Sick Kids, Yet Progress At The Orphanage

Sorry for the delay in updates. I have been staying home from the orphanage for three days now. The boys are just not well. We have been laying low and getting the usual 3+ hours of napping in that they are used to. Seems like things are looking up. Hopefully tomorrow...

Things continue to shape up at the orphanage. James and Nathanial went to purchase the steel for the playground equipment. They have been welding on it for two days, three if you can count today. They have the jungle gym finished and should complete the monkey bars today. The steel is covered in oil (I have no idea why) so when James gets home he is worn out from the heat and covered in oil. I feel bad for him. He would be fine with the whole thing, but he is still sick too. He does a good job of not complaining, none of the rest of the team even knew how miserable he was. He hasnt eaten much in several days and what he does eat he usually throws up. Everyone knows how seasick he gets, so the ferry ride is not helping. Please pray for all of this sickness. Even several of the others on the trip are not well, it is making it difficult to make a plan and stick with it.

Abigail (my cousin) and I have had some interesting adventures in the evenings though. James has stayed on the couch as soon as he gets back so he watches the kids so we can walk around. We got brave and decided to go to the Central Market by ourselves. To get there, you flag down a tuktuk, which is a motorcycle pulling a little covered trailer with seats. You negotiate your fare then pray that they understood where you wanted to go. We felt fortunate to get a driver that we knew and were not worried. He even promised to meet us at 4:30 to take us back. We had a team meeting that night at 5 so we were glad to have everything arranged. We shopped through the market, I bought a pair of shorts (size large!) and a few crazy cheap nicknack's and we were ready to head home. We finally got out of the stinky maze of the market and over to our meeting spot and no tuktuk man. We waited and waited, no tuktuk man. We turned down lots of other drivers, hoping to go with our trusty guy with the pink helmet. We finally gave up on him fearing we would be late for the meeting, we negotiated with another driver and off we went. Two turns into our trip it was apparent he had no idea where we wanted to go. We ended up far from the hotel before we could get him to stop. We flagged another driver to look at our map and tell our guy where to go. The other man was nice and said he understood, our guy on the other hand just stared blankly. It inspired no confidence that's for sure!! Off we go again, finally were starting to see more familiar sights. He stopped all the time trying to get us to get out. We just kept pointing and smiling and trying to get him to get us closer to the hotel. By the time we pulled up to the front door, at 5 sharp, we were so happy to get out of there! We never felt in any real danger, it was just frustrating. It made for some good stories to share with everyone that night and Kristin was proud that we ventured out on our own.

Some other weird things have been happening: Cheryl got slapped by a beggar (cant believe I missed seeing that one!), Chuck got lost on a tuktuk (his worst nightmare), Lori got hit by a moto (it hit her hand and broke her camera! What a close one..). The stories just keep getting better and better.

We went to the Lucky Market (grocery store) last night for food. It is inside a "mall". I took some pictures of the buildings surrounding the mall, they all look the same, terrible. The whole town is like this. There are moments of niceness, one random building where things look decent, but it is surrounded by complete nastiness. This will probably never become a vacation hotspot.