We have made it and it has been a blast! I slept for most of hour 13 hour flight… which was amazing. I tried three separate times to watch The Book Thief on the plane… I got through it eventually. Kate on the other hand watched four movies. We arrived in Taipei, Taiwan at 5:30 in the morning and wandered the airport for two hours. There wasn’t much there and we finally got on our flight to Phnom Penh.. which taxied for like 45 minutes and overall our flight was delayed but we got there. Got finger printed and through customs to find Debbie (taking photos of us as we walked out of the airport). We got in our van for our hour drive to the orphanage. The city has cows and trash, everywhere. Cows laying down, walking in the streets, eating trash. Cows for days.

By the time we made it here, we had missed lunch so we put our stuff down and walked to a small store in the village to have some lunch. The noodles were SO good! It was the perfect meal after a long trip. We sat and talked, caught up, cried, and walked back. Debbie gave us a tour around the orphanage and we met SO many of the children here.

Almost all of the buildings here have murals painted on them. Painted by teachers, students, and visiting volunteers and they are just beautiful. Quotes, paintings… here’s a few:

Dinner is at 5:00 so we headed over to eat some more noodles, rice, vegetables, and they had chicken. I have been eating vegetarian here. I can’t get the idea of the animals roaming free, and they all do- chickens, dogs, cows, roosters- eating the garbage and then us eating them out of my head. Other volunteers eat it, I tried some once, Kate has had it a few times (if she can tell what it is) and it is perfectly fine. It’s just the idea of what they animals eat that gets me! So rice and veggies for me. Dessert so far has been mango and oh my lord, I kid you not, the best mango I have ever eaten. It is SO good. I could eat all day if they would let me.

I call this my fortress of solitude. We have nets, not even just mosquito nets- any kind of bug/insect/critter you can think of net. The nets we have tucked under the mattress so nothing can get in during the day or while we are sleeping. Bugs like this guy

Sorry it’s blurry. So far we have seen geckos, frogs, flies, ants ALL THE ANTS, lizards, snakes, and bugs that I am not sure of their species. Anyways, we walked around the outside of the orphanage, showered at Debbie’s, sat and talked more, the finally went to bed at like.. 8:30. The transition for Kate and I with the time change has been beautiful and easy. We slept well, both waking up in the middle of the night having to pee… but not wanting to climb out of our fortress’ because it is such work. OH! Also, when you use the bathroom, most of the toilets here do not have constant running water so in all of the Bathrooms are giant tiled basins that are filled with water. You do what you gotta do and then scoop about two buckets of water into the toliet to flush it down. And toliet paper doesn’t got into the toliet. For any reason. Just think about that one.

I am absolutely in love with the shoes off inside part of this culture. Being barefoot inside is lovely. The tiles are beautiful and so well kept here. It has truly been a beautiful start.