Today was our first day at our placement! We were supposed to go this afternoon after orientation but the guy asked if we would be ok going at 10 so we went this morning for a few hours. We took a tuk tuk, which was about a 10 minute ride to our placement. It's a shelter where homeless kids and kids from very poor families can go and eat breakfast and lunch, take a shower, get a hair cut, play games, watch movies and we also help them with their homework and their english. Talking to the lady that runs it, she said they feed 200-400 kids every day so it can get a little crazy. We were there when all the kids got out of school and they all came for lunch. We were running around making and serving their food and then afterwards we just met the kids and played with them. Remember the picture of the little beggar boy from my last post? He and his sister were there, and his mom and her 2 other tiny kids. One of them is probably 2 years old and the other is just a few months. It's good to see that they are being at least somewhat taken care of, and this place is providing for people who really need it. The mom was there trying to feed the little one while holding the babe so I held the babe while she ate and it was just about the cutest thing ever. I have no idea if it was a boy or girl, I do know that it wasn't wearing a diaper though which made me a little bit nervous. We took a tuk tuk back home and had lunch and then we were free for the day. We decided to go to the central market which we had heard was even better than the first market we went to. We got ourselves another tuk tuk and rode about 30 minutes to the central market. It was enormous, soo much stuff. I got a dress for $3, a cardigan for $3, earrings for $1 and the best purchase of the day... A FAN!! It was $11 but no one was willing to go any lower. We went around to like 5 different people selling fans and by the end of it, the fan people were not our friends. They were starting at ridiculous prices, like $25-$35 and then we would counter that with an offer of like $7. One guy told us to go to China and another lady yelled at us "What is wrong with you!?" But in the end we were victorious and we left with our fan, which has made the inferno that is our room slightly more tolerable. As we were leaving the market we were approached by a tuk tuk driver, so we gave him the address to our hostel and were bargaining a price when seriously 10 other guys came up and surrounded us, all wanting us to take their tuk tuks. They told us $5 but I was sticking with $3, then one guy just picked up the fan and took off! That was his ploy to get us to take his tuk tuk, but I wasn't about to let that thing go so I went after him. He was just kidding and all 20 of them just sat and laughed and laughed. I guess it was funny, but it wouldn't have been if he really would have taken our fan. Finally the first guy agree to $3 so we loaded into the tuk tuk and headed home. We just hung out the rest of the day, and now we are booking our trip to Angkor Wat this weekend!
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| This little guy instantly loved us. So cute |
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| In the tuk tuk, holding on tight to our fan! |
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