Part I:
I'd crashed in my bed last night fully clothed again, hat on and all. That was around ten pm. I wake up at five a.m. I'm not tired anymore, so I get out my laptop and start writing some more. Allie wakes up two hours later, at seven a.m. and showers first. As of tomorrow, I will officially be out of clean clothes. We'd been promised that there would be a laundry service here, but just like everything else we were told before we came here, this too was a falsehood. I have to take matters into my own hands.
I step into the shower, fully clothed. I turn the metal knob to the left and water begins to spurt out of the shower head. We don't get warm water here. It isn't ice cold, but it definitely is cooler than what I'd call luke-warm. It feels even colder on your skin when you're fully dressed. I feel like I'm having an impromptu water fight....with myself.
8:20 a.m: Breakfast at Jars of Clay. We're becoming regulars at this place. They have the best milkshakes and stuffed croissant sandwiches. And free Wi-fi, which is always a plus. The guys finish up quickly and take off. They're going back to The Building to see if they'll have more luck with interviewing some of the people there without us girls getting in the way.
We go back to our air conditioned room at the team house to work on asset management (organizing our footage and photos), better interview questions (the ones we've been using haven't extracted the right information from the interviewees), and scripting the documentary. Compared to the rest of the trip, today feels like kind of a lazy day. I am grateful for this break, until the guys come back and share with us what we've missed. After the building, they passed a Vietnamese floating village and took some incredible shots of it, like the one below.
Let's see if I can remember this correctly. During the Vietnam war, Vietnam and Cambodia were at odds with each other. Some of the Vietnamese, however, sided with the Cambodians. So those Vietnamese were kicked out. But, Cambodians didn't want any Vietnamese living on Cambodia soil. So now they all live on house boats on a river. I thought that was pretty interesting.
While the guys had been gone, we'd also done some exploring of the teamhouse. We couldn't believe what we'd found - a washing machine! I could have died of happiness, knowing that we could have clean clothes for the rest of the trip. (The clothes I'd washed this morning in the shower were still pretty smelly.)
At three p.m., we have an interview scheduled with Randy, the boys' house leader.
He doesn't show.
He'd made some excuse to some other people as to why he can't make it, who came and told us. Of course, we know that the real reason is that, just as was the case with Holly's girls, he doesn't want to feel like he's exploiting any of those kids. Man, these people don't make it easy to work with them. We decide to ditch this organization and move on to a different one who will actually appreciate what we're trying to do for them.
Part II: My Favorite Part of the Day
It is five o'clock. We have some interviews scheduled over at Judah's orphanage. We take a tuk-tuk about 5 kilometers and pull up at a very colorful gate that had been undoubtedly painted by the kids. The moment we arrive, we are greeted by dozens of little tiny smiling faces. Before we can even exit the tuk-tuk, they're climbing all over on it, on us. They're smiling and saying, "Hello!" and hugging us. The youngest is only about a year old, and the oldest is in his teens. They're all orphans. The average age, from what I can see, looks to be about five, or maybe seven. Whatever the actual age, they're all very young. I start snapping pictures, and they LOVE it. Every time I take one, they all run over to me and gather around as I show them the picture. Then they run back and pose again. I take a few hundred pictures, then decide to go help my team, who is already filming an interview.
As usual, no one wants to open up. No one wants to admit they were a prostitute. It is shameful here, and people don't like to talk about it. We decide to move indoors for some more privacy. We interview Nalan, one of the leaders here at the orphanage, who was sold into prostitution at the age of six, and wasn't rescued from street life until the age of sixteen. It is a hard story to hear, and difficult for her to share. She starts to cry as she delves into some more of the details of life on the streets. My heart breaks for what some of these people have to go through.
We all give Nalan a hug. We just have to; she looks like she needs so much love. They all do. We schedule a time to return tomorrow afternoon for some interviews with more people, and then depart the orphanage. All the kids give us hugs and climb all over us before we leave. I can't help but love every single one of them.
3rd World Skateboard:
This is Joo; she's the one I want to take home most:
All thee kids are fascinated with our cameras:
Our tuk-tuk takes us back to our teamhouse. We set out in search of a place to eat. Mike wants "street food", or food from a street vendor. We walk all over the place, and no one seems to be able to make up their minds. I finally decide that I would rather eat at The Coffee House, across the street from Jars of Clay. So, we split up. Us girls eat at The Coffee House, and the boys will keep looking for something new to try.
We finish at nine p.m. We hadn't eaten much. The three of us begin walking in the general direction of our teamhouse, not paying full attention to exactly where we are or where we need to turn. I think we all had been counting on each other to lead the way. The problem with this place is, everything looks the same. It's all these narrow streets with crumbling sidewalks and rusty gates in front of each house. We're totally lost. None of us have kept track of how far we've been walking, or where we turned or where supposed to turn. Suddenly--
"I recognize that pile of garbage!" Allie exclaims.
So we find our way home, using an apparently unique pile of garbage as a landmark.
Once we arrive, we realize the guys have the only key, and we are locked out of the house. Oh, and we have NO idea where the guys are. Great.
We can't just stand the on the street like a bunch of hookers...so we begrudgingly make our way to Water of Life.
"We're locked out," we tell them. "Do you guys have a spare key?" Lon finds one for us and walks us back. Lon is a local, but he speaks almost like an American, with only a slight accent. He says five years ago, he couldn't speak a single word of English. Now he's completely fluent. This is amazing to me.
He unlocks our gate and lets us in. I can't wait to climb into bed and sleep for a looong time. My head hits the pillow and soon, I am fast asleep...
"Creeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaakkkk," I wake up to the bone-chilling sound of our fan turning from side to side. My eyes open. It is HOT IN HERE. Two things about our room: there is a fan, and there is an air conditioning. So far, we haven't been using the fan at ALL because of the noise it makes. It's literally like nails on a chalkboard. I clumsily climb down from my bunk bed and locate the air conditioning remote. I fumble around with it and try to turn it on. It doesn't come on. I try all the buttons. No luck. Uuuuuughh! It is So. Damn. Hot. I give up on getting any sleep for the rest of the night, annoyed that the A/C won't work. Then, fifteen minutes before I'm planning on waking up, Allie wakes up and pushes the "Power" button on the remote, just like I did before. The air comes on.
Seriously??!?!?!?
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