Cambodia Calling: Last Two Weeks

Wooooooahhhhhh, two weeks seems to FLY by here!!

Phnom Penh.

On the weekend 24th to 26th January we stayed in Phnom Penh. The Friday night was spent in the 'Blue Dog Guesthouse', the mattresses here were so thin that every spring could be felt through it however I strangely liked it as it felt like the mattress I had in summer up at the cottage. The second night was spent in the "Little Banana"in a cute little dorm room. It had 7 mattresses on the floor a bathroom and not much else, but for $4 a night what else would you expect? We really liked this place so will definitely be going back in the future. On the Friday night we had our usual pizza treat, eating at the Top Banana and here we met Tyler from Canada. The next morning we ate breakfast with Alice from England then all spent the day at the market and in a cafe together. Then at Little Banana we met Tim from Germany and Dennis from Russia, and it was these two we went to a rooftop party with in celebration of the Chinese new year. The party was good, the music a bit odd. It was a mix between cambodian remixes then suddenly changed to meditation music... but the view from the rooftop was pretty good. After we hung out with some Khmer people who Tim and Dennis knew, and very nearly got brought to a karaoke place (luckily it was full).

Playing Pool at the Little Banana

Gwen the Professional Pool Player

I also won quite a few cans of orange soda, here we are celebrating.

We also went to The National Museum with Antoine, who is interning with Magna. It was quite interesting, if you like statues of Buddas. Because there were a lot of statues of Buddas! Or Budda-like objects. The gardens were nice and there was a monk casually sitting beside the pond. This is becoming normal for us now (gradually). Here we got our palms read for one dollar each. I was a bit apprehensive because i'm not sure about anything like that but after watching Gwen and Antoine (and seeing what a load of rubbish it is perhaps due to difficulties in communication) gave it a go. Basically, I might travel somewhere foreign (who knew!), I need not worry about money and in order for happiness I need to get married soon.

Front of the National Museum

Gwen, Antoine, Me

Big Budda. (Notice monk left hand side)

Going into Phnom Penh is definitely a good way to meet people and it's exciting to hear about other people's travels and where is good for us to go.

Swimming.

For the last few years, the Magna volunteers have been bringing Sothy, who is deaf-blind to a place called Hotel 252 to swim. This gives him the rare opportunity of getting out of the Group Home. We rang up the manager to try and get this started up again, however she informed us that two summer volunteers (not from Project Trust) had brought children but not Sothy, they had made quite a bit of noise, left balls lying around and generally made a racket - resulting in complaints from the residents of the hotel. They wrote to Magna but got no reply, we asked about but no-one seems to know of anything. We are currently looking for somewhere else to take us and have sent e-mails out, but so far no replies.

Debbie
We finally got to meet up with Debbie this past thursday, who works with Sothy on using sign language so he is able to communicate with his peers. We arrived just as breakfast was finishing and I got to eat TOAST with JAM and drink APPLE JUICE. Toast has never tasted so good.!
The first session was just mainly playing, next lesson more work to be done. I enjoyed going to Debbie's as it's a relaxing chance to get away, but also nice seeing Sothy being able to play without his toys being scrambled for by the other children.

English Classes
We are making slow but steady progress with English Classes. The first week went well, then the school timetable changed and its hard to know who's coming and who's going. The kids here only go to school for half the day and each month that swaps. So if you went in the morning you not go in the afternoon etc. But some of them changed and some of them didn't, slightly disrupting our carefully made timetable of who should be in class when....
Also, sometimes a few of the kids seem to nap when they should be in classes, so we may have to make it a later class. We'll see how things turn out...

Teacher Gwen

Blue Lemons

Chinese New Year Party
On Thursday the 26th February we celebrated the Chinese New Year (Year of the Horse) at the Group Home with a partyyyyyy! First we watched cartoons for a while, then played games - blind mans bluff etc, then was a traditional dance show from the older Magna Kids and they were really good! We had a BBQ for tea then spicy curry and baguettes. Then was the time to give everyone a present.
Since we wern't here for Christmas they kids didn't have it but Magna had bought each child a teddy bear, our job was to create a big heap of them on the floor then each clid came up and picked one. And it went rather well :) The children were so excited and it was so warming to watch the gratitude spread right across their faces! Then A LOT of dancing. There kids love to dance. And Khmer dancing at that. Which involves a lot of animal like movements and twirling of the hands...