Monday 23 May 2011

A Week in Ban Meta

First of all, sorry for the immense lateness of this post. It's been a busy couple of weeks.




As you may have read a long time ago, in November the two of us spent a weekend at an orphanage. For our final week of travelling, we went back there to volunteer for longer. We got a bus from Chiang Mai to Lomsak so we could get picked up. The only problem was that the bus didn't get into Lomsak until 2am in the morning so we couldn't get picked up. We were thinking of just staying in the bus shelter and sleeping there if it wasn't scary looking and deserted. When we got there, we found that it was in a busyish looking place with a seven eleven so we didn't mind sleeping there. We didn't sleep there though, instead we saw a guest house and managed to get in and were able to sleep on actual beds.
We were picked up at around 9am and taken to Ban Meta. We were there whilst the kids were doing chores so we had some time so settle in and unpack and wait for lunch. When it came along we had a dilemma. We had been there before so we recognised a lot of the kids but we didn't want to sit with them straight away as we were nervous and they might get a bit scared if we just sat with them so we sat on another table together eating our lunch. We found out though that they remembered us as some of the younger ones poked us as they went to put their bowls away and some even remembered our names! After lunch we started to sort out what we would be doing for the week as we were asked to do arts and crafts with the kids. We looked through our resources and sorted out what we would do. Through out the week we all made,
Kites,
Lanterns,
Masks,
Aeroplanes,
Crowns,
Beaded Jewellery,
Geckos,
Stain Glass Windows,
Origami,
Drawing,
Balloon Animals,
and some other stuff which I cant remember.



We had one group in the morning which was usually the younger ones. Followed by the older ones in the afternoon while the little ones were asleep. It was very tiring. We never really had a break as it was constant teaching and looking after the kids. We relished the times when we had a break! We ended up stopping the late afternoon session so we could have a break and the leave the room we were constantly in. During that time we went to the play area and played with the younger children. A lot of the time I was being given pretend food to eat. I gained a lot of weight while I was there. I had a lot of ice cream made from leaves, flowers and rocks. Delicious.
One evening we also played a massive balloon game. We spent one afternoon blowing up around 100 balloons and after dinner we got all the kids to tie one around one of their legs. When the games started, they all had to pop each others balloons. They all loved it which was good.
One other evening which was one of my favourite was when some of the youngest ones took me back to their house and we watched Scooby-Doo together while they played with my hair. It was relaxing and a lot of fun as my hair kept them all entertained. Once they got hold of my camera, they were off taking photo's. Although for 4-6 year old kids, they were very careful with it which was good. 

 On our final day we had the Sunday service. It was just like I remembered. Very happy and very clappy. Well, you have to experience everything. We left after lunch so we could get the last bus to Khon Kean. From there we wanted to get a bus straight to Si Saket or Ubon but we found out that they had finished. Instead we had to go all the way down to Nakon Ratchasima which was a long away in the wrong direction. We wanted to get home though and did it anyway. We manged to get back at 6am in the morning. That concludes the travels of Look-Kaew and Namchar.

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