I'm a Lucky Lady

So a ton has happened over the few weeks since I’ve written on here. And though I haven’t be blogging much, I have managed to completely fill the 160 page journal my friend Kate gave me before I left, and 20 pages in a new journal I just bought, so I have definitely been recording my adventure in that form and through many pictures and videos. I will try to fill you all in on what has been going on, however I am almost certain my descriptions will not fully or adequately describe everything. But here goes:

As a foreigner who cannot speak the language I am learning to accept that I rarely know what exactly is going on or what is going to happen until it is actually happening here. Basically I am just along for the ride and figure things out as I go along, which is quite an exciting way to live actually.

This lack of knowledge is what led to my complete shock and amazement two weeks ago when I discovered construction was beginning on the girls’ dorm! I was working on my lesson plans around 7am on Friday morning, when suddenly I heard loud yelling and laughter coming from outside. I ran out to the balcony to see what all the commotion was about only to see about 40 children and adults physically lifting up the kitchen and walking it across the yard! Now you have to understand, this is no ordinary kitchen. The APCA kitchen is outside of the main building and is made of wood, with a thatched roof and palm leaf walls and our own mother earth serving as the floor. Makara (Dara’s wife) had told me the day before that they’d be moving the kitchen tomorrow, but I honestly just thought that we were having another miscommunication moment. It was hilarious!

A Korean donor committed to funding the girls’ dorm building a while back, and the money finally came through, so construction literally began immediately. It’s been 12 days since work started, and the base, which is covered in rocks right now, and the walls, which are made entirely of brick, have already been built! It’s interesting to see how construction is done here. There are about 15 men who are here every day, including Sundays, for at least 10 hours. They don’t have many tools or fancy equipment to work with. Trucks keep bringing in huge piles of materials such as bricks, dry concrete, sand, dirt, and big and small rocks, which the workers then move by hand or in baskets to the spots they need them. It’s an interesting process to watch. This morning the kids and I helped move small rocks into the building for the floor. I’m guessing they will cover those with concrete soon.

Another shock came when I found out two Saturdays ago that we’d be building a chicken house. The children, five guys from local villages who are volunteering here for the next month, some of the adult staff members, and people from the local village all worked on it together. The smaller children’s job was to move dirt over to the area we were building on using small baskets or old rice bags slung over two pieces of wood, to form the floor of the house. That’s what I mostly helped with. It was fun, but considering how hard the kids had to work to haul the dirt, I think a wheel barrow or two would have really come in handy. The older boys got to work stripping bark off of and cutting long pieces of wood down to size to form the structure of the building. Once the floor was in and the wood was up the older guys and volunteers began tying on pieces of palm leaf to make the roof. They also built a small pond using bricks for the chickens to drink and ducks to swim in. Work began at 7am, and by 5pm the building was completed. The reason we built the chicken house is because APCA is going to begin an Ecological Chicken Raising, Training and Saving Project in October. The project will be funded by Dan Schwartz and his family. I went on Semester at Sea with Dan back in spring of ’07 and he volunteered here at APCA earlier this year. The kids absolutely adore him, and he is very committed to helping improve their lives here. I worked with me Dara on the proposal for the project for several days, and it is now approved and funding should arrive shortly! The project is aimed to teach the children proper chicken raising techniques so that they can acquire knowledge and skills to use in the future. The children will also be able to eat the eggs and the chickens, as well as sell the chicks in the future. According to calculations done by APCA staff, one chicken will provide enough income for the children to attend school for one year, and two chickens will allow APCA to save towards the children’s future education, either in university or for vocation training. I believe we will be getting about 100 more chickens once the project begins. Right now we have 26 chickens which the five community volunteers are taking care of. During the day the chickens roam freely around the property, and it already feels like they are everywhere, so I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like to have 100 more of them running around! We began construction on a second, larger chicken house this morning, and it should be done by the end of the weekend. It’s exciting to see and help with the process of this project too!

The trip to the Vietnam border four weekends ago to see the Rural Economic Development Association (REDA) center was really interesting. We left at 5am, and what I thought would be a small group of people going actually turned out to be 16 people total as we picked up Dara, Makara and Sophea’s relatives and several of the REDA guys and their wives along the way, all of us packed into the APCA van. Though crowded, it was a pleasant, scenic, and thank goodness air-conditioned 6-hour drive along Route 4 into Svay Rieng Province near the Vietnam border. We arrived around lunchtime at a village set about a half mile off of the road where REDA has a community center. There were multiple buildings at the center for administration, education and community projects. The community center was started by Dara’s brother and is for People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) and for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC). There are also a lot of sustainable development projects going on for the community including a catfish farm with tons of huge catfish living in multiple ponds around the property, a frog farm, a lot of vegetable crops, tons of rice fields, chickens, and a bunch of concrete pig pens that are currently under construction. There are 36 kids in the OVC program. The director there showed me their records, and most of them lost one or both of their parents to AIDS, and many of the kids have HIV or AIDS themselves. It was pretty sad. Unfortunately because of the communication barrier it was hard for me to talk to the director and other staff about what they are trying to do for the kids in the future. I'm not sure what they have there in the way of medicine either, so I don't really know how long the kids with AIDS end up living or any of the details. I wish I knew how to speak Khmer so I could have found out more information. But it does seem like they are doing a good job building up and supporting the community and the children there.

We spent the night in a guest house a bit closer to the Vietnam border. Somewhere along the way on the trip I got TD (which you can feel free to look up on the CDC website) from some food which my stomach clearly did not agree with. The ride back to APCA the next day took 8 hours due to a long wait to get on the ferry at the Mekong Delta River, and was truly the most uncomfortable car ride of my life. I was so incredibly happy to get out of that car and be back at APCA. It took me two full weeks to get the bug from that trip out of my system, and I’m back to normal now. But man, that was just annoying. My mom is sending Samantha with more Cipro for me when she comes to Thailand next week-just in case.

Some of the staff members and volunteers had been asking me to help them with their English, so three weeks ago I added a fourth English class to my daily schedule for staff, volunteers, and the community. I teach the class at 7pm Monday-Friday and there are about 12 people who attend, including Makara. It’s a new challenge teaching adults compared to children. I realized when I started their class that I don’t know much about grammar, which is pretty much essential to know about if you want to learn another language. So I went into Phnom Penh and picked up a bunch of teaching materials at a book store, and I’ve been studying up on grammar myself. Now (hopefully) I sound like I know what I’m talking about. I am also developing closer friendships with the staff and volunteers and have been spending more time talking to them during the day, which is nice. Sung-ku left on August 19th, and I’m now the only non-Cambodian volunteer here, so that has been a new adjustment as well. It was nice getting to know Sung-ku. He gave me some helpful advice on being an ESL learner, since English is his second language, and it’s been pretty useful in my teaching. I now teach four, 1-hour long classes a day. I teach the smallest kids (4-9 year old) at 8am, mid-level kids (10-14) at 9am, and older kids (14-18) at 10am. Now with four separate classes every day I am usually very busy either teaching or lesson planning. Though sometimes it’s exhausting, I can see why people say teaching is such a rewarding job. And all of my students are very enjoyable and enthusiastic learners, so I’m more than happy to do it.

Three weeks ago Dara’s sister, Rom, moved into APCA with her young daughter and has been cooking all of the meals for Dara, Makara, the volunteers, and any other guests who come and go, such as friends or people from our partner NGOs that Dara is meeting with. She cooks in the inside kitchen, as opposed to the outside building, which consists merely of a sink and two burners. With so little to work with in the kitchen, she somehow manages to whip up amazing meals every day. I feel so spoiled getting to eat her cooking. We have rice with every meal, usually a fish dish, sometimes pork or beef, vegetables, and occasionally fruit. I’ve also tried some interesting Cambodian foods like congealed cooked pigs blood, other parts of pig and chicken that I never would have imagined ingesting before, and lots of different fruits and veggies. The food is always very fresh, picked up straight from the Bat Deng open air market down the road. So in case anyone had concerns about my diet, please do not worry, I am eating very well.

Dara explained to me that Rom can’t read or write in Cambodian because she was unable to go to school when they were younger. Dara and I talk a lot throughout the day, especially at meal times, and he has told me quite a bit about his past, which I think is really interesting, so I’ll share some of it with you.
Dara was a very young boy when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, led by the infamous Pol Pot. His mother was killed by the Khmer Rouge when he was three, and he and his father were lucky to escape to a refugee camp on the Thailand/Cambodia border. His father carried him on his back the whole way since he was so small. They lived there for 12 years, and that is where he grew up. Rom was at the camp too, but it sounds like they didn’t meet up with her until later. Some of the story gets a bit lost in translation. It was at the refugee camp that Dara met his wife, Makara, and his good friend Sophea. He has many other friends from the camp who he is still in contact with, a few of whom I have met. Dara went to university in Thailand, as well as the Phillipines, and moved back to Cambodia in the late 80’s. He’s had all sorts of interesting jobs including working as security for the US-Cambodia Ambassador at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, working as a black market investigator for Global Witness, which sent him on many dangerous missions, working with NATO in Kosovo, and he has been a leader in Rural Development with several NGOs. He is often invited to speak at conferences both in Cambodia and many other countries to talk about APCA’s work and serve as an example for how to run an NGO sustainably. He and Makara started APCA back in 2000, and the organization has expanded very rapidly in the past 9 years. APCA now works with partners and donors all over the world, from the US, Japan and Korea, and affects thousands of vulnerable women and children in 14 rural villages, as well as here at the orphanage. Dara has many contacts with people all over the world and seems to be a very well respected guy. I feel lucky to get to work with him and learn from him every day.

I have been reading a lot here in the evenings, and there is one book I absolutely recommend if you want to learn more about the Khmer Rouge and recent Cambodian history. The book is called “First They Killed My Father” by Loung Ung. Loung survived the Khmer Rouge genocide, however many of her family members were killed. Though not exactly light reading, it is an amazing account of her struggles and is very well written.

The kids here are absolutely some of the most awesome people I’ve met in my life. They are so energetic, constantly smiling and laughing, and so hard-working. They are also always grateful, and take really amazing care of one another. With so many kids of all different ages, it would be easy for them to be cliquish or to single some kids out, but instead everyone seems to get along really well and care for one another. I’m learning a lot from them.

My friend Rachel is coming to Cambodia to visit me in October! We will spend a couple of days at APCA so she can meet all the kids, and then take a bus up north to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. From there we will fly to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and then take a bus back into Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I can’t wait to travel with her! I am also incredibly excited that she’ll get to see APCA and meet everyone here. I wish everyone I know could come here to share this experience with me, because no matter how much I write on here, these blogs will never do this experience justice.

Yesterday I spent over an hour picking and cutting lice and lice eggs out of three girl’s hair. I am incredibly bummed out about how bad the lice problem here is. The kids, like kids everywhere, share a lot of things like brushes, pillows, blankets, etc., and they play together all the time, so the lice are able to spread quickly. Just about every girl, and a lot of the younger boys have it. I have no clue how long they have all had it, but the problem seems pretty prevalent. I’ve been reading up a lot on treatments and ways to get rid of it, but even for people in developed countries with modern amenities it seems difficult. A lot of websites recommend washing clothes and pillow cases in extremely hot water and drying them, as well as using medicated shampoos. Finding that out makes the prospects of doing anything about it here feel really daunting. The boys all shower outside using basins full of rain water, the girls’ showers are inside with little water pressure, there is no hot water, and we all wash our clothes outside in buckets using the rain water. However, I am determined to find a way to help them make the problem better because I hate seeing the kids uncomfortable. I think sterilizing all of their brushes, making sure every kid has their own brush, and educating them on washing their pillow cases more often and not sharing hair things will be a good first step. My mom is going to send some lice medications with Rachel when she comes in October, which I’m hoping will help. If anyone has any other tips on getting rid of lice, I’d greatly appreciate them.

A few days ago I went with Sophea and some of the community volunteers into four of the villages APCA supports to see some of the work they are doing. I got to see four kindergarten schools which are funded by a Japanese donor and Cambodia’s Hope. Cambodia’s Hope was started by Terry and Marvel Kellogg, and they are the reason I’m on this trip! http://cambodiashope.org/home/index.php I met them both on my Semester at Sea voyage back in 2007, and they told all of the students on the trip that we were welcome to come volunteer in Cambodia whenever we wanted. Cambodia’s Hope donors also support nutrition projects for all 14 of the villages, and literacy programs for women.

Before he left Sung-ku bought 8 more desks for the kids at APCA, so now every student has a desk to sit at during classes! He also provided chairs to one of the kindergarten schools in one of the villages. He and another Korean woman also committed to funding a water project for one of the villages. Right now the 160 families (about 700 ppl total) in that village get their drinking water from a dirty, swampy lake with plants growing in it. I saw it, and it didn't even look like water I'd want to put my feet in, let alone ingest. The people can't get their water from there all year though because it dries up during the dry season, so then for several months they have to go 10-15km outside the village every day to get water. Often the amount of water they are able to get isn't enough to bathe in, so they usually go many days without showering. I can’t even imagine living like that. With the donated funds from Sung-ku and the woman they will be building a 30 by 45 meter hole, 6 meters deep right next to the village that will allow them to collect enough water during the rainy season to last the whole year. That should really improve quality of life for people, and may even allow more of the children to attend school, since right now many have to work to get water, plant crops, etc. to help their families every day. Hopefully in the future they can find a donor to supply large water containers ($8 each) for each family so that they can bring water back from the water hole to store at their houses so they won't have to go so often. APCA also gives out loans to people in the villages, which they then pay back with no interest. This is similar to Kiva micro loans (http://www.kiva.org/), but on a more local scale. I am very interested in this aspect of APCA’s work, and am definitely going to ask Dara more info about how it is working, the percentage of repayment on the loans and how long it takes, etc. I feel really lucky that I’m getting to do all this field work, and I’m enjoying editing and helping with the proposals for the community projects as well.

On September 7th I will be taking a bus back to Thailand along the same route I came in on a little over a month ago to meet up with my sister, Samantha. Though the day I came in I was terrified of my cab driver’s driving, I now realize that he wasn’t crazy. Every time I’ve gotten on the road here in any vehicle my experience has been the same (except usually with less speeding). I’ve actually come to enjoy the chaos of Cambodian driving. It seems totally natural to me now to swerve around cows on my bike when I’m riding with the kids to the market, to cover my mouth to avoid eating dust when I’m riding on a moto or in a tuk-tuk near a big truck, or when Sophea or Dara speed onto the other side of the road to pass slower vehicles being pulled by cows or horses. The roads here are never dull, so I’m sure riding on a big bus to the border will be just as much fun. And this time I’ll have considerably less stuff and more of an idea of what I’m doing when I arrive at the Poipet border.

I have loads more to say, but I want to get back outside now to help with the chicken house building. I will try to write on here once more before I leave for Thailand next week. Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with my blog and supporting me during this experience. I feel so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends, and your kind words and support mean the world to me. Please send me emails to update me on when is going on with you. I would love to hear from you. jlr60atpittdotedu@gmail.com
Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the end of summer!

Loving the crapca out of APCA

I haven’t written on here since I arrived at APCA on July 26th because I’ve just been too overwhelmed. I’ve had so many wonderful, new and exciting experiences so far that happen what seems like literally every minute of every day, that I haven’t known where to begin. I know that no amount of writing or pictures can adequately describe all that I have experienced or felt in the 12 days I have been here so far, but I suppose I have to start writing sometime.

I’ll start with the basics: APCA is incredible.

There are about 64 children here, though the number tends to fluctuate fairly often with children coming in from the surrounding villages to learn or help out with their parents. A majority of the kids here are orphans, but some still have parents who live in the surrounding villages who simply cannot afford for them to live at home, so the kids come here in order to attend school and have a better life. There is a very strong community feel here, and it’s amazing to see how people take care of each other, and to see how much APCA is respected in this area. The kids’ ages range from 2-17, with about an even number of boys and girls. APCA is located in the Kampong Speu province in the Oudong district, about 50km west of Phnom Penh, the capitol city of Cambodia. We are in a very rural area surrounded by rice fields. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous. I still wake up every morning and go straight outside to the balcony to look out over endless green rice fields, coconut and sugar palm trees. The sunrises and sunsets are truly breathtaking. Our property is a decent size, but we only have one building that is three stories tall. There are a few other open structures with palm leaf roofs that serve as a classroom, sleeping quarters, a kitchen, and what is soon to be a place to keep chickens for the community. There are three bathroom structures outside for the kids that have running water and toilets. APCA has our own well on the property, and most of the time we have running water, especially just after we’ve had heavy rain. The water is usually a bit of a murky brownish color, and you can’t drink it, but it is what we use for showers and washing our clothes. We don’t have washing machines here, so everyone washes their clothes in buckets with soap and a bristly scrub brush, and then rinses them in another bucket of plain water. It has certainly made me appreciate washers and dryers.

About a ten minute bike ride down the road is a small outdoor market where we can go to buy basic necessities, lots of yummy street food, and any type of Cambodian fruit that is in season from lychees to mangosteens to dragon fruit. And all of the food is so inexpensive. I have been buying the kids bananas a couple of times a week because fruit is a rare treat for them. 70 bananas only cost $1.50 to $2.50, depending on the vendor. That’s only about 4 cents per banana! It’s unbelievable how inexpensive things are here. I bought a nice digital watch at the market the other day for $2. Ridiculous.

My main job here is to teach the kids English. That was literally my instruction from the director Mr. Dara: teach children English. No further explanation. So that is what I’m attempting to do. I started out teaching two one-hour long classes a day. In the morning I taught a class of about 20 older children ranging from 12-17 years old, and in the afternoon I taught about 40 children ages 4-11. My first week I taught colors to both classes so I could see what levels they were at and what they could handle. The ability levels in both classes varied greatly, and the afternoon class was almost impossible to teach effectively because it was so big. Some kids could say and spell all of the colors, while others didn’t even seem to know their ABCs. Plus there are only eight bench style desks that can seat about 24 kids total, (if they squeeze in like sardines) in our outdoor classroom, so many of the kids ended up on plastic chairs in the back. I talked to Dara about splitting the afternoon class up, and now I am teaching three classes a day with only about 20 kids in each class, and am able to teach more specifically to each class’ ability level. It still isn’t perfect because some kids are definitely more proficient than others even with the split groups, but I think the separation will be very good for both their learning and my sanity.

Since we have no book to go by and no lesson plans I am basically just making up my own lessons as I go along. It’s difficult because the children have been learning English consistently for at least two years now, but they don’t seem to have a lot to show for it. I think this is because many volunteers come and go, staying only a month or two at a time, and they don’t really know where the last volunteer left off. I’m hoping that since I will be here for about five months that I will have time to make some good progress with them. And I’m going to try to keep good track of what I am teaching to help out other volunteers in the future. So far lesson planning has been fun, and the children seem to be quick learners, which is awesome. They are really a joy to teach.

Not only the kids are fun to teach, they are amazing people to be around. I have never met such motivated or independent kids before in my life. Every morning they wake up on their own between 4-5am either to study, clean, or practice traditional Cambodian dancing. Then at 7:45am Kim teaches them Korean. At 9am and 10am Hazel and I teach them English. The kids usually eat lunch and rest until 1pm when their Cambodian teacher does their Cambodian/English lessons. Then at 3pm I teach my 3rd class. At 4pm Kim teaches all of the kids Tae Kwon Do. It’s adorable to watch the younger kids do it, and a lot of the older kids are getting really good. After dinner they study on their own, clean around the property and shower. They are busy literally all day every day, and this is their summer break! Dara really wants them to stay on top of their education year round, and they are so happy to do it. All of the kids study very hard in my classes and are really excited to participate every day. A lot of them even come to me during their breaks throughout the day and at night asking me to help them study. It’s really remarkable how motivated they are to learn.

So that is pretty much my day to day life here: teaching, playing with the kids, riding bikes to the market, and helping out with whatever needs done whenever I can. I have been reading in the early afternoons before my class, lesson planning, and really just enjoying the slower pace of rural living. Although nothing really feels slow about being here because there is always excitement and action going on, which I’m sure you can imagine with 60 some odd kids running around. The 12 days I’ve been here have flown by incredibly quickly, so I’m actually very glad I’ve decided to stay here for a long time.

I have also been into Phnom Penh five times already since I got here for many different reasons, usually running errands with Dara or picking up/dropping off people at the airport. The trip into the city takes about one to one and a half hours. Last Sunday I went into Phnom Penh early in the morning to visit Monica, Alisa and Jessi at the Palm Tree Orphanage for Monica and another volunteer, Mike’s, going away party. It was so nice to see the girls again and to get to see Palm Tree and meet the kids there. Palm Tree is a much different place from APCA. It is nestled right in the middle of Phnom Penh in the hustle and bustle of the city. They have several multilevel buildings, both a girls and a boys dormitory, at least five indoor classrooms, laundry facilities, and a music room with lots of instruments. They also have a covered eating area with tables and chairs for all of the kids. It is a very impressive set up.

The party was so much fun! We ate traditional Cambodian cuisine, drank Angkor beers (very delicious), and danced with the kids for hours. The kids there were so sweet and very smart. It was sad saying goodbye to Monica because I have no clue when I will get to see her again, but I’m really glad we were also to see each other both in Thailand and Cambodia. It is cool that we got to experience more adventures on the other side of the world together.

I took a moto back to APCA early Monday morning. A moto is what they call motorcycles here, and they are the alternative to taxis, which actually don’t even exist here. Basically if you want to get anywhere in Cambodia you hop on the back of one and the driver will take you to your destination. The hour long moto ride was a much different way to experience the trip as compared to the air conditioned APCA van, which is how I usually go. I won’t go into too much detail about the ride as to not freak out my parents or relatives, but it was definitely an exciting and interesting experience.

I had a wonderful time visiting Palm Tree, however the visit also made me realize how much APCA is lacking. The kids don’t even have a proper area to eat here. They usually squat on the ground to eat their meals, which isn’t incredibly sanitary. Instead of dormitories there are palm leaf covered areas outside where some of the kids sleep on raised wooden platforms under mosquito nets. Many of the kids also set up their mosquito nets on the floors and balconies all over the building. Unfortunately APCA doesn’t have enough funding to build dorms for them yet, so for now the kids just kind of sleep wherever they feel like it. I feel incredibly spoiled to have my own room here with a real bed.

Yet the kids never complain about anything, and are extremely grateful for everything you do for them or give them. I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for them. They are extremely happy children, and their basic needs are met. It just kind of sucks that APCA doesn’t have the means right now to build more structures that would make their lives more comfortable. Dara is currently trying to get funding from our Korean and American donors to get a covered eating area and a boys and girls dormitory built, so hopefully that will happen in the near future.

Hazel left this afternoon to go back to England. It was so sad to see her go. We have become fast friends the past couple of weeks, and I feel lucky to have been able to meet her and spend time with her here. I will miss having her here a lot, and I know the kids will too.

We had a party for her departure last night and it was so much fun! For dinner we had the Cambodian version of spaghetti, which is very thin, sticky white noodles, in a fish soup broth with lots of veggies. Apparently it’s one of the kids’ favorite dishes. And I can see why, it was really tasty, or ch’ngun as they say in Khmai. I’m slowing attempting to pick up some Khmer, but so far it’s slow goin’. I have mastered about 80% of the kids names though, which I think is pretty good. We danced to a lot of Cambodian music, which often has specific dances associated with it. I have never really considered myself a good dancer, but I got a lot of compliments on my skills from the kids and even some adults. I’m sure they’re just being nice though, as that does seem to be the Cambodian way. I have seriously never met such constantly happy, smiling, positive people. It seems like everyone in Cambodia is happy all the time, no matter what they are doing. Considering Cambodia’s incredibly difficult and recent history, peoples’ attitudes here are amazing.

The kids also danced to some hip hop songs, a few of which they had routines to because they have been studying hip hop on the weekends with a dance teacher from Phnom Penh. They are really good! I wish I could have taken pictures, but I couldn’t get up to get my camera because Veasna, a hilarious and adorable four year old boy who has really taken a liking to me, fell asleep on my lap, and I didn’t want to get up and wake him. He falls asleep on me probably every other day and wants me to hold him a lot. He also gives the most awesome hugs.

Though I have only been here a short time I really feel like everyone here has accepted me as family. I feel really lucky to be surrounded by such loving, kind people here, especially because I am so far from all of the loving kind people I know and love at home. I really don’t think I could have asked to be in a more amazing place to have this experience, and I’m so happy to be here.

Another cool thing about being at APCA is that I will have the opportunity to help with field work in the 14 villages APCA supports, as well as with some other NGOs we partner with. I think this Sunday I will get to go with Dara and Kim to the Vietnam border to see the work that our partners in the Rural Economic Development Association (REDA) are doing in their villages. I know they do a lot of work for orphans with AIDS as well as drug abusers, so that should be interesting to see and learn about. I’ll definitely let you know how it goes.

I think I will stop myself here for today and try to write more later. I hope you are all doing well wherever you may be. Shout out to my friends and family-I LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL VERY MUCH!!

Peace.

So three Cambodian guys, a blonde chick and a zebra get into a cab...

Yesterday was an intense day of travel from Thailand to the Cambodian border, then on to APCA. Poi's aunt and uncle helped me book a ticket through a travel agency on a ten passenger bus and then a transfer to a cab to Phnom Penh for 1350 baht.
Poi's grandparents dropped me off at the Malaysia Hotel in Bangkok at 6:30am because the bus was scheduled to arrive at 7am. The bus showed up at 8am and we were on our way. It was cool to see some of the more rural areas in Thailand on the way. The scenery was very lush and green, and there were people out in the rice paddies working. It was very postcard-esque. And I got to listen to some good music on the way via the man from Mexico City's headphones who was sitting in front of me. He seemed to be waging a full fledge attack on his eardrums with his sound cranked all the way up.
We arrived at the Poipet border around 11:30. At the border we all got out and had lunch while we filled out paperwork to get us across the border. Some people from my bus still needed to get their visas, so they did that there too. I sat with a guy from Singapore named Jeremy who was going to meet up with his friends at Siem Riep, where Angkor Wat is. He is a business student at an IT school in Singapore, but is spending this semester abroad in Bangkok, so he is just traveling a bit before his classes start.
Around 12:30pm a man told everyone going to Siem Riep to start walking with a guide. It turned out I was the only one from our bus going to Phnom Penh, so I stayed put. A few minutes later our bus driver came up to me and motioned to me as if to ask why I was still sitting there. I pointed to myself and said "Phnom Penh." He motioned for me to get up, pointed at the group far ahead and said "follow follow!" So I got up, put on my 30lb backpack, strapped my day pack to my front over my other small side bag, and began pulling my 50lb bag full of stuff for the APCA kids with my smaller carry-on size bag strapped on top of it. He shook his head at me and led me to a van. I'm pretty sure he thought I was ridiculous for having so much stuff. A guy drove me passed the group that was already walking and continued on toward what I assumed was the border. Mind you I had no idea where we were going or how this whole border crossing situation worked. The driver stopped abruptly in the middle of complete chaos. There were street children, vendors, cabbies, and beggars all over. He took my stuff out of the van and pointed straight, but said "go left", and drove away. Nervous and with no other falangs in sight I got my bags back on and went straight, figuring that in this case actions speak louder than words.
I was immediately swarmed by about 15 street children offering to pull my stuff for me on small dollies they were dragging. Several men also came up to me offering their taxi and bus services. As I was walking, trying to politely tell the street children ‘no thank you’ while managing all of my bags, a man, who must think himself very clever, came up to me and acted like he was my driver and had been waiting for me. I showed him the receipt for my ticket, which he then proceeded to tell me was no good, and said I’d have to buy a new ticket to get to Phnom Penh. At this point I was a little freaked out and realized he was not with the company I'd bought the ticket from. I told him I didn’t want his help and walked away. Of course he followed me and kept hounding me while I was trying to figure out what the heck to do. About ten minutes later, just as I was calling Poi to ask her to call her aunt, the group showed up with our real guide. I had never felt so relieved.
From that point on our guide, Heng, led me every step of the way across the border. First we waited inside a building to have our passports checked and stamped, which is when you officially cross the border. Then there was an infirmary line outside where they scan your temperature and make you swear you don't have swine flu. Then we walked on about a quarter mile on a dirt road passed like five seedy looking casinos to another line where they check your passport again and you turn in your arrival card. While waiting in all those lines I talked with Jeremy and another girl from Japan named Makiko. She is a teacher in Japan, but has spent a ton of time traveling solo all over the world. This was her 4th trip into Cambodia, and this trip she was going back to an orphanage she has visited before in Siem Riep where she teaches the kids Japanese guitar and songs. She was a really confident and interesting person, and she made me feel much better about traveling alone.
After all of those lines another bus drove us to a waiting point where my group left me and I waited for a long time for a cab to Phnom Penh. Finally a car came, which Heng said was a cab, though it was unmarked. I got in and sat right next to a ladyboy. I don't think I mentioned this before, but ladyboys are what they call transsexuals in Thailand, and they were all over Bangkok. Apparently sex change operations are all the rage there. While I was traveling with Monica and Alisa we decided to code name them ‘zebras’ so we could more openly announce to each other when we spotted one.
On our way out of Poipet we picked up two other Cambodian men and then proceeded to Phnom Penh. So there I was, in the back middle seat of a small Toyota, squished between a ladyboy and a large Cambodian man for 5 hours.
It was absolutely the most terrifying car ride of my life. My eyes were wide and my body was tense the entire trip. Our driver seemed to feel that 70mph was an acceptable speed to go down a two lane road with motorcycles, tuk tuks, bicyclist, stray dogs, cows and buffalo, pigs and pedestrians on either side. Not to mention other cars, which he would pass on the left without slowing down by simply honking like a maniac and expecting everyone else to move over. There were a few instances where suicide pigs, cows and dogs darted unexpectedly into the road. Those were scary. But somehow the whole way there I didn’t see one dead animal and there were no accidents. It truly seemed miraculous.
Heng had helped me give the cab driver Sophea’s phone number, so he knew to drop me off in the Oudong province which is about an hour outside Phnom Penh on the way. Sophea is a staff member at APCA, and he and I have been in communication this week about my arrival because Mr. Dara, the director of the orphanage is in Korea for a conference for NGOs.
Sophea and Dara’s wife, Mrs. Sim, Hazel, another volunteer, and three girls, Sreypov, Nary and Mari were there to greet me. I can’t even explain how happy I was to see them after that car ride.
It was about a half an hour drive from the Oudong market where we met to APCA. When we got there all of the kids ran to the van yelling “Hello Jennifer!” “Nice to meet you Jennifer!” It was the most incredible welcoming I could have ever imagined. They all ran up to shake my hand and hug me, and I had to pull myself together quickly to keep from crying. I was so happy and overwhelmed after such a crazy and long day.
Before I knew it the kids had grabbed all of my bags and were carrying them into the building and up the three flights of stairs to my room. One small boy had my 50lb bag on his back and was carrying it on his own! It was unbelievable. They led me to my room, which is so beautiful; I was not expecting the accommodations here to be so wonderful. I have my own room with two fans, and my own bathroom. I will post pictures as soon as I can. It is really lovely and so much more than I was expecting. They already had dinner prepared for me, an egg, rice and veggies. I was so hungry, and Hazel sat with me and we talked while I ate. Hazel is from England. She has been here for the past 6 ½ weeks and leaves next week. She is volunteering here teaching English and doing research gathering with Dara and Sophea before she begins her university studies at Sussex in England. She is a really kind, smart girl and we have spent a lot of time talking since I arrived here. I’m impressed with how mature and worldly she is at just 19.
There is another volunteer here from Korea named Kim. He arrived last week and will be here three more weeks. He is a grad student at a school in Korea and is majoring in International Peace, which sounds flipping sweet! He is teaching the kids Korean and Tae Kwon Do, and meeting with other NGOs all over Cambodia to learn more about their work. Apparently they have had a steady Korean teacher at APCA for the past 5 months, but she just left, and after Kim leaves another Korean teacher will come for 5 more months.
I just realized I never explained what APCA is. It stands for Assisting Poor Children Agency. The orphanage here in Oudong has about 63 children. APCA also works with 14 villages in the surrounding area doing many projects. As I learn more about their work share it with you.
This blog is getting really long, but I still feel like I have so much more to tell you. I should probably learn to condense my thoughts a little bit better. But I am so excited to be here, and I am really happy that there are other volunteers here as well. I wasn’t expecting any, and it is a really pleasant surprise. I hear Kim yelling downstairs so I have a feeling Tae Kwon Do lessons are starting and I want to participate so I’m going to run. Sorry this was so long! I hope you are all doing well!

More Bangkok Adventures

Ok I'm going to make this quick because I only have 9 minutes left at this internet cafe at our guesthouse. I have had an awesome past couple of days. I met up with Monica and the two other Palm Tree volunteers, Jessi and Alisa, who also went on our SAS voyage. We didn't know each other then, but I recognized them. It's so much fun traveling with SASers again. It's such a different experience traveling with other falangs, and I feel very fortunate to have had such different experiences here staying with Poi, hanging with Steve, and now spending time with the girls.
We are staying at a guest house, which is what they call hostels here, in Koh San, which is a very busy, very toursisty section of Bangkok. There are lots of guest houses, restaurants, massage parlors, and money exchange places, and street vendors selling food and liquor all along the road. A vast majority of people here are foreigners, but there are almost no Americans. It's a good, safe place to stay, and interesting to see.
Yesterday we got oil massages in the morning and then we took a tuk-tuk to Platinum, a humongous mall with over 1,500 stores! I didn't realize how much I missed tuk-tuk travel until the four of us were squeezed in the back of one, three on the seats and Alisa on the floor. It's definitely one of the most exciting ways to travel.
Platinum was sheer insanity. There was no way the four of us could stay together, so we created a meeting place and separated for an hour. This wasn't like a regular mall. The stores were more like stalls, and you couldn't try anything on. But you could haggle with the store owners and nothing had a fixed price. And it was ridiculously cheap. I ended up getting a dress for 300 baht, which is about $8.50. I got the girl down from 350, which isn't a huge accomplishment, but I'm just getting back into the swing of this whole bartering thing. Man have I missed it.
Last night we went down to Siam Lum, a huge night market here in Bangkok. We wanted to go to the Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing fight) which is right by the night market at Lumpini stadium. Unfortunately when we got there we found out that the cheapest tickets were 1000 baht, which none of us had on us. But a ticket salesman let us go inside to see what it was like, so we were able to snag some pictures and watch for a few minutes. Though the main fights hadn't kicked off yet at that point it looked pretty cool. At least we got a taste. Then we went and had dinner at the beer garden where Poi and I had gone my first night here. We split four Thai dishes and got some Tiger beers. There is another awesome beer we found here called BeerLao from Laos. I am really digging trying all of these Asian beers that we can't get back in the states. Although I'm pretty sure you can get Tiger some places. Ok computer is beeping at me. Outta minutes gotta go!

Little falang in the big city

So I figure I'll write as much as I can while I'm here at Poi's with internet access. Basically I'm in love with Bangkok. It is completely chaotic, vibrant, random, futuristic, old world, and diverse-it has everything. It kind of like if you threw Japan and Vietnam together in a bowl, and mixed in a pinch of the US. It is unlike any Asian country I've ever visited.
Bangkok is a very lively and business centered city, and appears to be very much on par with the rest of the first world in terms of the businesses that are here. Yet it is still very much a developing country, evidenced by the poverty seen even here in a major metropolis. Poi told me that kids do not have to go to school here, and sometimes families cannot afford to send their kids to school, even though public schools only cost 2 Baht per day, which comes out to $20 US dollars per year. So those kids often end up as street vendors from a young age. Though there is no quick fix to alleviating poverty, education is probably one of the best ways to prevent it.
The juxtaposition here between old and new is amazing. There are giant skyscrapers intermingling with temples sandwiched right between them. Life here just seems to flow quite naturally. Cars, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, bicyclists, and pedestrians share the road, and that seems to be the chain of command in terms of who has the right of way. Lanes or lines of any color on the street are treated more as suggestions than law. But I have yet to see a single accident, though close calls seem to occur by the second.
The people here are much more diverse than I expected. There are a decent amount of Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and tons of falangs, which are us western people. Steve said that there are about 6,000 ex-pats who live in Thailand, most of them in Bangkok. However I guess that's not a lot considering that 93 million people live in Thailand. I feel like I see a lot of Americans and Eurpeans around, but they are probably mostly tourists like me.
I was able to get new passport pages pretty easily yesterday. I left my passport with the embassy in the morning and came back in the afternoon where it was ready and waiting for me. So now I have more extra pages in my passport than I think it came with originally, and I am good to go for quite some time.
Poi's mom treated me to a Thai massage and facial yesterday at her friend's salon called Bliss Spa. I had never had a Thai massage before, and it was not what I expected. It involved a lot of pushing and pulling and stretching, bone cracking, and deep muscle massaging. Though not entirely relaxing, I felt great afterwards. It is supposed to be really good for your body because it stimulates blood flow. The facial was nice too, and though it was an upscale spa it was still ridiculously inexpensive.
Afterwards Poi's family driver took me to Steve's to pick up my big bags. The traffic here is ridiculous during rush hour! The stop lights can be red for up to 10 minutes. It took us two hours to go a total of probably 4 miles. I didn't think you could get worse traffic than in LA, but boy was I wrong.
I am planning to meet up with Monica and two other volunteers from Palm Tree tonight after they fly in from the beach. I'm going to stay with them for the next couple of days in Koh San, which is a section of Bangkok. I'm hoping we can go see a Muay Thai fight tonight, which is Thai kickboxing. Hopefully Steve will be able to come too.
Poi's uncle is helping me figure out getting a bus into Cambodia, so that should be worked out by today. Her family is so friendly and generous. They are really taking care of me while i'm here. A bunch of her relatives just arrived so I'm gonna get going. Take care!

Alive and Bangkickin!

Hey everybody! I just got into Bangkok this morning after a not-at-all-horrible 14 hour flight. Thanks to discounting my dad's suggestion to get a good nights sleep my last night in the US, I was completely exhausted by the time my butt hit plane seat at 11:40pm July 19th. flight passed in no time at all. Thai AirwaI put a sign saying "Please wake me for food" on my chest and promptly passed out moments later. Theys serves three fabulous meals, passes out drinks more often than necessary, and has an amazing in-flight entertainment selection with about 30 movies to choose from. Between sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom and sporadically watching Benjamin Button the flight flew by and I arrived rested and ready to take on Thailand an hour and a half early at 5:20am Tuesday (Thai time). Moments after departing the plane I was greeted by a man with a sign bearing my name. Through the magic of connections that is my dad's friend Steve I was through customs within 5 minutes, passport stamped and everything, a process that usually takes at least 40 minutes. Steve is my dad's friend and business partner, and he and his wife have been splitting their time living in Thailand and in their house in San Clemente for the past 12 years. Their apartment is gorgeous right on the Choapraya River. Choapraya runs right through Bangkok and is really happenin. There are lots of boats going back and forth on it and it was fun to watch the action happening. Anyways, I got showered up at Steve's and then we went to his office about 10 minutes away. Steve had some work to do so his assistant Narudee took me around for the day. We got to use one of Steve's drivers and we went to the Grand Palace where we were taken on an awesome tour with a private guide, a woman named Kanya who really knew her stuff. Thailand's past 8 kings lived in the palace. The 9th king who is in power now moved out and now the palace serves as a major tourist destination. It was beautiful and so ornate-pictures to come. Narudee and I then went to pick up a SIM card for my phone so I could call Poi, my sister's roommate who also lives in Bangkok and is Thai. Narudee dropped me off at Poi's house, where I am now, about to sit down to a 5 course Thai dinner. I think we are going out to a night market with a beer garden tonight, which sounds awesome. I'm pretty tired though so I hope we don't stay out too late. I'm getting early tomorrow and Steve's driver is taking me to the American Embassy so I can (hopefully) add some pages to my passport. I realized last week that I might not have enough left for the whole trip, but it was too late to do anything about it at home. I have to go now because we are going to eat. Hope everyone is doing well at home!