Wednesday
Lastnight wasn't the best sleep, with it being the festival there are many people who have come to the town for the waterfalls and spend a few days holiday here. So all the hotels are fully booked and everywhere is busy, with everybody partying and playing music. There were a few bungalows next to us with people coming and going from each one...eventually we got to sleep but I was woken a few times in the night. At 5.30am we were both woken up by the sound of laughter and shouting outside our window. Never, ever wake a sleeping girl who has to wear earplugs when it's quiet let alone when it's noisy...she will be very very snarly. I leapt out of bed, went straight to the window, looked out at the smiling faces of 4 cambodian men having a nice time on their holiday and BANG BANG BANG on the window. They jumped an absolute mile and looked like they'd pood their pants. Absolute silence followed. I went from being in a foul mood to being in fits of laughter at what I'd just done to those poor men. Back to sleep we went.
After breakfast later we arrived at the bunong place to be told lesson was cancelled...but they had organised for us to be doing something. The subtle complaint yesterday must have paid off. We hopped on the bikes, a lot of people came with us. Haang, Put who is an old student from here who now goes to university in pnohm penh, and 3 of Haangs friends. They rented a bike out so Liam rode one with somebody on the back I went with Put and haang drove with 2 friends on the back. We rode for about half an hour before arriving st the village with the elderly people they take supplies to. We went in to see the same lady as last week who seemed to be less wheezy today and sat on up on the platform with her for almost an hour. We spoke to her about her daily routine and a bit about her life with Put doing a wonderful job of translating. She isn't sure how old she is she only knows she is around 80. She only moved back to the village about 10 years ago because during the Khmer Rouge her along with a lot of other villagers were rounded up and moved away to work. She is completely alone with no surviving family, Im not entirely certain if her children and husband died during the regime or for other reasons all I know is they all died "around 20 years ago" so it was probably during that time. She had a lovely watch on which we asked about and she says she has had it since she was a little girl, she traded a sack of beans for it! She was quite worried about her roof still, and the helping part of us just wanted to say here is 100 dollars, get it fixed. But the part of us which is thinking of our own financial situation just can't do it. We've paid a fortune to be here, and the organisation say the money is given where it is needed in the community....surely some of our money should be going to the little old lady who keeps getting wet when it rains?! She asked for a picture to be taken with us and told us to print one out to give her before we leave which we will be sure to do. She even grabbed her walking stick and said she definitely needs to use this in the picture so that she looks very old!
After that we went back to the bunong place to drop people off before goi no to Haangs house for lunch. Liam and I drove on one bike and haang and her friend on another. It took half an hour to get to it, the same route we took to get to Busra waterfall. It was so dusty, we were filthy by the time we got there. Her house is at the side of the "road" and is only half built. She lives with her husband, his mother and a couple of children who she says are her niece and nephew. There is only a wall on one side of the house so god knows how they manage when it rains at the moment. We helped prepare lunch chopping vegetables etc, and after taking turns relaxing in the hammock we all ate together on the floor. The food really wasn't that great, it was so bland and all the little fish were whole but too small to get the bones out, same with the little shrimp. Most of them smothered the rice in soy sauce and just ate that! Still, it was enjoyable because it was authentic and an experience.
After that we drove straight to the orphanage for class where we taught shapes and sizes for an hour before playing a game which always goes down well. Then straight after that, we set off to visit another village. We've gone from being bored stiff to not having a moment to breath today! It was fun on the bikes, it's always great looking at the landscape and feeling the wind on your face here. About 30 minutes in Haangs tire went flat so we were stranded for about 20 minutes before they managed to flag a bike down who took her 2 friends whilst she slowly drove the bike the rest of the way to the village to get it fixed. After all that palaver we only had a few minutes at the village to have a quick look around before needing to head back for class and get the bike back. The night sky didnt fail to impress again, i dont know what it is that does it but theyre the most beautiful skies ive ever seen. By the time we got back it was dark, and we ended up being about 10 minutes late but they were only just arriving a we did anyway. We did more work on pronunciation with the 4 students that turned up which they seem to really enjoy. Despite it not being a particularly long blog today it was a really long day and we're both very tired now! Hopefully we will sleep well tonight.
Thursday
Lastnight wasn't too bad considering there was music banging away until the early hours from somewhere. Luckily I didn't have to get snarly with anybody outside our bungalow though which was good. Liam apparantly woke up in the night to watch the football and spent a while searching the channels to no avail, which I had no idea about so I must have been sleeping well! I feel sorry for Liam not finding the channel because he was really looking forward to it despite it being 2.30am. We did our usual morning routine, apart from we met the new volunteer James today. He's the same age as me and for Australia. He wasn't too happy because he had arrived to no room being booked for him and of course, the place is heaving at the moment so the only place they managed to get him at short notice is really far out from town. As well as that he had cut a trip with his friends short to get here but hadn't been told it was a public holiday and lessons were being cancelled/ hardly any students here...so he feels if he had known he would have come next week. We spent a long time chatting and just hanging around today because of a cancelled lesson and no activity planned for us all.
So from 9am-1.45pm we were waiting for something to happen, then we all hopped on the bikes and headed for 2pm class. More kids were there today, more like normal. Because a lot of them seemed to be struggling with the basics the last couple of days we went right back to the alphabet. We spent the whole lesson on that, playing hang man as we went and trying to mix it up a bit. It was a nice lesson and luckily James liked it too so. Think he will be fine...he just has the same reservations as us only he is here for 8 weeks not 2! We had agreed with the kids at the boarding school we would begin at 5 today because of the concert so the 3 of us started to walk there to get there for 5. On the way we bumped into dara and his friend who walked the rest of the way with us. They went a different way than we've been before, going through a few hidden gems of small housing estates (of shacks), past girls washing at streams, and past a few different fields with groups of boys playing various ball games. We couldn't believe it. We had asked them more or less every single day about sports and each time we were told they had no ball and there was nowhere to really go. Now they were telling us we could play at these fields....great job boys for telling us this on our second to last day!! But then later in the night we mentioned it to a couple of other boys and they said the same...we have no ball. So I think we've been asking the wrong kids and they've not known about these other places. Anyway by 5.20 there were only 3 boys who had turned up. We decided to start, and at 5.40 a fourth one turned up. We got James to introduce himself, them to introduce themselves to him. As usual we let the conversation to where it may and taught informally through the use of casual conversation. We both love these classes, the students are brilliant and we will miss them.
After class we were dropped off at our hotel to have a quick shower before meeting the boys again to go have dinner. There were perhaps 6 of them and us so we were there s little while before heading onto the green to see the concert. It was s really busy, with a big stage being filmed by a big camera for tv. There were a mixture of talkers, comedians, singers and dancers. As well as what was going on on stage there were also carnival type games along the sides mostly involving hitting things for prizes. All the boys had a go and between them got us all some sweets to eat as we walked round. Everybody was in really good spirits and one we had found a table among the sea of tables the students all got us drinks and food to try. James is detoxing due to a heavy week in the city so wasn't drinking, I didn't feel comfortable drinking in front of the students when we're still here as teachers and Liam said he would have one. Three beers later ( despite me telling lism it was a bad idea to promote drinking) with lots of "cheers" and shouting being thrown across the table we were ready to leave. They clearly don't drink often because they were rather tipsy from the 3 beers and were very excitable. Oddly enough their English got better the more they drank! James went back to his hotel with borin who hadn't had anything to drink, and the rest of the students walked us back to our hotel. It was worth going out for, it was such a funny evening and a really nice finish to our time here. We know there isn't any class tomorrow morning so despite not getting back until gone 10 we still made time to watch the discovery channel for a while because we decided we would have a lie in tomorrow!
