For a change I haven't been on holiday or had any time off since my last blog update! We seem to be in a bit of a run of power cuts at the moment, which adds a bit of excitement to our daily schedule, like the constant risk of flooding did. Thankfully we no longer have a risk of floods as the season has just changed to the "cold season". This would have sounded ridiculous to me before I came out- after all, it stays at around 30 degrees for most of the day, and quite a bit hotter at noon- but it's actually quite accurate, I do feel cold in the tuk-tuk on the way to work in the morning. The power cuts mean that we have no fans though, so it can get fairly warm, especially at GH2 which has had the power out for most of the past 2 weeks.
We are supposed to be moving into GH2 at some point, but I have no idea when as yet. When we arrived at Magna we were told that it would be 1 or 2 weeks before the problem with the bed bugs was sorted out, but here we are almost 3 months later, still camped in the "classroom" of GH1. I think classroom makes it sound like a much bigger space than it is- we have a double bed (between the 2 of us) and it takes up about half the floor space. It's alright though, it's nice and homely with all our stuff in it, and the food at GH1 is so much nicer than GH2 that we can cope with being a bit cosy.
We were talking to Khy, the group home manager, the other day and she commented that the Ma's really liked having us living there- the only thing they wanted us to do differently was shut the curtain when we were getting changed. To which we replied that we would love to, but we didn't have a curtain! In the typical Cambodian way she thought this was hilarious, and found us a "curtain" (it's actually a scarf, about the same size as a pashmina and only covers the middle part of one of the 2 windows, but what can you do?!). Cambodian attitudes about things can be very different to ours in Britain- last Friday we got up in the morning and had breakfast as usual, but when we went to get in the tuk-tuk to go to GH2, we discovered it was broken so we all just had a day off at GH1! we taught the half of our students that we were with, but all our lesson things were at the other group home, so a bit of improvisation was required. Much like today really. I have 2 older classes that I teach, my morning class and my afternoon class, both for 2 lessons a week and I repeat the same lessons for them. However, when I got to GH2 this morning I found all the students of my afternoon class were there-apparently they swap around at the start of each month, but nobody told us that!
So I had a quick think, and we ended up doing the verb "to have" and had a great lesson, much more fun than I had thought I would be able to make grammar! And they were all on excellent form, writing out full sentences that were almost completely correct. The younger class today was interesting too. Rather than there being 10 kids as there usually are, there was only 3 of the oldest in the class, with all the rest of them being "at the hospital". They all have to have check-ups once a month to monitor the ARV treatment that they're on so it's not unusual for one or two to be missing, but there are usually enough left to form a class! There was a hilarious moment at the end of the class when Flo went to switch on the ceiling fan and all three kids rushed to stop her, miming enthusiastically something about the ceiling fan and Somnang (one of the younger kids) and then all rolling their eyes, sticking their tongues out and drawing their fingers across their necks. It looked uncannily like a mime for "Somnang was beheaded by the ceiling fan" and certainly made me laugh! Although they reassured us that Somnang was actually fine!
On Thursday this week we had a big party at the hospital for World AIDS Day with all the kids from the group homes as well as those on the Magna home based care scheme, for them to learn about HIV/AIDS and how to look after themselves as they are all HIV+. Not as some American doctor said "it's AIDS Day so you thought you'd bring some kids to a hospital for a party"! We did a cool activity with the 6-10 year olds (with the occasional sneaky 3 year old!) to teach them how to wash their hands- we put glitter on their hands and then showed them how to wash it off with soap and water. The glitter stuck to their hands well, so they really had to try hard to get it all off, and hopefully got the message about how well you should clean. It's especially important for them as HIV weakens their immune systems, and the ARV treatment has lots of side effects like causing tooth decay, so they need to be particularly diligent.
Last weekend we stayed in Phnom Penh to get a bit of a break from the orphanage and stayed at a guesthouse- in a twin room! So for the first time in 10 weeks, we each had a bed to ourselves! We visited the Night Market for dinner as it was near where we were staying and had Cambodian kebab things and shared a plate of fried rice. It will be so weird when I come home to just have a plate of food to myself, here we just get a bowl of everything and split it between us. The food at the group homes has been so tasty these past 2 weeks too- today we had chicken in this delicious spice mix, with chopped up omelette and sliced cucumber/carrot/ginger/Cambodian vegetable for lunch (with rice of course) and it was so delicious! It doesn't really sound like anything special but in comparison to bone in watery stock with some bizarre veg, it was very good!
This weekend we are going to see Twilight at Sorya Mall, which is the main (one of only 2!) shopping centres in Phnom Penh, followed by dinner at Suki Soup- I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's quite similar to a steamboat in Singapore. It looks tasty and fun at least! We're going with 2 people from church who go to my home group that I joined this week. Amazing enough the woman whose flat it was at used to go to St George's and had several of the same teachers I did!!
It was fun starting advent this week- there are advent calendars in each group home that we made by making little packages of sweets and hanging them from a ribbon with numbers on all of them. The kids are all so excited about it, within 10 minutes of us hanging them up they had all memorised what day they got to open it on! We have been planning a christmas party for them too, but no more on that for now!
I hope you can all understand this slightly chaotic blog! Chum reap li-ah!
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