Hoppy Easter Everyone

Although it is Easter back home, here it is just another day. There are no chocolates waiting in hiding, or eggs to be painted.  The kids didn't even know what Easter was!  I would have spent more time on Easter except again I am not allowed making any religious connections so it is hard to explain a giant bunny pooping chocolate eggs around town to a bunch of kids who literally ask every question imaginable.  So instead I left it until today, Easter Monday, and we simply went about the day...dressed in bunny ears and hopping to and fro.  Hoppy Easter Everyone!  Have an extra chocolate dropping for me!

 Floppy eared bunnies

group shot

hop like a bunny

My TA's and I

 ...and a massive storm to finish it off

Fashion Mania

One of the teachers at Learning Jungle is a radio DJ in the evenings and often MC's events around Phnom Penh.  She was MC-ing for a fashion show at the Plantation and generously invited all of us other teachers to join in the event on their final closing night.  All of us girls got dressed up in our best attire for the occasion knowing it would be on the posher side of the Cambodian lifestyle.  All six of us piled into one tiny tuk tuk and hit the town running with some karaoke on the drive over.  We definitely turned some heads belting out the one and only Spice Girls "If you wanna be my lover" but it was well worth it as it started us off for a fun filled evening of firsts.  Once we arrived we soon realized that even in our nice clothes we could have been mistaken for the homeless compared to those around us.  It was so odd to be surrounded by the rich and famous in a Country that is so deprived of every day commodities.  As ironic as it was that didn't stop us from indulging in the free wine or jumping in photos with the models!  Not to mention the clothes were amazing!  I would have bought most of it if it weren't above my pay raise.  I'm pretty sure my rent is less than the cheapest item on the runway.
After the show we were able to mingle with Buffy (our Teacher/MC friend) and some of her friends.  We went to dinner at a little local restaurant and then hit the town for my first official night out and about.....I'm getting too old to party (its loud and I like being in bed before 10) so its not something I'd normally take part in but when in Cambodia do as the Cambodians would do!  First stop on the agenda was the famous lip-sync show where only the best ladyboys perform.  Boy what a show! They seriously blew me away!  Then we were off to the club, Heart of Darkness, well the music hurt my heart as it pounded through my entire body, and it was dark, so it lived up to its name. Overall one of the funnest nights thus far but not something I could do on a regular occurrence.

 Smile for a selfie

 Sharon clearly caught off guard

 And so it begins...

 Not my favourite

 ...And here comes the rain...

 Whats that on Christine's feet? Her dirty grey sandals you say?! Yup, when everyone else is in heels and shoes so shiny you could see them from the moon

 literally poured rain on the girls but we were covered under the overhang

Cambodian Lady Gaga, he looks better than the real Lady Gaga  (apparently he's also famous here..)

St. Patrick's Day

So I decided to go all out for St. Patrick's Day and teach my kids all about leprechauns and shamrocks, and how if you follow the rainbow you might just strike gold.  They LOVED it!!  They couldn't believe that rainbows could hold so much magic.  Now I'm not allowed having any religious connections when teaching about St. Patrick's Day so I couldn't fully explain what the day was really about so instead we focused on those magical aspects.  I sent home many letters informing parents to have their kids wear green on March 17, and I repeatedly enforced this into my students as well by annoying them with the same questions multiple times a day... "What colour do we wear on St. Patrick's Day?" (students chant green) "What day is that on?" (students chant March 17)!  Well the day arrived and I could not have been more proud!  They all wore green!! (except for one new student who didn't know what was going on as she just arrived that day).  One of my students was so adament about wearing green that he went home the night before and kept telling his mom "I have to wear green tomorrow, don't forget" then when he woke up the first thing he said was "I have to wear green tomorrow" not realizing today was tomorrow!  I guess its true, there really is such a thing as the luck of the Irish!!

 Finger painting all the colours of the rainbow

 Classroom Decor

 Its not St. Patrick's day without a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

 Everyone in green!

Horrible lighting but still a good looking group

The Piano Shop

There is a new accountant at our school who is super nice and she had invited me out to join her at a concert.  Turns out this concert I thought I was going to was in fact two people playing Saxophone at a Gallery.  Although it was not my normal cup of tea it was an overall enjoyable night and I was happy to get out and get to know some new people!  The Gallery was really cool with amazing pictures all of which I would love to have as they perfectly captured the spirit of Cambodia and its people.  And there was a super cool bar upstairs above the Gallery that shows documentaries, something I might have to check out at a later date.  The actual Saxophone playing was interesting but definitely not my favourite kind of music... they played more artistic pieces with extremely loud screeches and odd pauses so there was no smooth jazz melody which is the type of saxophone I am used to hearing.  Maybe next time we can listen to guitar or piano, something easier on the ears.

The Choeung Ek Genocidal Center (Killing Fields)

  

 In Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge, a name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, carried out a mass Genocide of one and a half to three milling people.  The Khmer Rouge regime was led by Pol Pot as he planned to create a form agrarian socialism founded on the ideals of Stalinism and Maoism (theories based on political leaders Joseph Staline and Mao Zedong from China).  The Khmer Rouge policies of forced relocation of the population from urban centres, torture, mass executions, use of forced labour, and malnutrition led to the deaths of an estimated 25 percent of the total population.  The Khmer Rouge goal of purifying the people is similar to the goals of Nazi Germany, in attempting to create a "master race", as one Khmer Rouge leader said, it was the "purification of the populace".  The genocide was ended following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.  Up to 20,000 mass graves, known as the Killing Fields, have been uncovered.
Seeing the fields was not easy as you can imagine from the above information.  Four of us had gone however we all soon drifted from one another as we reflected on what we saw.  We were given audio tours which recounted the events that occurred at different locations throughout the grounds.  Some of the recordings were even from past prisoners who were forced to do labour and who were brutally tortured and rapped.  One story in particular was of a man who had merely been 14 when captured by the Khmer Rouge.  He was about to be executed when an older gentleman, also a captive, took solace over him and begged the Khmer Rouge to let the boy go.  The elder gentleman was then executed in the boys place.  It is selfless acts such as these that make the world Beautiful even in such ugly times.

The Buddhist Stupa where over 5,000 human skulls can be seen

 The fencing around a mass grave where people have left prayer bracelets 

 Mass grave of 450 victims

 Chinese grave with bone and teeth fragments

 Fragments of clothes that have been recovered on the grounds of the killing fields from the victims.  Children's clothes can be seen

 This was the most disturbing of all as they recounted how the Khmer Rouge would grab children by the feet and swing them repeatedly against this tree as their mothers were forced to watch.  The mothers too were then tortured, rapped, and executed

 Bones and teeth

 The skulls within the Stupa

My thoughts and prayers go out to those who suffered then and now.  There is evil within the world but there is also so much good, so let the good shine on as the bad is remembered but not repeated. 

Expanding Our School

So since my Birthday one of the kindergarten classes from the other Learning Jungle Campus has moved over to my school to make room for another toddler class there.  They figured since my school has six classrooms and we were only using one of them they may as well fill a classroom with kindergarten to make the school look more occupied.  The addition of the kindergartens has completely changed the atmosphere at the school making it more lively and fun.  I really like the teacher of the kindergarten at my school (her name is Sophy but we call her Buffy), she's Cambodian and she also has her degree in education.  She has been teaching at the other campus for over a year and the other teachers had to answer to her there as she was head teacher therefore she has a lot of say of what goes on within the classroom dynamics.  By having her kindergartens close by we are now also able to coordinate what she should be teaching in order to prepare the kids for grade one.

Thats not the only change happening at our school though as my classroom has gone from 18 students to 26!  With the rapid expansion of my classroom we are now looking for another grade 1 teacher so that we can split my class and make room for more students.  And we are thinking that by August we will be able to open a grade 2 classroom.  Virak has asked me to be involved in the interviewing of the new teachers which is pretty cool to have that responsibility.

The first few months I am not going to lie have been the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  Between battling illness (oh did I mention after returning from Sihanoukville I got really sick again and it turned out I had Typhoid Fever?!! But I'm all clear now) and having to learn my students levels and abilities in order to adjust my lessons to better suit them, not to mention adjusting to the school and all the new students being added to my class as the school is building its way up the ranks it has all been rather draining but now I feel excited and prepared for the remainder of my time here.  I am looking forward to experiencing all the changes to come and to be able to watch the transformations of the school and be apart of it all!!

Birthdays at the Beach!

So you may have noticed Birthday in plural because it turns out Becky is also born on Valentines Day!!  Craziness! But even stranger is that when I travelled to Thailand quite a few years ago (2009) to do my volunteer work I met a girl there as well with the same Birthday as me!  Seems as though South East Asia and Birthdays on Valentines Day are a common occurrence.  So to celebrate our combined Birthdays four of us girls took a little getaway to the beach in Sihanoukville! I was so excited I packed a week before! And I knew the bus ride was going to be quite lengthy (5 hours but in Cambodian time you need to add an hour since they are rarely on schedule) so half of my bag was filled with food to hold me over for the trip.  Friday finally came round so I set off to school with my bag packed and anxiously awaited 4:30 when the other girls who all work at the kindergarten campus would tuk tuk over and pick me up on the way to the bus.  My kids were incredibly cute too because they knew my Birthday was on the Saturday so some of them had little gifts for me.  One boy gave me a flower and told me his mom was letting me borrow it...so cute.  I had made little goodie bags for my kids with all of their art work that we had done over the weeks to prepare for Valentines Day and then I also included a chocolate heart for them to eat at the end of the day once they were out of my care (let mom and dad deal with the hyper child on sugar!)  So I gave out the goodie bags and said my goodbyes at the end of the day and then was off on my adventure.  The bus was pretty decent I was pleasantly surprised at its ability to work, you often hear of buses breaking down multiple times while en route. It was a double decked bus, seats on the top level and moto's and car parts on the bottom level.  We were ecstatic that the bus pulled out right on time at 6:25  only to stop 700m away for a good 20-30min.  An hour and a half later we had barely left town but once we did we were motoring.  They had TV's which they played really weird Cambodian Soap Opera's the whole time so I decided to close my eyes and when I woke up we were practically there!  We arrived around 11:30pm and had a tuk tuk driver from our beach side bungalows to come and pick us up.  Christine and Sharon the two none Birthday girls had actually been to Sihanoukville before and had stayed at the same place and loved it so we had connections.  Once at the Bungalows we were starved and I was not going to bed without some real food.  They kindly made us cheese and tomato baguettes in the dark kitchen which I ate three of.  Then it was off to bed.  The water was literally right there within throwing distance of our bungalow so I was able to listen to the waves all night...that and the dogs barking, the mice scurrying, and in the morning the chickens being beheaded (I'm completely serious!) Our day was super relaxed had breakfast of champions (crepes nothing like Dad's though) and spent some time in town but not for long because we all wanted to rest on the beach. After napping waterside we walked down the beach and Sharon and Becky rented a Seadoo for all of ten minutes (Becky had never been on one!). We thought we'd be mysterious and have sushi on the beach at a new sushi bar that had just opened. Two and a half hours later, four rounds of drinks in, they finally told us they had no more sushi rice.  Funny how it took them so long to let us know this significant detail. Luckily we got some free drinks for the disturbance.  Although it was our Birthday night we really didn't do much, returned to our bungalows still hungry from a lack of sushi so we ordered dinner ate then sat in some hammocks and were in bed by 11:30.  My kind of night! Sunday was leaving day already so we made the most of it my getting 8 dollar body massages on the beach. Amazing!  Then time to catch our ride back to the city.  This time we took a van because its faster however faster comes with its consequences and for me it was severe motion sickness in which I did lamas breathing the whole time in order to refrain from physically being sick.  And to top it off it was only an hour or so faster.  The occasional time I managed to open my eyes was jaw dropping as we weaved into oncoming traffic and maneuvered around others at an incredible pace.  We passed other vans, normal family vans that literally had 30 people in them as the back hatch was propped open and men just dangled and held on because there was no more room inside the van.  All in all such a good weekend and the motion sickness was worth it.
As an added surprise I was given mail today stamped with a cow, which really can only mean it is from one person!!  I was so excited to get mail!!! My first in Cambodia!!  Thank you Aunty Doraine I loved it so much! And the kids were so overjoyed when I played the card for them too, they thought it was hilarious! Greatest Birthday Surprise!

 Pre Birthday Celebration with staff!  They treated me to dinner and surprised me with the most delicious cake!!

 Kids art work. You make my heart soar

 All Hearts Puppy. (what its supposed to look like)

 What some ended up looking like (and no this is not Billy's)

Hand Hearts for parents

Goodie bags. They are supposed to be frogs and little bears but my artistic side on the bears turned into weird teletubbies

 Card from student and picked flower

 Flower I'm "borrowing"

I think its a bunny?

 Inside our Bungalow. Mosquito net up above

 Standing in Bungalow doorway you can see the water just beyond hunts

 Where we spent most of our time

 Our dining area

 Our Bungalow

 They said the water was oddly rough for this time of year.  It is normal smooth like glass

Most difficult Selfie ever! Becky in pink glasses, Sharon to her left, then me and Christine at the top.  Oh and Mel of course who has been staying there for over four months just living life on the beach.  He was hilarious! And yes he is biting the chair in the photo! He's from India but resembles more of a surfer hipster slash Jamaican free spirit

The workers at the bungalow knew it was our Birthday and gave us roses

Leaving already but not without a puppy....kidding we didn't actually make it far with him

 You've got mail!

 So Shocked to get mail!

Signature stamp! Thanks again Aunty Doraine! Miss you and Love you!!  If you need a getaway I've got a spare bedroom and you know where to find me!