Posted from Siem Reap, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

I have to say we were all a bit nervous and had no idea what to expect. We met with Liz from Australia, the coordinator extraordinaire, who took us through the logistics and rules of running a big school/home like the Green Gecko. We got our Green Gecko volunteer shirts and off we went. A group of 60+ children were awaiting us, since it was 11 am, one of the first things we did was to go to assembly where were introduced to all of the children. Assembly happens every day for these kids, with all the volunteers, their Gecko Group leaders and Tania. What struck me first was how big all of these kids were, somehow i had expected many Kids Orlando’s age, 6 and younger. Yes there were a few smaller once but most of the kids were Ayesha’s age and older. I think one of the oldest kids was 20.
What followed the next 2 weeks was an experience that s really hard to put into word for me, what a huge learning curve it became for us. You somehow think you know so much, but really when you are dropped into a place like Siam Reap, where everything is a totally new experience you start to realize quickly that we know so very little and that we still have to learn a truck load.

Basicly Richard and i were assigned to to help the other teachers. Now these teachers were not qualified teachers but both were still students from Europe and dedicated 5+ month to teaching at the Green Gecko. Actually all the volunteers are long time volunteers; it makes it very hard for the kids otherwise. Please for anybody who is more interested in the Green Gecko project, follow the link. You will not ones regret it, you will fall in love with these children, their story’s will humble you, and you, like us, will want to do more. At the end of our day we would go into town for dinner and after only a few days we started to recognize the same children trying to beg or sell on the streets. We decided that giving money was not ok, but they were welcome to join us for dinner. So on many occasions we would have a couple of extras at our table. Our kids dealt with Cambodia exceptionally well. Orlando was a bit tired at the end, since going to school everyday had not been normal thing for him. All the kids loved him a little too much and to hard. Ayesha settled it really well and also took over an English lesson for a whole day as the teacher” a day in the life of Ayesha in Australia”. She did amazingly well since quite a lot of the kids were older than her. Richard helped out with website issues, we both taught computer study and I helped were ever I could, wishing the whole time that I really wanted to do more.