We turned up in 3 "pick up trucks" 2 for us and one for our luggage! After a few logistical issues we were sent off to our respective houses. As the houses are fairly small we had had to do a little wrangling to ensure that each group of girls had an adult with them. Girls, staff and bags were dispersed around the village and we all had to settle in.
I was housed with Niamh, Katie and Laura in a pleasant house with a living room with tiled floors, a ceiling fan and a sofa (rather a luxury). The rest of the house was far more basic. We chose not to take our huge bags upstairs, we feared the wooden floors would not take the weight! The bedrooms were wooden walled constructions with a double mattress on the floor and a mosquito net, basic but functional. The kitchen was a wooden lean-to area outside with a single gas fired ring and thankfully a fridge. The bathroom consisted of a wooden walled room, next to the kitchen area, with a squat toilet in one corner and a large vat of rainwater in the other.
The lady of the house was lovely and welcoming and provided us with water and smiles, but spoke no English, but instructed her 10 year old son to take us for a tour of the village, he either spoke no english or chose to speak no english to us.
We bumped into Miss Turnbull with Shikha, Kate and Lizzie who were utilising the balloons to entertain their house's children, wonderfully reassuring to know that they were so close.
We pottered around the village and he eventually took us over the river, and found great amusement in our crossing the bridge, we clung to the sides in great fear whilst he ran back and forth showing us how stable it was. On the other side he showed us the "main road" where Katie spotted a black scorpion, we obviously shuffled back a few paces as he threw stones at it so that it raised it's tail. He then calmly took off a flip flop and splatted it. I know that in Buddism one is not supposed to kill, but I feel this particular death was justified!
On the way back we discovered Pete, Hayley, Steph and Irmina's house. They were sat outside amongst a menagerie of animals, the favourite being a little maccac monkey (sp)
We returned to our house for dinner, the mother unrolled a bamboo mat and we all sat on the floor to be fed rice and other dishes. The father returned home, thankfully he spoke a little english and we managed some faltering chat, helped along by a phrase book that I had bought with me and Niamh's linguistic abilities.
Then was the dilemma of when to go to bed, we didn't want to be rude and go to bed too early or stay up too late and keep the family up. The problem was solved when our host got out some pictures from previous guests, so we pulled out the school magazine and some postcards from home. The picture of Katie's cat went down well.
We eventually retired for the night, Niamh and Katie in one room and poor Laura drew the short straw and had to bunk in with me. After a round of the alphabet game, doing countries of the world, we slept remarkably well. It was all just rather surreal!
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