First week

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I have now settled into a sort of routine for weekdays. Not a lot happens in the mornings as most of the orphanage children are at school. The organisation (NFO) supports a number of other teaching projects as well as running the orphanage, and the main two of this happen in the early afternoon. One is the "monks' English class" that I have now taken over in Takeo town centre, and the other is helping with English lessons in a rural village school a few miles outside Takeo. After these lessons the volunteers then normally go over to the orphanage to spend the rest of the afternoon with the children, either doing some English lessons or more commonly just chatting to the kids or playing games or sports with them. This goes on until sometime after 6pm when we return to the volunteers' centre for our evening meal.

The volunteers' centre is about a mile from the orphanage though they are both within Takeo town. NFO has 3 of its own tuk-tuks - these are 4-6 seater passenger vehicles consusting of a two-wheeled open passenger compartment hooked on to the back of a standard motor bike. There are also about a dozen bicycles so volunteers can choose either method of transport between the two buildings. As the country around here is very flat and the roads are wide without much traffic, cycling is an easy way to get around so I always cycle between the two. Motor bikes and cycles are very common in Cambodia, as are tuk-tuks. The roads in and around Takeo seem in quite good condition whereas I was expecting much worse from what I had read. There is very little street lighting though so it is considered not a good idea to travel longer distances at night.

Many volunteers have a long lie-in in the morning but I prefer to get up and cycle around to get to know the area. Yesterday I visited the main market in order to buy a few items I needed, like some cheap flip-flops and a shoulder bag to carry books to and from my lesson. I also wanted a spare sun hat which was quite a problem to find as just about every hat I tried on was the same size and too small. Very few locals speak English, and of course I know no Khmer (the Cambodian language) yet, so trying to explain why I kept rejecting hats was quite difficult. The market is a warren of hundreds of closely-packed stalls. Although it is loosely organised into areas like meat, vegetables, clothing, cleaning materials etc., it took a couple of hours to get round and even then I am not sure I saw it all.

There is a regular turn-over of volunteers and about half a dozen are leaving this weekend and some more news ones should be arriving on Sunday. For this reason we all went out to a karaoke bar last night for a celebration.

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Photos

The orphanage
The entrance to the NFO orphanage

Volunteer Centre
Where NFO volunteers stay

Our transport
One of the NFO's tuk-tuks

Comments

[Sherry]

Hi from Dudley
A good blog, keep it coming. We shall be following your progress. Have fun