Early Morning Karma Call

       

Flynn here! Today we had to wake up at 4:00 to get ready. We got our hats, tags and whisper devices (headphones for our tour guides' microphones) and made our way to the lobby to meet our group. We hopped on the buses and began our drive to some Buddhist temples. When we arrived, we were given pots of rice because, well, we were feeding monks! All monks wake up really early every day to collect their food for the day. They carry a pot each and walk along the streets collecting money, food, anything actually! It was kind of weird at first but after the first crowd passed us I felt good about myself. When we had finished we got back into the buses and made our way to some rice paddies. When we arrived we were given the conical hats and were told to take our shoes off to be playing the role of a farmer better. We were split up into groups and were shown different elements that make up the process of growing rice. Campbell and I enjoyed the element of hitting the rice plants against wood to seperate the actual plant and the rice. There was also a water buffalo with a plough attached to him and we tried to plough the soil. Our supervisor yelled a command to start the buffalo and I had to run to keep up with the buffalo named Suzuki. After making some freshly squeezed sugar cane juice, we got back on the buses and drove to an extremely tall waterfall that some kids were swimming in and had some (bad) sandwiches. A boy was swimming a long way away from us and I didn't want my apple. Tony told me to throw it to the boy and so I did. The throw wasn't very good but he still caught it. We got back in the buses and started another drive to a school for hearing impared children. We were told and shown how the children learn and cope with their lives. We played a game where each family would stand up one at a time and they would tell their teacher some words to describe us. It started to be a funny game when Rose was told she had nice eyebrows and that Josh had a big nose. We then gave them colouring books, sticker books and snacks. This gave us two hits of good karma in less than twenty-four hours. When we went out of the school we were greeted by some tuk tuks (a motorbike with a little carriage attached to the back) and given $5 each. We didn't know what we were doing but we found ourselves at the night markets. We were told by Tony and Drew that we had to bargain as much as we could and spend all of the money we were given. When we had all finished we went back to the hotel on tuk tuks and met by the pool after an hour. We were doing a white elephant game (you put everyone's items in a pile and each person chooses a gift and unwraps it in front of everyone. On your turn you can either steal someone else's present or get a new one from the pile) with everyone! Here is a list of our family's presents.

Mum received: a fold up lantern

Mum bought: the same fold up lantern

Josh received: a weird hat

Josh bought: a weird hat

Campbell bought: scarves

Campbell received: a small blue wooden frog that if you stroked a stick on its back it would make noise

Flynn bought: old money, a U.S.A badge, an elephant pillow pin, a leather band and a pencil case

Flynn received: a fan that can turn into a hat.

Flynn out!