well time flies when you're having fun and consequently our time at New Hope for Cambodian Children orphanage went by in the blink of an eye...
we taught several english lessons, took control of the nursery (to the extent to which learning to say 'stop crying' and 'no biscuits if you're naughty' have enabled us to take control of a dozen 3 and 4-year-olds) and generally rampaged around NHCC making our presence felt. our arm muscles are noticeably more toned thanks to the million times a day that kids run up wanting to be picked up, and we've finally adjusted to the heat! so much so that on one occasion we actually wore jumpers.
the rain pours down for about an hour a day, flooding everything, including the inside of your bedroom if you leave the windows open (we can speak with some authority on the subject). but it cools everything down, and our house mother mrs mun is as fast as lightning collecting washing off the line when the rain comes (it seems she may have some kind of sixth sense. handy!).
so it was with sadness that we prepared to leave... and although admittedly we were not totally pumped for the 'dance party' planned for the night before our departure, you wouldn't believe us if we told you how much fun it can be dancing to cambodian trance music on a basketball court with kids aged 4 to 15. all in the lovely province of kompong speu.
the highlight of the night was a toss up between seeing a kid wearing a t-shirt with britney spears emblazoned across it front and back having a dance-off with no-one in particular, two 12-year-olds who put australian clubbers to shame with their rave dancing, and the fact that mr mun (house father and resident DJ) played the same 2 songs over and over again, one of which was 'give it to me' by timbaland... dubbed into khmer.
oh god we're going to miss this place. but with any luck, we'll be back there one day :)
iona also got a very entertaining email from a boy called Ravy (who must have used gmail after her one day) expressing some kind of romantic interest. it could have been the cinderella story of kompong speu if only we weren't leaving the following day... so i guess we'll never know what could have happened. sigh.
we also spent one very entertaining lunchtime swimming in a river of fairly questionable cleanliness, us two, dani, our friend from cali, and an english guy called richard (who contracted some type of giardia-like illness shortly afterwards). mrs mun was understandably quite entertained when we returned to our house covered in mud, dirt and water, and insisted that we hose ourselves of outside before we considered coming into the house. and fair enough.
another morning we accompanied some of the cooks to the nearby market, where we were taken under the wing of the cook from yellow cluster, who held our hands across the road and got us to carry her shopping. then gave us an entire watermelon for our services (to be fair, she did buy about 40), all of which we ate gleefully.
so now we've left NHCC, arriving in Phnom Penh in style (in one of those open sided jeeps with no doors and definitely no seatbelts), and we managed to restrain ourselves, leaving all the children in kompong speu, despite the massive temptation to take some with us - they really are absolutely gorgeous.
so let the next phase of WT09 begin. we'll keep you updated, obviously, and expect some sort of photographic evidence some time in the next few days!
xoxo gossip girl(s)
(we are up to episode 8 of GG and love it, which is no mean feat having spent the last three weeks with 2.5 hours a day of electricity. kewl)
