Day 2:

American Breakfast in the morning according to the forms that we had filled up. Looked rather unsubstantial and not filling at all. Looking at the chicken fried rice that others had ordered, I decided to order chicken fried rice the next day. Breakfast was at about 7.30 am, and we played cards for a while after breakfast before leaving for the Prostheses foundation slightly further away. There was a photo-taking session outside the foundation before we left for an introduction inside the foundation. We were introduced to the foundation, their aims and the prothetic legs that they made. Derek gave a good impromtu speech and gave the amount raised to the director. We then proceeded to do our community service inside the foundation that looked pretty much like a factory rather than a foundation. The process of fitting a prosthetic leg was shown live and we were amazed. All of us were split up into about 3 groups, I was assigned to wash the plaster of paris of the equipment that they had brought to various locations in Thailand and Malaysia. It later turned to scraping rust of bigger knives after lunch and it was very frustrating when we could not wash the rust of the knives. We sang while we were doing work, a morale booster that everyone enjoyed. We then breaked of for lunch with chicken drumsticks, nice sauce. We played bridge during the one hour break that did not include lunch and a half-hearted attempt to play murderer, which was not fun at all. Too slow. We never played murderer again. During the break, Fraser and Paul were playing with the wheelchairs, and it looked rather cool. Back to work. I got frustrated by the job about 15 minutes in and decided to help Chaya cut plastic bottles instead. Later, I went to help another group unscrew screws from some equipment and it was finished very quickly indeed. Mr Tham managed to obtain some isotonic drinks for us that tasted rather revolting, since I was used to the taste of Singapore's 100 plus and H-Two-o. All work finished. Our replacement teacher, Mr Liang, was here, and of course, I was happy that it was someone I knew. This was followed by a briefing by the rotary club for the next day's building of the check dams. My vision of the check dams was there, and I prepared myself for the hard work the next day. We later went to the Le Refuge home for girls, the ride was bumpy but I still fell asleep and when we arrived, I was reluctant to disembark. There was a funny smell and I wondered what it was. A long introduction to the home by the Father, and then some games like pass the hoola hoop and guess the leader. I was sabo-ed during the first game, as predicted, and did some funny forfeit like trying to do hoola-hooping. I was able to do it last time but rather hopeless this time round as I failed terribly in trying to get it to spin. The girls (and 2 boys) showed us their house and their rooms, and the fantastic view of the mountain from the computer room balcony. They were very excited when it came to showing the place around them. A sale of their items went on, with each group given 2000 baht to buy their products, since they did not want outright donations. I bought some table mats which I thought were rather nice, but not quite appreciated by my mom later. Following this was dinner, after the sales had been concluded. There were 3 girls on our bus and one of them was called Suk. Describing her would be hard, since she was a playful, lively character. Now we assume that all orphans would be sad and motionally disturbed, but not these girls. They are very happy people and they are really at home when we play with them and talk to them. They opened up rather quickly and we had a really really good time with them especially over dinner and during the lighting of traditional Thai lanterns. In our van, we sang with them, our Christian songs which we harmonised very nicely and we had never performed so well before, and they sang their version of Seek Ye First (in Thai), a song that I had wanted to sing when they were singing other songs. Divine appointment? Our treat for dinner, shrimp and other stuff, common palate. Kebabs were rather hot, what looked like peppers was really in fact, a super hot version of their green chilli and I had to drink a lot of water to flush away the heat of those chillis. Later we went to the open space near the restaurant to light the lanterns, where we played with the orphans in the mean time. Lalang was a common thing, and they used those rough ends to bully us, but in the end, we really had an enjoyable time. An eye-opener to Thai culture with the traditional lanterns which worked on the basis of hot air rises. We were asked, of course, the basis, and we played along to come up with some really dumb answers like "air is dense" and all those rubbish. When it came our time to leave, there was of course, sad farewells and even though we had known them for less than a day, Mr Chiam commented that we acted as if we knew them for years! He even had to block us from going to near their open air van to prevent any delays in the schedule. Our first practise took place in the "void deck" area, very effective for mass dance practises and singing practises. When I went back to my room, I watched discovery channel, but really, it was a repeat of the programme we saw in the morning and we were rather unappreciative of it. Crap. Watched ESPN and saw more repeats. Wondered what they did in Thailand when it came to satellite programmes. The toilet which was faulty was finally repaired. Slept like a log since Zhang did not snore and I used the softer spare pillow instead of the rock hard pillow on the first night.

Trying to teach girls to play murderer is a joke. Really.