Monday

Monday was my first day at the Day Care.

I went to Bonnnie's school where Bill Rhea, the Day Care owner/founder guy picked me up.

He brought me to the building, introduced me to Micheal, the guy who runs the thing on a daily basis and then said good bye.

Woah.

So the day care has about 50 kids. And about 4 teachers. And the kids are beautiful and hungry for love and food and don't speak any english. Neither do the teachers. Just Michael.

I started in the classroom where Micheal was teaching and brought out the puzzle I had for the kids. They were very excited and all asked me lots of questions while clamoring to touch it. Of course, I didn't understand them and felt rather helpless in the crush of dirty, curious little bodies.

Once we regained some control, we used the puzzle to teach the kids the words for TIGER, ELEPHANT and MONKEY. Basically i'd point to the picture, say the word and they'd repeat it back. Very advanced teaching method, I assure you.

I won't go into the nuts and bolts of the day too much here (perhaps on another day?) but the things I won't forget are as follows:

The kids remove all their clothes, get soaped up, sprayed down, shampooed, brushed, dried and redressed in new, clean clothes while their rags are washed during the day. This is the only shower most of them get, period. This is also the only time most of them wear clean clothes.

At the end of the day, they all get showered again and redressed in their now-clean rags before being sent home again.

The kids also get a big, hot lunch of rice, potatoes, broth and veggies at lunch. They eat like you wouldn't believe and you can tell who's been there a while and who is new based on how skinny they are. This is not an exaggeration.

After lunch, they all lay down for naps. It starts as a giggle-fest and then the littlest ones drop off, followed by older and older kids until they're all asleep. Its so quite and they're clean and full and safe and they sleep for an hour and a half. I wonder how long they could sleep there if we didn't wake them?

So those are my big observations of my first day. Not being able to communicate with anyone at all was terrible and made me feel rather useless. But now that it's actually Tuesday, I can look back and give myself a little slack because it was the first day and I'm already way better.

The last big thing is that I rode home on a moto. And I freaking loved it. Its been a highlight of my trip so far and I'm not sure what will bump it from the top. Sorry, Mom. I know you won't like this, but at least today I borrowed a helmet? Anyways, it was such a good, breezy, cool and wonderful way to end a long, hard day. I could ride on the back of a moto through Phnom Penh for hours and not get bored. I love it. Seriously.

Dang. Look at the time. I can't write about today at all. This is the biggest thing I was going to write: I have lice.

And apparently that's normal around here.

Welcome to the wild, wild west.