 students in ranging from 16 to 22. We wernt sure on their ability so we spent the majority of the lesson doing introductions, it turns out most of them see really quite good and it's mostly a case of them learning to listen to native speakers better. Half way through an older student asked to join us and really joined in whole heatedly trying to learn...we found out at the end he was their English teacher and he is keen to learn more and improve to teach the kids better which was brilliant. Afterwards a few students asked if we would like to get there earlier tomorrow to play volleyball which of course we said we would, and we've also had a few options of people wanting to spend time with us on the weekend to go and see various sites etc so it seems our weekend is pretty booked up now.
After riding back to the hotel on the back of 2 of the students bikes, we walked to the bar to have our dinner. It really is quite relaxing there, it's like being in the jungle, even the toilet is outside. Al the floor boards are rickety and wooden, there is kind of reggae music playing half the time, you can hear all the animals moving around and chirping. We chatted about the day and uploaded some pictures from the last couple of weeks before heading back to settle down to bed. It was so cool on the way back because its really dark, and there was lightning in the distance lighting up the whole sky. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more active than today so we tried to get into bed straight away and get some sleep.
