Blog 16 - Orphange Smhorphange

This week has been a big improvement on last. To say the least. I’ve spent most of my time at the orphanage, back to a semblance of normality. We’ve done some stone painting, I declined. We didn’t have many stones and I’d already painted a penguin the time before. It was an amazing penguin reminiscent of the Linux mascot. They had a great time, even though most of them just painted it one colour then added some dots. We then played egg and stone races, which suffered some outrageous cheating.

The day after concerned beads. I was suddenly 4 again, with a desperate urge to eat bits of plastic and throw them at the fat kid with glasses. However, I refrained and utilised my GCSE in Art to create a bracelet with symmetrical patterns and a knot tied at a precisely middle point. It was perfect. Whilst I was doing this, the kids amused themselves with throwing beads and trying to garrotte each other. I’m still wearing my bracelet without irony, I’m actually pretty proud about how it turned out. There were plenty of spillages of the yoghurt pots containing beads, of course. It’s part of the fun, and the magical sound of plastic rattling on floor tiles. Something to give pre-school teachers Vietnam-like PTSD.

Thursday was great fun. Colouring! I coloured a picture of a fat frog with a small frog. However, many of the pencils had been appropriated for improvised shivs, so some colours were substituted. Meaning purple bushes and blue mountains. Still, it gave a sense of the unnatural which strongly juxtaposed the natural image whilst unsettling the viewer leading them to question how they sense the outside world in a purely superficial way. Coincidently, that’s also how I described my art coursework after I’d spilt paint on it. I spent a lot of time colouring in-between the lines and only colouring in one direction, meaning my training at Head Start pre-school still remains.

Friday was the biggest doss, we arrived at 9am, sat down in the cinema, watched a film, then got up and left. Time well spent. The film was The Town, I remind you, a 15 certificate. Ten minutes in, you’ve seen a bank robbery, a hostage situation, a man have his head beaten in with a rifle butt, a stripper and a couple getting jiggy. All interspersed with more “fucks” and “cunts” than parliament. So, I think you’d agree, the perfect film for 8 year olds. I was expecting “Shrek: Forever After”, still, not a bad film. Ending left a lot to be desired though.

We were greeted when we got home by the fact that Jonas’ (Pookie’s son) hamsters had escaped, one had been found in Sabine’s cat’s mouth and the other is AWOL. The one found spending quality time with the Maxi survived, amazingly. This was when I found it’d been living in a plastic jar for nearly two weeks. I assumed they’d found a cage for it in the near month since he’d brought it. Nope, still in a ten inch² plastic jar with no lid, no sawdust and no water bottle. Matthias and I pretty much gave up at this point, though miraculously one of Jonas’ friend’s (too many bloody apostrophes) neighbours had a spare hamster cage. Pookie had finally brought some sawdust, so Matthias and I fashioned a future board lining, poured in the sawdust and released the hamster. The change was instantaneous. It immediately began burrowing, digging and running around to its little heart’s content. I created a house out of a yoghurt pot and gave it a dark place to snuggle in. We put in some proper hamster food and sat back, chuffed. Now all it needs is a bottle and it might survive the month. Hopefully.

Building on last week’s coffee with Jira Nun, I returned to buy some T-Shirts and again got talking with Jira Nun. Which then led to her inviting me for lunch, I agreed, obviously. I sat down with her, her cousin who designs the clothes and her brother, who speaks very good English. We enjoyed Vietnamese style food – spring rolls with Vietnamese sausage and peanut sauce with a side dish of noodle salad. I was there for about two hours, chatting with her and the staff. She then pressed some dried coconut and pumpkin into my hands and said she wanted me to come back sometime with Matthias. So, I dragged him along on Thursday. We enjoyed some fresh smoothies and talked about the upcoming Song Kran festival in April. Her children are coming home from LSE and she wants me to meet them. I was also introduced to her scheme for Japan. She’s selling T-Shirts raising money for the Japan relief program, aiming for 100,000 baht (roughly two grand). She’s already half way there in a few days, and more than a week to go. I have one, as does Matthias, a product of borderline emotional blackmail.

We also have said goodbye to Sabine for a while. She’s returned to Germany for a month, we had an all you can eat barbeque to bid a fond farewell. We hope that she won’t miss the perfect weather, glorious sunshine and Thai food.

And finally, another sign I found amusing. It’s a nearby internet cafe:

*giggles*