Cambodia

We returned Sunday night from our 4 day trip to Cambodia, which was a quick 1 hour flight from Bangkok. It was really wonderful to spend time with my friend, Julie who was a most gracious host at the Partners in Progress English School headquarters in Phnom Penh. She has been in Cambodia for 3 months and is directing PIP's English program. After a difficult test and interview to evaluate English proficiency, students are chosen to develop their English speaking skills using the Bible as their guidebook. The program's success is dependent on teacher volunteers that commit to travel to Cambodia and teach for a minimum of one month. They teach from 8-5, very nice accommodations and meals are provided. The free classes are highly sought after and sometimes much sacrifice is given by students in order to learn English. I was so inspired by Julie's night guard who works seven days/week, 6pm-6am for $100/month. He will be going to college in a few weeks during the day and it is a one hour ride on his bicycle one way to get to his night guard position. Every night he proofs the daily newspaper, searching for new vocabulary words. When he encounters a word he doesn't understand, he looks it up in his dictionary, and then meticulously copies its' meaning 5 times, he is that disciplined to learn the English language. So inspiring.

Besides lots of catching up, Julie and I enjoyed an early morning walk around the capital city along the Mekong River. At 5:30 a.m. the parks were filled with Cambodian people exercising, doing yoga, line-dancing, and playing games. It was a beautiful day. We passed the royal palace and the decorated Independence Monument. While I was there Cambodia was celebrating its 55 years of independence from the nation of France. Because of the French influence, there is excellent French cuisine to be found and lots of bread in Cambodia unlike Thailand. I missed a great picture outside Julie's window of the daily delivery of French bread to her front door via bicycle-bummer!

Julie came and watched one of Dustin and Nathan's basketball games, thankfully, it was one of the games that was under a covered pavilion. The guys played several games without shade in unbelievable heat, the hotter it got, the worse the level of play got, as you can imagine. Our ISE team ended up 5th out of 8 International teams represented. Dustin and Nathan stayed with an Indian family, the entire extended family lived under one 'large' roof. The house had 11 bedrooms! They migrated to Cambodia over 13 years ago and are in the IT business and part owners of the host International school. What an experience for the boys.

Ethan and I had some interesting experiences of our own. When we arrived into Phnom Penh and found a taxi we instantly liked our driver, he spoke excellent English and seemed to really know his way around. We agreed to hire him for the time we were in Cambodia. The next morning he was so prompt to take us to the school at 7:30, that afternoon I called him to pick us up at 5:30, he had a pre-arranged appointment and asked us to be ready at 4:45-no problem right? The traffic was atrocious, I thought Thailand had a lot of motorcycles but it is nothing compared to the Cambodian motoes. As 5:30 approached I could tell he was feeling anxious and had made several phone calls. He proposed to drop (dump) us off at a shopping area, have dinner and he would return for us at 7:00 pm. Ethan really didn't like that idea but I convinced him that it would be an adventure and would help our Mr.Kim Deem too. We ventured into a shopping mall and found a food court. In line I heard a nice Southern twang and decided I would check it out. It was a new friend from Arkansas-Kerri who invited us to join her, her mother (who was on her first trip to Cambodia), a friend and 5 children-one natural son, 2 adopted Thailand children and 2 adopted Cambodian children. She had been in Phnom Penh for 3 years fighting for one of her Cambodian son's older sisters while her husband is living outside of Little Rock. Cambodia has closed US adoptions for fear of child trafficking. In between court appointments she homeschools her children along with 20 other children at a nearby orphanage, what a brave and loving soul. It was great to spend our evening with them and exchange email addresses but time to meet our taxi driver. We hurried out into the dark street where it has begun to rain to our meeting place and you guessed it-he was no where to be found. Ethan started to get really nervous, we were unable to use our cell phone in Cambodia, so I had to solicit the use of a lady's phone on the street using sign language. She was very kind and dialed my taxi driver's #, he informed me he was stuck in traffic and to catch a tuk-tuk. We finally found one who would agree to take us to Julie's house and after 3 phone calls to Mr.Kim Deem to explain the directions we were safely home. Ethan gets very panicked in these situations, I've tried to challenge him to think of some problem solving ideas but it does little to distract him. I assured him that many years from now he will probably be telling his children about the night he took a tuk-tuk ride in Cambodia with his mother. I hope this all turns out to be a positive experience and was assured by Julie that she or her siblings would take nothing for their experiences of growing up in Thailand many years ago. I'll post a slide show and later tell you about our trip to the sad killing fields of Cambodia. I took a ton of pictures of all the things that people can figure out to carry on their motoes and missed just as many. I missed the guy with the car bumper, two people and a dining table on a motorcycle, and another pair with a couch, it's really unbelievable all they can creatively carry on their motorcycles while maneuvering in the traffic.