Cambodia Calling: Nam Bai

Group Home
The Group Home is actually a lovely building, we have a a room on the bottom floor which is well equipped with teaching supplies/ paper/ stickers etcetc which will come in handy. We have both put the photos we brought on our sides of the room. We sleep on mattresses on the floorwhich we pushed together and put the big mosquito net over the two of them. Our room looks onto the front yard ( a big space where the kids play) and have no curtains to our room, and the windows are hardly ever closed as it would be to hot. Therefore even when we go into our rooms to recluse from the kids there's always going to be a few over this time to pop up to the window shouting 'ma', wanting something or just staring in. We have an ensuite wetroom, that is stinking. We are going to buy some cleaning products this weekend then give it a good scrub.

This was AFTER a hose down!

Our room :)

There is a 'library' containing a few shelves of books in both English and Khmer, the english ones in my opinion are too difficult for them to understand as the kids english is veryyyyy basic. There are also games for them to play, but things like Monopoly/Balderdash that are again far to difficult for them considering its all in English (and half the stuff is missing). We've been giving them paper when we want a bit of rest so our room is now coming down with drawings which is brightening the place up significantly.

The Kids
As I described to my mum are 'terrors but so great at the same time'. Terrors as in there is not 5 minutes when their not yelling 'ma' at us to get us to watch, or they're hitting each other over the head with bats, or pinching each other.
But they are so great I have honestly never got so many cuddles in my life. Reading their files and understanding the background of each child really shows how different their lives are to most children growing up in the UK.
Currently attempting to learn their names, this is difficult and this week I have learnt 3. They have got my name as apparently is sounds like a type of whiskey, therefore often I am called 'Alixon Whiskey'. Gwen gets 'Goan" But mostly the younger ones just caled us 'ma' and the older ones call us 'sister' - it's quite nice really.

They spend most of their free time just wandering around the GH, I think the GH rely strongly on the PT volunteers to organise activities and lessons and they've found the 5/6 month gap challenging. Next week we start our timetable so hopefully that'll get them a lot more motivated to do stuff.

The amount of english they know is very little, which Phearun the GH Manager wants to change this year, no pressure on us then... There is a few of them with ok english skills but still not enough to have a conversation.

We enjoy talking to the older ones and mostly spend the evenings with them, last night the boys were showing us all 'Magic' - including a levitation act. With the girls we listen to music and sing, they seem to like J-lo and Justin Bieber over here.

The Food

Rice, rice, rice, rice, rice. The word Nam Bai (food) literally translates to eat rice. One day I ate 4 bowls of rice - can't be healthy. Ma made us a salad yesterday for lunch which was a pleasant surprise AND we got noodles for breakfast today instead of rice. She must have been feeling generous. Some of the kids came back with what we now know as deep fried potato pieces, and we took the bikes out to get some. However we both went for a deep fried banana at 500 riel each. Later that day the Khmer teacher at the GH brought us deep fried banana also, definately not complaining! =)

Lotttts of mango also. yummm, also quite a lot of fruit i've never seen before and only know the names in Khmer, but its good.
Coconuts here are also green.