Yesterday was the first day that I liked being back. Its hard to say that...I feel like I'm expected to love being back and living here. I guess I expected it from myself. It wasn't there at first though. All I wanted to do was go home. Back to familiarity and normalness. Back to Matt. I miss him terribly. Me and Kim are hoping to get a laptop and internet at our apartment so it would make it alot easier to call home on Skype. So back to yesterday. We went to market and bought some more things for our apartment. I took her to the "pile" shop which is what me, Kristie and Brittany had affectionately called our favorite clothes store. Its just a HUGE mound of clothes and then bags more stuffed along the side. Straight from the factories. We found Hollister jeans for $14!! SO awesome. So buying some clothes definetly made us feel better. Then we went to Bohhdi Tree for supper which was one of my favorite restuarants. AND I saw Mong who used to be one of our fav tuktuk drivers! But of course...when I asked him how much to give us a ride me said.."Whatever you think"! AUUGGHHH. Brittany and Kristie...Mong is STILL the same. I have yet to call up Kong..another one of our tuktuk drivers. Hopefully he remembers me:) We also got a washing machine installed so Kim was busy today washing clothes. What a great roommate:)
Today was my first day at work. Very overwhelming. But exciting. I have 26 1st grade students and a wonderful assistant called See Chan. She's gonna be my lifesaver! Thursday is the first day the kids come...we've just been getting things organized. It is going to be a challenging year I think....I never knew being a REAL teacher was so much work. Oh well. I know I can do it. OK...I'm heading home to make supper with Kim. We still haven't found househelp so we've been cooking ourselves. I've never ate such odd mismatched meals in my life...hahaha...oh man.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
So I'm finally here.
I'm here. Kampuchea. Or atleast that's what the locals call Cambodia. Wow. Where do I start. We arrived in Phnom Pehn last week. It was almost dark and pouring rain. The shock of seeing dark faces and motos everywhere was much less shocking than I thought it would. Everything felt familiar....but strange. Everything was as I remembered it but somewhat intimidating. Oh if only I could have been seeing everything through Kim's eyes. What a different picture it would have been....chaos.
We live on street 288. A much busier street than I lived on before. This one is actually paved and there is somewhat of a sidewalk even! Stepping into our apartment that first night...we were shocked. The ghettoness of it is hard to describe. Our kitchen has a SMALL fridge, two propane gad burners, a sink and a counter about 5 cm long. Today we had a washing machine installed beside the sink so when we aren't washing clothes it will probably be used as counter space. There is two bedrooms. One is like massively big..the other is roughly the size of a closet. So we moved both beds..both king sized beds... into the big room and use the other room as our "spare bedroom".....hahaha. Actually all that is in there is a broken lamp and an ironing board that is so dirty and stained I wouldn't dream of bringing my clothes anywhere near it. It's scary. Our bathroom is alright except one of the like 25 taps jutting haphazardly from the wall leaks like crazy so the floor is permentantly wet. Our living room is better now that we rearranged. We are gonna try and find Febreeze to spray down the couch and hopefully buy some fabric to replace the dirty strained curtains. BUT we have cable TV!! Its been our saving grace. We are already addicted to "Star World"..its an English channel that plays Friends like all day long..and other good shows.
We've only encountered one mouse so far. Kim killed it with her journal so we stuffed the huge massive hole in our bedroom wall with a bandana to deter further rodents from finding their way in. Oh and a huge dead rat on the road. I almost stepped on it.
Our first 4 or 5 days have been really tough. We haven't really gotten any help from anyone so we've had to figure out alot of stuff on our own. We finally got cell phones...they even threw in some Nokia hats for free. They are quite possibly the funniest/ugliest hats ever. I wonder if it was a joke. Probably not.
Cambodia had a national election yesterday and we haven't really heard how it all went but we stayed inside all day..it was a long day. The last couple days have been a little scary here..lots of demonstrations and parades. Soldiers. A much different vibe than when I was here last. So we hope that everything with the election went well and life can get back to normal.
We got to go out to the orphanage that I taught at on Saturday night for the July birthday party. It was the best feeling in the world to see all those kids again. They were SO surprised!! They had no idea I was coming. The looks on their faces was priceless. Kim was beyond impressed at how I knew all their names....and how to pronounce them...hehehe.
I start my teaching job tomorrow. We have two days of inservice and then the first day of school is on Thursday. I'm teaching grade 1 which is pretty exciting. They are all Cambodian..mostly from wealthy families and they speak English!!! YEAH!!! And there is a pool that staff can use on the evenings and weekends...something me and Kim will take full advantage of.
Surprisingly I don't have that many funny stories yet. They will come though. That I am sure of.
We live on street 288. A much busier street than I lived on before. This one is actually paved and there is somewhat of a sidewalk even! Stepping into our apartment that first night...we were shocked. The ghettoness of it is hard to describe. Our kitchen has a SMALL fridge, two propane gad burners, a sink and a counter about 5 cm long. Today we had a washing machine installed beside the sink so when we aren't washing clothes it will probably be used as counter space. There is two bedrooms. One is like massively big..the other is roughly the size of a closet. So we moved both beds..both king sized beds... into the big room and use the other room as our "spare bedroom".....hahaha. Actually all that is in there is a broken lamp and an ironing board that is so dirty and stained I wouldn't dream of bringing my clothes anywhere near it. It's scary. Our bathroom is alright except one of the like 25 taps jutting haphazardly from the wall leaks like crazy so the floor is permentantly wet. Our living room is better now that we rearranged. We are gonna try and find Febreeze to spray down the couch and hopefully buy some fabric to replace the dirty strained curtains. BUT we have cable TV!! Its been our saving grace. We are already addicted to "Star World"..its an English channel that plays Friends like all day long..and other good shows.
We've only encountered one mouse so far. Kim killed it with her journal so we stuffed the huge massive hole in our bedroom wall with a bandana to deter further rodents from finding their way in. Oh and a huge dead rat on the road. I almost stepped on it.
Our first 4 or 5 days have been really tough. We haven't really gotten any help from anyone so we've had to figure out alot of stuff on our own. We finally got cell phones...they even threw in some Nokia hats for free. They are quite possibly the funniest/ugliest hats ever. I wonder if it was a joke. Probably not.
Cambodia had a national election yesterday and we haven't really heard how it all went but we stayed inside all day..it was a long day. The last couple days have been a little scary here..lots of demonstrations and parades. Soldiers. A much different vibe than when I was here last. So we hope that everything with the election went well and life can get back to normal.
We got to go out to the orphanage that I taught at on Saturday night for the July birthday party. It was the best feeling in the world to see all those kids again. They were SO surprised!! They had no idea I was coming. The looks on their faces was priceless. Kim was beyond impressed at how I knew all their names....and how to pronounce them...hehehe.
I start my teaching job tomorrow. We have two days of inservice and then the first day of school is on Thursday. I'm teaching grade 1 which is pretty exciting. They are all Cambodian..mostly from wealthy families and they speak English!!! YEAH!!! And there is a pool that staff can use on the evenings and weekends...something me and Kim will take full advantage of.
Surprisingly I don't have that many funny stories yet. They will come though. That I am sure of.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
