Chapter 5: And you say this is routine?

Here I am once again. As incredible as it may seem, I got here one month ago, and things are still falling into place right now. Getting used to life here is a challenge from the second you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. Here is how my day goes on:

I wake up at 6h30 everyday, to enjoy a peaceful breakfast made up of tea and some biscuits. Well, to tell the truth, it is not always peaceful, as generally the first thing to do is to bathe in anti-mosquito (a great smell for the early morning), put water to boil, kill the ants in the sugar....

Anyway, at 7h30 one of the teachers picks me up on his motorbike. The road is generally quite bumpy, which helps me come down to my earthly duties. When I get to school, it is almost eight, so I go into the classroom and I am greeted by all the students, reciting some poetry about something in Khmer, to which I reply O Kun (Thank you) before moving on to 3 hours of teaching.

By 11h30 I am hungry as hell, so I discover with great surprise the rice that is my daily meal. In less than 10 minutes, the kids start getting to the library, where I eat, and start drawing, coloring, playing… At 13h00 I am back to work (What is your name? How old are you? Where are you from? What is your name? How old are you? Where are you from? ) until 17h30, with half an hour of rest.

I get home just in time for a throw-yourself-some-cold-water-with-a-pot shower, then I eat lunch and go to bed… at 9! This goes on every week for six days, and the seventh is dedicated to.... resting? You wish! There are always house chores and lessons to prepare.

One would think this is a crazy way of spending holidays, but if I could show you the smiles of the kids, the baby steps in communicating with people of completely different backgrounds and all the discoveries and surprises, maybe you would understand.

Chapter four: the lost-and-found temples of Angkor

I must say this trip to Angkor was much expected, as it is going to be about the only one we will be able make due to the 6-day-schedule and the bad road conditions during the rainy season. As you can imagine, expectations were high, but luckily the temples didn’t let us down.

After a long trip of almost 6 hours by taxi and bus, we finally got to Siem Reap, where we rediscovered the joys of civilization: air-conditioned, warm shower, automatic flush! The following day we woke up to start our tuk-tuk tour of temples with a greyish weather, which, for once, I welcomed since it made the heat less intense. Apart from loosing some money and my 3-day-pass, the visit was great and all the details in the temples amazed me, with a feeling of “I never thought I would see this first hand” following me everywhere.


The second day we woke up early –and when I say early, I mean early, 4h30 am- to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Although, as always, there were many Japanese tourists, I was able to find a quiet spot and enjoy the incredible panorama as the sun was starting a new day.



We then continued the tour, with amazing sites such as Bayon and its hundreds of happy Buddha faces, and the following day we ended our tour with a temple built by women, Banteay Srei, and a river carved with shrines to bless the water. I could go on and on about these temples, but the beauty was more than words can express, so I hope you can imagine it through the pictures.

Anyway, they say good things always come to an end, so I am back to Sampov Loun, with daily life as before, so I better get back to my cleaning labours!

More next week. And more pictures coming when I'll get internet again!

Chapter three: school days are back

So, first week of action! Let me say it has been longer than I thought, as getting used to places always takes quite a long time, especially when you have to get used to washing your clothes by hand, flushing the toilet with a bucket, washing teeth with bottled water, spraying anti mosquito all day long…

As for my work, I have to say teachers are really nice and we have started a contest: I bet I will learn Khmer before you learn English. For now I am close to wining, I can already count to 10, say my name, my age, my country of origin, that I am a teacher...

Apart from that they always take care of me, bringing me ice for the water, fresh fruit, baked muffins… They also pick me up from home, and I’ve been lucky, it has only rained one day, so I was able to avoided repeated odysseys of mudded roads. One is more than enough for the whole week.

Students are the sweetest children, especially the little ones. Even those who are 16 years old still have an innocent look in their eyes. Teaching them has been a challenge as I didn’t know their level at all, and some know a little bit while others can’t even read the Latin alphabet.

Oh, I almost forgot that for my birthday we went to eat traditional soup with some teachers. This was quite a lot of fun and certainly a birthday different from all the others. Well, this is about it, I will upload some pictures later, as right now I'm on my way to Angkor!

Chapter two: On the way to Sampov Loun, true Cambodian style.

Here I am a couple of days later, from now on, Sundays will be my official reporting days, so mark your calendars! Anyway, I want to tell you what happened from last time you read this, which is quite a lot, so let me get down to it.

First we met up with the doctor that coordinates the project, here in Cambodia. His name is doctor Ka (I know it sounds like a horror movie or something) and he thanked us for coming to work in the countryside, as even Cambodians themselves don’t do it. This got us a little scared but we were leaving the following day, so there was no turning back.

The bus ride was 5 hours long, with a great breakfast and air conditioning! Not too bad, you might think... Well, let me tell you we did 300 km only and most of the time there was a loud American action movie dubbed in Khmer, accompanied by the honking of the driver which seemed to take pride on scaring every living soul, be it truck, moto, bike or chicken!

Nonetheless, we got safely to Battambang, an ex-colonial city where we ate and got ready for volume 2: the way to Sampov Loun. We did this second part on a private taxi, during three hours. Again, you might think this is cool, but there is always a downside: it had just rained so the road was more of a mud track than anything. We did manage to get to the destination, but with mud up to the ears!

The house was the only good surprise with no buts of the day. Big, quite new, very clean and with a huge room for us girls!!

On the following day, we visited the schools where we will be working, with plenty of kids watching us with curious yet shy eyes. We didn’t get to talk much with teachers, who only know basic English, but it was quite nice. Luckily, we were under the roof when a huge tropical storm broke out, which didn’t seem to bother the kids playing on the fields!

On the way back, however, we got stuck on the mud and we had to go down from the motorbikes (on which we were sitting 3 by 3!). The ground was so sticky that I broke my shoes, and this is what my feet looked like after the barefoot odyssey:

At least I got to take a cool shower afterwards (the water from the “bath” comes from the rain directly, and you have to pour it on you with a pot… rustic but refreshing!). At night time we talked with Sophas (read: Sopoa) our step mom here, who told us about her story, the country’s history and the situation of teacher and people in this very poor area. This is what I call immersion!

Today is Sunday, we are all resting and waiting for the heat to go down a bit as it is even to hot to wear glasses (almost no kidding!). Tomorrow will be our first day at school and my birthday… we will see!

Chapter one: first impressions

So I bet couldn't sleep waiting for reports from that far away country from which nobody talks about called Cambodia. Well, here they are, first hand.

We got here yesterday, after a long long flight in which we mainly slept. The good surprises were that the flight from London to Bangkok was quite empty, so we could lay down and sleep. As for the Bangkok-Phnom Penh part, they gave us food even if the flight lasted less than an hour!! And although we had to eat kind of in a hurry, in less than 10 minutes, the food was really good!

When we got here, it was 6 pm, pitch dark, quite warm and with plenty of mosquitoes flying around. Two people from the project picked us up in a tuck-tuck, and on we went to the hotel. Apart from some salamanders running down the corridor and cockroaches in the bathroom, it's pretty clean, we have internet, air conditioning and food is quite good, so no problemo!

Tomorrow we are moving to Battambang, our last stop before the small village where we are staying, Sampov Lun. We have talked with a doctor from here who warned us about the dangers and problems in the area: in boca al luppo!

On the touristy happy side, there are great places in Phnom Penh like the National Museum, with many statues of Buddha and Hindu divinities, the Royal Palace, the silver Pagoda, the wats (Buddhist temples) and the central market.

(more pictures later)

On the kind-of-more-negative-but-also-exotic side, streets are quite crowded, with much traffic, the heat is intense (though not as bad as I thought), the smells are kind of what you would expect from sewer and it is quite touristy, so you can’t walk a single mile without being offered food, guides, a tuk-tuk…

All in all, the least I can say is that this is another world, with many different and surprising things but, as this is only a report of my first impressions, I will end here for today. More to come…